Spring in Our Steps

Whew...it's hard to keep up with this blog when it seems everything is happening so quickly. It hardly seems possible that we're almost in June. The last post we wrote was in March!

We Plum Crazy gals have been just that. Between the two of us and our 7 children (and 1 in utero), two husbands and busy lives, I think we've been just trying to hold on. Three of Heather's children have birthdays across a four-week span starting at the end of May. So, we've been baking up a storm for business and personally as well!

We took things somewhat slow and easy in April. We only took one order for a smallish baby shower. The client wanted us to provide her expectant friend's two favorite things -- butterflies and bows -- in her two favorite colors -- purple and pink. We did our candly melt monarch butterflies and made some fondant bows.

Rather than put in a lot of hours towards the latter part of April and during Spring Break, we elected to take that time off, knowing that May would be plenty busy.

And, it was.

We started the month off with a fun project -- a Tea Party themed baby shower. The client wanted a teapot cake with cupcakes for each guest. We suggested that she add in real china cups and saucers to provide a lovely favor for each guest, and she quickly agreed. Also, we were thrilled to be able to work with our favorite event coordinator, Suzanne Devereaux from Encore Events and Party Planning. As always, she understands what the client wants and executes it flawlessly. She makes it easy to do our job. We think it turned out fabulous!


Suzanne from Encore Events put on a beautiful spread...

 

Can you guess what the baby's gender is?

Chai Tea Latte cupcake with Swiss Meringue Buttercream

The swiss meringue buttercream is a lighter and more buttery tasting frosting than its standard buttercream cousin. It was the perfect compliment to the moist and light cupcake underneath. Thank you, Delores, for letting us be a part of your special day.

Our second project for the month of May was a biggie! Our second wedding cake, but this one would be providing cake for about three times the amount of our first wedding last December.

On the docket was a fairly simple and straightfoward two-tiered ivory buttercream cake with sage green scrollwork. The tricky part was providing the seven sheet cakes that went along with the order. While that may not seem like a challenge, let us assure you that it most certainly is...when you only have one working oven.

As we've mentioned before, we rent the kitchen at a local church for our projects. They have been working hard to get all four of their ovens in working order. One has been on temperature and working great. The other three ping-pong around temperature-wise, making it difficult to evenly bake a cake. It hasn't been too much of a hassle to date with the orders we've had. But this was one we were hoping to have all 4 fired up and working -- or at least more than the one.

However, despite their best efforts, the parts weren't able to be ordered and installed in time. That meant a lot more time waiting for cakes to bake and take out and put in another. Repeat. Thankfully there was always work to be done -- making the filling for the sheet cakes, melting down chocolate for the mocha buttercream icing, washing up dishes, chopping up strawberries for the main attraction cake -- strawberry cake with strawberry cream cheese filling. So, we kept busy.

On Sunday, Wedding Day, we arrived at the kitchen with plenty of time (or so we thought) only to realize that we had a new issue to deal with -- the temperature of the kitchen itself. Even though the weather was lovely this weekend, for some reason the kitchen retains heat like crazy. As fast as we could frost the sheet cakes, it seemed to want to start melting. This led to some interesting rotations between the fridge and our work space.

At last, we had everything done (or almost), so we packed up the Plum Crazymobile and headed out to the wedding location in east Clovis. Thankfully, we made it out there before the ceremony started and were able to get completely set up and finished just as the wedding concluded and guests started trickling over to the reception.

Even the hiccup of missing cabbage roses that were supposed to top the cake didn't keep us from finishing in time. Launa was able to use her skills to "borrow" some flowers from the surrounding reception tables to make what turned out to be a lovely cake topper.

Strawberry cake with strawberry cream cheese filling

The "replacement flowers" turned out to be just as gorgeous with the sage green scrollwork

Finishing up the sheet cakes. This one was chocolate cake with mocha buttercream

With the cakes done and ready to be served, we hightailed it out of there to let the guests enjoy. By the time we collapsed in the car, we were both a little jittery with the crazyness of the last few hours. This photo tableau pretty much summed up that moment.

Note the buttercream smeared on Heather's glasses. Who knows how long she wore them that way.

This is what we thought about that...

Heather (right) is hysterical. Launa (left) looks exhausted and frosting encrusted!

We rewarded ourselves with a dinner at In n' Out Burger before heading back to the kitchen to clean up our mess. We've heard that that strawberry cakes were the show stopper and made a good breakfast the morning after too. And as always, we are so grateful to be involved in one of the happiest days of a person's life. Congrats to Gabi and Rachel Gonzalez! May God grant you many blessed and joy-filled years together!

Now...to put our feet up for a few days before embarking on our next adventure. Petit fours for a bridal shower. These are going to knock your socks off. All we are going to say is two words: sugar diamonds!