Cactus Cake on a Rainy Day

WE ARE OUT OF SCHOOL!!!  Woo hoo!  Summer time:  lazy-beachy days, nature walks, fun times at the farm...  But, it's been raining off and on for days!  Literally!  And because of that we've watched hundred of hours of TV/Netflix and played almost as many hours of video games.  I dusted the fan blades, wiped down the blinds, scrubbed the tops of the kitchen cabinets, washed the baseboards, fixed and tidied up all sorts of odds-n-ends, napped...  Ho hum.

Summer and I have been compiling a list of fun things to do in Tampa for those days when there's nothing to do.  The list is mostly places to eat and a few destinations.  Unfortunately though, most of the places to go are outside.  So, after some thought...we decided to make a cake!  That'll be a fun inside the house activity.  It'll be something different.  

I used to LOVE to bake during the summer:  whole pies with lattice work, tiny muffin cup sized pies, elaborately decorated cakes...  Sadly, calories got in the way.  Lucky for me though, we're trapped in the house and Nicholas can't get enough calories, Summer and Shawn will eat some, and my nephew, Brian, is visiting for a few weeks and he'll eat some too.  

We braved the rain, went to Michael's for some cake decorating supplies, Publix for some other things, and made a quick stop at the farm for some fresh milk.

The boys settled in for more gaming.

I love making things from scratch but I also enjoy cutting out some of the tedious steps when possible!  We used ready made royal icing and boxed buttercream and cake.

In order to allow for some drying time, the first step in the cactus cake was to work on the flower.  I used a nail and a leaf tip.  The beautifully pink flower was limp and lifeless.  But...meh.  Good enough, right?  (I should have added more powdered sugar to stiffen up the icing after mixing in the coloring because I think that little bit of liquid thinned it out and the petals were a lil sunny side down.)  

There was no way to remove the soggy flower from the nail.  So, we sacrificed a hamburger bun.  It made for a great stand.

Again, knowing that the royal icing needed time to set up, we went on to make the flower stamen and cactus needles.  The cactus needles were just plain white icing but the batch for the flower stamen had some yellow food coloring added to it.  We used a number two tip to pipe out inch long lines.

Summer on piping duty.

The white icing was so thick that I had to change to a number four tip.  Even with a larger hole, the icing was just so thick that we had to take turns piping.  Our hands cramped!  

Number two tip.

Nicholas' turn.  The number four tip was better but still a TOUGH job!

We all needed a break from icing piping.  So, we moved on to the buttercream...a much easier task!  The goal was to make a cactus shade of green.  But, we think that this looks exactly like wasabi!

Wasabi?

Nicholas was honestly not sure if it was wasabi!

Then, it was time to bake the cake.  I'd made this cactus cake in 1993 for myself just for fun.  I am certain that was the first and last time that I used the ball cake pan set.  I moved them with me to two different apartments and two different houses. Although, I'd considered throwing away the pans, for some reason, I never did.  And, I'm glad that I didn't.  What fun to bake a ball shaped cake!

Summer icing the cake.

In the end, the cactus looks pretty darn legit in a new/clean clay pot on a bed of crushed Oreo cookies as dirt.