8 Days a Week or Living La Vida Loca

I think one of the best phrases the Beatles ever came up with was “8 days a week.” Lately I feel that’s what my work schedule is– 8 days a week. And me being me, I can’t help but add to a completely chuck full plate and throw in another project– aka a cake. I’ll sleep when I’m dead as they say.

Around 4am on Sunday I left work feeling exhausted and accomplished. My overall highlight of the night? I saw Ricki Martin! Let me break it down and have a true confession here, for a minute.  I loved Ricki Martin when I was in High School. I probably loved him more than was good for my already suffering drama-geek reputation. I loved him so much I went to see him in concert and I even had his spanish album Vuelve. I knew all the words en espanol and believed that we might actually make out someday…so much for dreams!

As Ricki’s career waned so did my love and I think about how gaga I was for him as a goofy teenage phase.  On Saturday he arrived to Frederick P. Rose Hall in support of a friend Michael Cerveris, who was performing– they are both in an upcoming run of Evita on Broadway.  As his 6’2″ frame smoothly strolled out of the theater, I got a long look at my teenage crush. His hair was dark and swept to the side and he wore black rimmed “dork” glasses– I wear them too, though he pulled off a Clark Kent kind of look, where the best I can do is be compared to Sarah Palin.  As he passed me I heard him speaking in Spanish to his friends.  And I’m still perplexed as I’ve never heard another dialect of Spanish with quite the same sultry quality.

For a minute I was that dorky 16 year old pining for the gorgeous Latin Sensation. Speaking of Dorky, heres my other weekend endeavor” Bot” from Umizoomi. Everytime I do a kids cake I am shocked at how out of the loop I am in terms of kids characters and TV shows.  Hopefully you can see in the pictures that cake is actually suspended over dowels decorated to look like legs and feet.

A bit of a challenge more so than I anticipated, but I heard with was a hit at the party for a young Mr. Braydon.  All in all a good week/ weekend.  On one last dork note, I’m thinking about getting an iphone…any suggestions on model or memory??

Add a comment January 24, 2012

My Worst Nightmare

Hey everybody!!! Happy New Year!! I’m happy to be back!!! I decided to publish a quick post I’d written a few weeks ago as I get my barrings and hopefully get back in the swing of baking! I’ve also had some exciting changes happen this past holiday season, but in the interest of creating suspense I’ll go into my exciting news once I have a recipe to post with it.

Jazz at Lincoln Center has been keeping me BUSY, like 80-hour-work-weeks busy, so there is little time for me to be baking, photographing, and posting and believe me I’ve caught some flack from my co-workers for not using them as taste test dumbies.

Just a few weeks ago I was at work no later than 10am each day– most days at 7am and didn’t leave till midnight 2am or 3am each day!! I felt triumphant at the end of a very long week not only accomplishing all the shows and events but also completing a great cake for a colleague who was celebrating 7 blissful years of marriage with her husband… and then my worst nightmare.

Picture a beautiful, brisk,  sunny Saturday and I’m on my way to the theater, cake in hand. I decide the subway is the best bet. Should I drive in I will hit all sorts of traffic and probably get stuck without a decent parking spot, not to mention the ING marathon was the next day and parking was at a minimum.

So the D train it is. I lumber down the blocks carefully toting my two tiered jem. I take a seat with my cake next to me and am relieved as the train remains relatively unpacked.  I carefully deboard at 59th Street. I’m here. As I take my time up the steps I’m relieved to see the Jazz marquis infront of me. I’ve made it. Unscathed.  Now I’ve made cakes, wedding cakes at that, and learned the hard way if your cake hasn’t gotten proper refridgeration, hasn’t settled for a decent amount of time and isn’t stacked right–dowels in all the right places you are doomed to find your top tier flipped to the bottom of the box.  As I cross the second lane of the Broadway, the pedestrian sign counting down the seconds, my ankle rolls as I step onto a manhole and down I go, BITING it in the middle of Broadway cake and all on the street. “Somebody help that lady!!!” a woman shouts behind me. I could care less about the cabs lerching forward anticipating the light changing. I’ve made it so far: an hour ride, two tiered cake in hand on the NYC subway!

I’d apparently made enough mistakes to learn how to keep a cake standing even through a trip and toss across Broadway. There the box stood right side up cake in tact, not a fondant detail out of place. :sigh: of relief.

I can say less about the skinned knee and twisted ankle.  It swelled hours later to the point where I was limping around the theater, but my cake barely shuttered.

P.S. Click “Gallery” or “Birthday” to see some new pics.

3 comments January 16, 2012