Christening the kitchen
Aug. 26th, 2006 09:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nlbarberFirst baking in the new oven: the nephew's birthday cake (he's now 7). As I haven't moved anything in yet while waiting on the punch list work and the contractor's cleaner, the cake process included such things as checking the kitchen inventory made while packing to see what could be obtained (cake pan yes, by turning one box upside down and opening the bottom--the pan was packed early; cooling rack no, so borrowed from next door), moving the KitchenAid mixer from the floor of the guest bedroom to the kitchen counter, and finding various odd-sized containers in the pantry to use for mixing frosting colors. The cake decorating tools live in the pantry (untouched by the remodeling) so those were easy to find, but the spatulas were in a box and had to be dug out.
Baked the cake last night (a mix--this is for 7 year olds...) and put a crumb coat of frosting on it to keep in the moisture (canned frosting, ditto). Nephew surprisingly wanted a Pokemon party. I thought Pokemon was dead, but apparently some pockets of the craze still exist and he's in the midst of it. But not the sunny Pikachu types--he's into Shadow Pokemon, which run to darker colors like black and purple. The only shaped cake pan for Pokemon ever manufactured was a Pikachu pan, but that's OK, it's not available anyway. After some negotiation, nephew picked out a shadow Pokemon of sufficiently simple linework that Aunt Nancy could trace/reproduce on a cake: Gengar.
This morning I started on the decoration, beginning with making a stencil out of a picture of Gengar. Then I traced it, and outlined in frosting, then called in nephew and nieces for helping with mixing up the intermediate color shades. As always, the decorating takes about 3 times longer than I expect, so I was still finishing work on it about an hour before the party. So much for the yardwork I needed to do--the treasure hunt was in my back yard. Somewhere in the late morning I told older niece I'd pay her to mow the grass with the push mower, and then I made one sweep to pull up about 5 or 6 poison ivy plants that had popped up with our last few weeks of rain. OK, maybe one of those patches had been around more than a few weeks...
The party went well--sister-in-law hired a moon jump, so the kids started out with that then came inside when the heat got to them for popcorn, grapes, lemonade, and an art project. Next came the excursion to my yard for the treasure hunt (the treasure was their party-favor bags), and back inside for cake and more lemonade. The plan was to spend the last half hour on the moon jump, but heat drove them back in after 15 minutes so nephew opened his presents, the kids opened the Pokemon card packs in their goody bags, and card trading commenced. A good time was had by all including the adults, as a lot of the outdoor supervision of the 7 year olds was done by the nieces and a few of their friends.
Baked the cake last night (a mix--this is for 7 year olds...) and put a crumb coat of frosting on it to keep in the moisture (canned frosting, ditto). Nephew surprisingly wanted a Pokemon party. I thought Pokemon was dead, but apparently some pockets of the craze still exist and he's in the midst of it. But not the sunny Pikachu types--he's into Shadow Pokemon, which run to darker colors like black and purple. The only shaped cake pan for Pokemon ever manufactured was a Pikachu pan, but that's OK, it's not available anyway. After some negotiation, nephew picked out a shadow Pokemon of sufficiently simple linework that Aunt Nancy could trace/reproduce on a cake: Gengar. 
This morning I started on the decoration, beginning with making a stencil out of a picture of Gengar. Then I traced it, and outlined in frosting, then called in nephew and nieces for helping with mixing up the intermediate color shades. As always, the decorating takes about 3 times longer than I expect, so I was still finishing work on it about an hour before the party. So much for the yardwork I needed to do--the treasure hunt was in my back yard. Somewhere in the late morning I told older niece I'd pay her to mow the grass with the push mower, and then I made one sweep to pull up about 5 or 6 poison ivy plants that had popped up with our last few weeks of rain. OK, maybe one of those patches had been around more than a few weeks...
The party went well--sister-in-law hired a moon jump, so the kids started out with that then came inside when the heat got to them for popcorn, grapes, lemonade, and an art project. Next came the excursion to my yard for the treasure hunt (the treasure was their party-favor bags), and back inside for cake and more lemonade. The plan was to spend the last half hour on the moon jump, but heat drove them back in after 15 minutes so nephew opened his presents, the kids opened the Pokemon card packs in their goody bags, and card trading commenced. A good time was had by all including the adults, as a lot of the outdoor supervision of the 7 year olds was done by the nieces and a few of their friends.