An act of creativity

I made a cake!

We three Deans

My father-in-law, Dean M. Dawes, was born on April 2nd up in the mountains of Montana on the Crow Indian Reservation. His birth was not reported until his mother could make it down the mountain ten days later. His birth certificate says his date of birth is April 12th. Sometimes he says he has two birthdays, but more often he and his family joke that he was just a really long baby, which I find funny, mostly because he's a fairly short man. Grandpa Dean always always wears a cowboy hat. It's something of a trademark for him, so my husband Dean suggested that I make him a cowboy shaped birthday cake. 

Grandpa's favorite kind of cake is German Chocolate cake with that Coconut Pecan frosting. I've made it for him before, but I never did anything fun with it, because I couldn't figure out how to be creative with that kind of cake. Or maybe it was just because I hadn't tried very hard to figure something out. 

I want to say something about the process that I go through every time I make a cake. I start with a lot of excitement and confidence that I'll be able to figure out whatever it is and make something awesome. As I go along I am so hard on myself because I don't really know what I am doing. I watch a lot of videos on youtube to try to figure stuff out, but I have never taken a class or anything. I feel like every time I make a cake, I learn something new. I always do something different than I have ever done before.
This time I was working with Fondant, which I first experimented with last November. This time though, I had to figure out how to make the brim rigid. I watched a youtube video which suggested making it two weeks ahead of time so it has plenty of time to dry out rigidly. Of course I didn't watch the video until three days before I needed it. All well, now I know for next time. I tried curling up the edges of the brim with cake pans, but that wasn't really working, so I ended up protecting Dean's hat with foil, and then propping the fondant on top of Dean's upside down hat so it would hold it's shape. I need to get better at taking pictures throughout the process.

 I learned a year or so ago that if you freeze a cake, you can cut it easier, and it won't crumble as easily and fall apart. I made three layers of cake. I used cake pans that were too small though, so the hat part ended up being a little smaller than I had originally planned. Now I know that I need to measure better before I even choose my cake pan to use.
I baked it, froze it, stacked it, cut it, frosted it.

Then came the hard part. I am still very much a beginner with fondant. When I worked with it last time, what I read recommended using powdered sugar and/or corn starch to keep it from sticking to everything. This time I read something that suggested using crisco instead. It works way way better! It was so much easier to work with using the crisco instead. This time what I struggled with the most was the colors. I was grateful that I made a lot of extra fondant because I had to start over twice because the brown just wasn't matching up very well with the bottom part of the hat. It was greenish, or pinkish, then the band was a puke colored greenish black... blech... The top still ended up a little lighter than the bottom part, but I ran out of color. :/ all well. It's fine. I had all of these grand plans of making a detailed intricate braided band like Grandpa has on his hat, but the fondant was starting to dry out by then it was starting to dry out, so I had to do it quickly.

What I haven't been able to figure out yet is how to smooth out the fondant when I wrap it around something. With all three of the cakes I have now made with fondant, all of them had these weird creases. I cover them up as best I can, but I'm sure there is a way to get rid of them entirely. I need to remember to research that a little before I do the next one.
Overall though, I like how it turned out, despite my agonizing feelings of inadequacy throughout the process.

Grandpa seemed to like it. It's always a little sad when we have to cut into it, but that is the nature of cake. I was talking with my mother-in-law this weekend about some of the hobbies that she has. She doesn't want more stuff, so she has mostly stopped sewing or crocheting. She just doesn't want it cluttering up her house. Maybe it's a good thing that my creations get eaten.