Today marks the first official full week of Kindergarten for my oldest child, Malachi. It's hard to believe his first big school year is underway. Thankfully today was a little easier than last week when I put him on the bus for the first time.
I thought I might feel compelled to go up to the bus, crawl up on the bumper and look under the hood, slap the windshield wipers around a little, maybe kick the tires a bit ... you know, make sure everything was in working order. But instead, I wanted to take my son, shrink him up and keep him in my pocket for safe keeping, like forever.
The other option, of course, was to casually follow him up the stairs of his bus, nonchalantly sit next to him, look around and whistle like nothing unusual was happening and then continue to follow him stalker-style for the rest of the day. Oh okay, the rest of his life.
Lucky for him, I was able to restrain myself and opted to cry for the next couple hours instead. But alas, today was a better day. Whew.
Anyhow, the purpose of this post is actually to share a little bit about the "thank you" present we made for his old teachers at his day care center. After all, they cared for him for the last five years and helped bring him to this point so something special was in order.
It all started the night before his final day at his day care center when he suggested we make them a cake. I didn't think I'd have the time with a newborn and all, but when he suggested we just "get up early" to do it, I said okay, let's get baking. After all, I'm up all night with the baby as it is; I didn't need an early morning alarm to tell me to make a cake to boot. Yeeesh.
So, we made this little guy. Just your everyday Number 2 pencil, well, only sweeter.
To get started, we used a simple boxed cake mix in your standard 9"x13" pan.
Next, we whipped up some butter cream frosting. The recipe for that and for the fondant I make can be found
here.
Then I cut off an inch of the width on each side of the 9"x13" cake and then cut the large section in half. I stacked those on top to get the general shape of the cake, putting a layer of butter cream in-between.
I then rounded the corners where the eraser would be and cut the other sides to make the point of the pencil. When that was done, I frosted everything and added a layer of yellow fondant.
Looks a bit like a carrot but it just needed some details. The first of which was black fondant for the tip. When that was on I "painted" the wooden part of the tip with brown food coloring.
Then I made a small batch of pink fondant for the eraser. For the metal piece that holds the eraser in place, I decided to use silver sprinkles. I added a strip of butter cream about an inch wide below the eraser and poured sprinkles over it, pressing them in place.
Once the sprinkles were added along with a few details like "No. 2" in black gel icing, it was done.
Malachi was very excited to bring it to school with him and I'm told it was a huge hit (and delicious)!
