Pheww

Another Elementary Christmas Concert is done! Praise the Lord, it went well. It wasn't too short, the performances went very good, and there were no emergencies. It was a stressful week getting ready; I literally worked all day every day, sometimes not even having time to turn my computer on until 11am. Friday I was so stressed, I had knots in my stomach and my heart was racing so I got some water and my peanut butter sandwich I made for lunch and took a 5 minute facebook break. Watched the Guinness video, checked out the cake pictures (again; I'm so proud) and the tackled the rest of the day. Miraculously everything got done in time and it was wonderful. Hoping to see some video next week of the result. I find when I am conducting I am concentrating so much on the music and the cues that I don't get the overall effect.

So back to my favourite topic of the week; the cake. I am so happy with how it turned out, and even if I never make fondant again I will always be glad I tried it once. It was a lot of work, but once the all the little pieces were made Gemma even helped me glue them on: purple purple purple pink. Purple purple purple Blue. Oh, and after the stress of covering the cake was over, too. I made little cakes so I wouldn't have to roll out such a big piece. It was 2 6 inch rounds stacked and then I baked about a 4 1/2 round in my metal lunch tin. It worked awesome! And then I had small circles to cover, so that was not too bad. I had a few lumps around the bottom, where the pleats fell, and one tear but I covered it up with a polka dot instead of starting over. I was so nervous to try fondant and did not want to have a disaster, and once I came to the decision to make a little cake it seemed do-able.

I made marshmallow fondant because I can't find corn syrup here. 4 cups of marshmallows, 2 tbps of water, melt in the microwave, stir till smooth, then 4 cups of powdered sugar. And by 4 cups I mean about 5 or 6. I added cup after cup after cup of suagr, because it was SOOO sticky and finally it started to hold together. I colored some with the wilton extracts and some with food coloring; I was also nervous about using food coloring but it worked fine. Just keep adding sugar, keep dusting your hands and the table. It was DELICIOUS to eat (but very sweet, as you can imagine).

What else can I tell you? Adrienne watched the kids all afternoon, so I spent about 4 hours Sunday afternoon and another hour Sunday night finishing it up. Will I do it again? Maybe. There were lots of fondant 'peelings' on the plates at the party, maybe its too sweet for little mouths and I hate waste. And of course, 5 hours isn't always practical. But it was fun.