Voila! Le Gateau!

Oh my gosh! It's done! This was seriously a marathon in cake making. It was fun, but I put a lot of pressure on myself. I feel like I've accomplished something. I'm productive and capable! I would say this badboy took me about 10 hours to make over the course of a week. See? I told you I lost my mind. Ah!

Here's the progress of the cake (minus the cake and frosting making part, pretty boring, so I'm skipping to the juicy parts):

Oval Cake with a notch cut out for the small round cake

Cutting the second oval for the wings

I goofed on the shape of the wing so I needed to add an extra piece for the other wing

Chocolate frosting in between all the layers

Crumb coat, kind of melty in the heat, continued to frost the next day

Finished cake at the restaurant!

My sad attempt at a sunflower for Alex's smash cake. Too melty!

Interested....

Diving in (almost frozen from the restaurant's fridge)

CAAAAAAAAAKE!

Lessons learned:

• It was easier than I thought it would be (the planning helped)
• Cake batter from scratch is way tastier than any cake mix batter (um, not that I eat cake batter)
• Butter makes everything better
• Frosting can cover all sorts of mistakes, screw something up? Slap more frosting on the problem
• I had carefully measured that the cake would fit in the cake caddy. Then I frosted the cake and didn't account for the extra girth (see above lesson)
• I need a bigger fridge
• Popping the cake back in the fridge during this heat wave was a neccessity

More about the party next time...Must go to bed, no more cake making until midnight.