TheBanyanTree: A (Cup)Cake for Abi

[Pam North]

Abigail Sadie was born on October 20, 2002, her grandmother's birthday!  I
didn't know her then, in fact, she had just turned three when I met her.  I
knew her dad years and years ago and I've never met her mom.  Luckily for
me, I get to be a part of her life now, which also includes her five year
old sister Lexi, and 'Gramma', who is staying with them now.  Which is how I
came to be involved in the planning of her fourth birthday party!!

Abi chose 'unicorns' for her party theme, but she just can't seem to wrap
her mouth around that word!  It comes out more like "hern-a-kerns", or
'hornicorns' as I like to say!

Her dad went online and ordered plates and cups and balloons, hornicorn cake
toppers and party favors, and then I went online and found party bags and
little bottles of bubbles that had unicorn heads on the caps to give out as
favors in the bags!  While my own kids are too old for this fun anymore, I
still get to 'relive' it with these 'mini-chicks'!I  told her dad I'd make
the cake and put the plastic hornicorns on top.

And it all sounded so simple and fun!!

Several months ago, the kids came home from daycare with a magazine that
included a 'recipe' for making giraffe cupcakes!  It was obvious that the
'heads' were those marshmallow-y peanut-shaped candies, the 'necks' were
sugar wafers, and they were stuck into a cupcake.  It was all frosted
yellow, with brown ears and eyes and 'spots'.  Cute!!  The magazine has been
sitting on his counter top since then, and neither he nor I got around to
trying them out.

A few weeks ago, he handed me the magazine and suggested I try them, only
making them into hornicorns for the party!!  Oh neat!!  Sure!!  I can DO
this!!  How fun!!  Piece of cake!!  (No pun intended!!)

I was nuts!!!!!!!!

I gathered cake mixes and boxes of powdered sugar.  Though the recipe called
for 'canned frosting' tinted yellow, I wanted to just use my decorator
frosting and make them BETTER!  Riiiigggghhhhttttt!!!!!!!!!

I had a few issues.

The first issue, was that the peanut candies used in the 'recipe' were
yellow.  I have NEVER seen them in yellow.  They have *always* been orange!
While the recipe said to tint the frosting to 'match' the peanuts, I was
going to have to frost the peanuts white!  To match the frosting of the
complete hornicorn, that I was going to decorate with pink and purple.

I didn't realize how nearly impossible it would be to 'frost' a marshmallow
peanut!  Nor what a challenge it would be to frost all sides of a sugar
wafer!

The 'recipe' said to "trim" the peanuts, at an angle where they would match
up with the wafers, also trimmed at an angle, so that the pieces matched up
in a 'V', sort of like the corners of wood fitted together.  I emptied the
bag of peanuts, and trimmed them all.  Then I opened the package of wafers,
and trimmed a couple dozen of them.  (What does one do with several thousand
'pieces' of wafers and peanuts piled up on the counter?!?!)

I mixed a double batch of frosting, but from the first, I realized that
there was going to be a problem.  I had frosting all over all of my fingers,
and a really mutant looking creature in front of me.  Okay.  I needed to
skip ahead and 'see' a couple of 'finished' products.  So, I pulled out two
smaller bowls, and mixed up small batches of pink and purple frosting.  I
found bags and tips, and set out to 'decorating'!!  Another issue:  My pink
'ears' just looked like eyes.  The 'horn' in the middle?!?!  A third eye!
Hmmm...  Okay, try again.  And make the horn a different color.  And
squiggle the 'mane' down the neck and back.  A couple spots....

Viola!  A mutant creature that really looked NOTHING like a
hornicorn!!!!!!!  Aurghghgh!!!

I'd been sitting on a stool up against the counter, and as I leaned back to
study my creations, I realized that more than an hour had passed!  Great!
At that rate, I'd finish the last hornicorn somewhere around four-thirty in
the morning!!!!!!!!

And then, as I watched, a head fell off!!!  And as if choreographed, another
fell, and then a third.  Hmmm.... heavy?!?!?  Maybe I didn't use enough
frosting as 'glue'!  I tried more.  It was worse.  So, I tried a couple
without frosting the peanut.  Do you have ANY idea how attractive a pink and
purple hornicorn is with an ORANGE head?!?!?!?  Well, lest it's never even
crossed your mind to consider, let me just tell you:  IT'S UGLY!!!

Okay.  Time to think up a Plan B.  Perhaps this hornicorn cupcake idea was
really bad, and I needed to just admit defeat.  *BEFORE* I had a nervous
breakdown!!!

I still had the plastic hornicorn cake toppers, so I went in search of pans,
more mixes and eggs, and just baked a cake.  I used a big square pan, and
then a smaller square pan.  I had a yellow cake mix, and a chocolate cake
mix, so I just mixed them separately, but then sort of 'swirled' them
together in the pans to have enough batter.

And the cakes baked perfectly and rose nicely!!  I took them out of the oven
and placed them on cake racks to cool.  Because the big cake was SO big, I
had to put two racks on top, side by side, to flip the cake over when I took
it out of the pan.  I had a nice steady grip on it all until I did the
'flip'.  At which point a rack slipped and the cake BROKE!

Okay.  Let the broken pieces cool.  I knew I could 'glue' it all back
together with frosting!  THAT part would be easy!!!

I cut up part of the cardboard box that her (birthday gift) easel came in,
and covered it in tin foil.  (Okay... so first I had to go to the grocery
store since I only had a six inch piece left in the box!!!)  Then I
carefully pieced the cake together and spread a thin coat of frosting all
over it to glue all the crumbs together.

When it was all dried, I frosted the cake white.  Hmmm...  I had no more
powered sugar and not enough Crisco, so I knew I couldn't make more frosting
(unless I was going BACK to the grocery store *AGAIN*!!), so I had to make
what I had stretch.  I had enough for the basic cake, but to do the
'squiggles' around the edges, I'd need to use the pink and purple.  Which,
either by them self, would not be enough.  So, I took the leftover white,
and mixed in both the pink and purple, to come up with my very own
personalized version of a pastel 'purpink'!

And I decorated all around all the edges of the big cake, and little cake on
top, it was mostly smooth, and it looked birthday-ish!  I wrote the
obligatory "Happy Birthday Abi" on the top, and then I set the plastic
hornicorns in.  One was small on a 'base', and I just set it in one corner.
But the other was HUGE, and pretty darned heavy for a cake topped!  Because
it sort of looked like it was 'jumping', I set it in one corner of the
bottom cake, 'jumping' into the corner of the top cake!  Perfect!  Then I
placed four little hornicorn and star candles where there was room!

A hornicorn birthday cake for Abi!!!!

Because I'm no fool, and I've been around this rodeo before, I knew I
couldn't just leave it on the counter lest the cat jump up in the middle of
the night and do her own 'taste test'!  So, I carefully set the cake in the
(cooled!) oven, and left the door open a crack for some air, plus because
the door wouldn't close all the way with the cardboard hanging over the edge
of the cooking rack!!

So when I got up the next morning, the cake was un-licked!!  (Though the
same can NOT be said about those sad forlorn hornicorn cupcakes I'd left
sitting out!!)  Perfect!

NOT!!!

Seems that Mr. Heavy Hornicorn had fallen.  And he couldn't get up!!!

And of course when he fell, he took a corner of cake with him!!!!!!!!!

And I didn't have any more white frosting to fix it with.  But, I had saved
the small leftover blod of purpink!!

Big sigh here....  i was just a teensy bit worried about Abi's reaction to
the cake.

But I needn't have worried.  She was not the least bit concerned!!  I guess
in her mind, a toppled over hornicorn on her cake was O.  K!!

Once I had the cake on her kitchen table, where it wouldn't have to be moved
again, where it wouldn't have to suffer anymore indignities, I opened the
container of purpink frosting.  And I blobbed it all over the corner.  Big
puffy swirls of 'cloud' looking blobs, which we made Mr. Hornicorn rest in.
Now he was jumping through clouds!

It was be-u-ti-ful!!!  Abi was SO excited and couldn't wait to cut into
it!!!  It didn't look so bad, and she was a thrilled little chick!!

 For her, I wanted the cake to be 'perfect'....

And for her, I think it was!!!!!!!  :D

Pam