MFEO

After walking home through rainy Manhattan streets and catching a glimpse of the Empire State Building glowing, barely visible through the fog, I had a hankering to watch Sleepless in Seattle. I had forgotten how funny the kids are in that movie!

        (Jonah on the phone with Dr. Marsha Fieldstone, while his Dad is on a date)

         Jonah: He's kissing her on the lips. My Dad's been captured by a ho!

Ha! What's your favorite rainy night movie?

Images: Screenshots from Sleepless in Seattle

Making a Wedding Cake: Part II

After months of planning, worrying and buying way too much butter, Wedding Cake Day was upon me. My biggest concern was getting the tiers there without anything cracking or breaking. Oh, did I mention the reception was being held in another borough? It was. The cake had to get from the west side of Manhattan to the east side of Queens.

Thankfully, I have very good friends who helped me get all three tiers into a cab, and also kindly flirted with the cab driver to get him to drive very slowly and smoothly (a major miracle, if you've ever ridden in an NYC cab). I put the crumb-coated cakes in individual boxes and then we held the cakes and our breath in the back of a cab. We arrived at the reception site with the cakes still perfectly intact. Hooray!



After the cab ride was over and I could breathe again, I set to work assembling and frosting the cake. I love frosting cakes, but frosting a giant one was more fun than I thought it would be. I kept exclaiming, "this is so fun!" to no one in particular.



While I was in my own little world of frosting joy, a few engaged couples were wandering around and looking at the venue. One of them looked at me and said, "Oh, the baker would know! How many people are they expecting tonight?" I was thrilled that they thought I was a professional! But then, a little later, another couple came by and the groom asked for my card. Eeee! I probably should have been a little cooler about the whole thing and given him my email address or something. Instead, I smiled like a goof and told him I wasn't a professional, just a friend of the bride.

After the frosting was done I cascaded some yellow & white ranunculus, baby's breath and greenery down the front of the cake and called it a day! Well. Actually, I went home, showered, and changed from Nervous-Cake-Baker to Happy-Wedding-Guest-Who-Needs-A-Drink.





All in all, making a wedding cake was (honestly!) really fun. And I'm really happy that my friends could have a cake they liked and that it tasted good (why is that so rare in wedding cakes?). So, congratulations to the Kings! Thanks for trusting me to make a giant cake. I loved it.

Making a Wedding Cake: Part I

Oh my. I did it! I made a wedding cake! Crazy.

I've been dreaming about making a wedding cake for ages. After making the groom's cake for a friend's wedding this summer, I was even more excited about someday making a wedding cake. So when Tracey said, "Hey, you could do our wedding cake!" I jumped at the chance. I've had so much fun with this project and I'd love to share the behind-the-scenes details with you! (I'll write about the day-of-the-wedding details next, if those interest you too :)



Thankfully Tracey and Greg were very laid back about the whole thing, and weren't looking for something super fancy or perfect. That really freed me up to focus on how it would taste, knowing if my frosting style is a bit homemade-looking, that's ok. We decided on a fall-flavored cake, with a tier each of carrot, pumpkin and apple cake covered with a thick layer of cream cheese frosting.



After the question of flavor was answered, I turned to the Internet to answer the million other questions I had. Like, how does a three-tiered cake not cave in on itself? And how on earth am I going to get a giant wedding cake from my apartment in Chelsea to the venue in Queens? The Internet was very helpful. Thankfully, Queen Deb had already attempted this feat and I learned (as always) a lot from her.

After the Internet taught me about using dowels (I used straws) to keep the cake from caving in on itself, I made a full-sized test cake. Which was maybe a bit insane/wasteful, but turned out to be the best thing I could have done for my sanity and my confidence level. I tested all the recipes, built the cake, figured out that it was super easy to hide the cake boards in between each layer, gained confidence that it wouldn't cave in, and saw how the frosting would behave after sitting out all day in a warm apartment. As a little cheat, I only frosted half of the test cake.



After the test cake survived the day in my apartment without anything catastrophic happening, I took a giant box of it over to Tracey and Greg, who gave it the thumbs up. Then I threw the rest away (I know! I'm sorry) and waited nervously for the wedding day to make the real deal. Oh, and I suppose since this is the behind the scenes post I should tell you that I made all the cake a week before the wedding day and froze it all. It worked beautifully—cake is much easier to move around when it's frozen solid, it thaws to taste exactly the same as it did when it went in, and it allowed me to enjoy the pre-wedding festivities without having to come home to bake nine cakes at the end of the night.

I think I've bored you enough with the details for now (or, if there's anyone out there like me, fascinated you), more on how it all went down later today.

(Wedding-y) Weekend in Pictures

{lingerie party decor}

{bachelorette party dinner}

{refueling between festivities}

{three tiers of wedding cake in a cab}

{venue preparations}

{a lovely dress}

{it's good to be king}

This weekend was all about a wedding. The bachelorette party, rehearsal, rehearsal dinner, reception set-up and finally the ceremony that married two of my favorites. It was a wonderful day, filled with all kinds of laughter, tears, and dancing (that one's a rarity for me!). 

Oh, and I made a wedding cake. No big deal. I'll tell you all about it tomorrow. :)

Light and Sleep

It's pretty much a no-brainer that light effects how we sleep. How many of us could fall asleep in a brightly lit room? When I'm winding down for the night I usually switch to dim lighting, but I never really thought about the light coming from my computer. It turns out, the blue light that emanates from our computers and phones is not very helpful when you're trying to fall asleep.

Lately I've been using this great app called f.lux, which changes the light your computer produces based on the time of day and where you live. Writing this post in the wee hours of the morning, my screen is casting a soft, orange glow on my hands instead of an intense blue-white light. It's really nice and calming.

photos by Sofia Ajram

A Little Bit of Knope

Just a little bit of hilarity for your Wednesday morning. I've been inhaling season two of Parks and Recreation on Netflix lately, it's so funny. I may have laughed out loud at this part around 1:30 a.m. this morning, hopefully I didn't wake up my roommates!

PS: Watch the same thing here, on a loop. Then die laughing.

Whimsy

Gorgeous, whimsical images from photographer Tim Walker. I never knew I wanted to have a camp out in a library, but now I need to!

via Hello, Friend