Happy Birthday Rob!

Rob's birthday was yesterday, which happened to be his longest day of the week. It was a hard day, but he made it through knowing what was on the other side of long day Tuesday. The other side meant things Rob really loves -- pizza, presents and cake.

For me, much of Tuesday was spent thinking how I was going to produce a fondant covered cake Rob wanted. You see, Rob loves fondant. If you're not familiar with what fondant is, think about the last wedding you were at and chances are you had a cake covered in fondant. Also, if you're familiar with most cake shows (Ace of Cakes happens to be our favorite) you will recognize fondant as the stuff they basically make everything out of. It's that thick, sugary substance that is basically fat and sugar and gives cake that smooth look. And yes, Rob can't get enough of it. All he really wanted for his birthday was a cake covered in fondant.

We found a recipe online that promised to be fairly easy and had simple ingredients. I came home from work and started whipping up the fondant. It's made of corn syrup, shortening, powdered sugar, salt and vanilla. I thought my Kitchen Aid was going to die running its dough hook through the thick ball of fondant, but it made it and I received a smooth ball of fondant. I decided an easy decoration would be to make a Colts cake since we are fans you know. (We have jerseys - that makes us legit fans!) Anyways, I ran out of blue food coloring and my Kitchen Aid was making even more sad noises. So my fondant ended up looking more like the Smurfs came to visit rather than the deep Colts blue. Use your imagination.

Here's the final ball.

Unfortunately, Rob and I were to busy actually rolling out the fondant and figuring out how to lift it onto the cake to take a picture. It was quite large and hard to maneuver. It actually ended up tearing into two pieces, but we made it onto the cake. It wasn't as firm as it should have been, but it worked. I decorated it with Colts horseshoes and basically ran out of room to write "Happy Birthday Rob" and I didn't want to write "Go Colts!" on Rob's birthday cake so I ended up with....

I'm laughing even now as I write this - who makes a birthday cake like this?! I do obviously. Rob laughed out loud when he saw it too

A closer view

Rob didn't want to mess up the cake by putting 24 candles on it so we just put four. No, we are not celebrating Rob's fourth birthday. The four is part of 24...

Oh, and we had pizza from Mother Bears (a Bloomington favorite). Rob was a happy man!

It was a good birthday and we had a lot of fun. After cake (which was very good and SWEET!) and pizza we watched Biggest Loser. Ironic? Yes, I think so. :) Good birthday? Yes I think so.