It Nearly Killed Us

So, last week's cake was really one HUGE cake order (we did some cupcakes and cookies also). The title of this blog will be explained in a moment as soon as I list the other possible titles for this blog:

I'm getting too old to pull all-nighters
$1900 cake just given away!
No sleep
What were we thinking?
Never again for free
So many firsts
Amazingly supportive husband
Why did I agree?

Anyhow, the list could be even bigger than that for this cake. We were approached about a month ago by an acquaintance (the lady who fell on her cupcakes - previous post in January), and she asked if we would be willing to donate a cake for an auction her daughter's private school was having (Browne Academy) to fund raise money. I agreed and so I thought I was doing a cake for an auction that someone would bid on.
About 6 weeks ago, Diane called me again and said that the committee for this event thought that having a cake that was a replica of the main school building would be wonderful and so they asked me to do it. I don't know what I was thinking when I said yes. It would be for free and they would cut and eat it at the event.
I had never done a building in cake before and I didn't know what I was getting myself into. Now that I know, I will never give a cake like this for free again.
We began work on the cake last weekend, Marcia drew some plans for the building and we had pictures that we took when we went to check it out. We drew some templates for the breezeway and windows and doors. We cut out the windows, doors and breezeway pieces on Monday so that they would have time to dry hard. We also cut the walls out and hand painted the mortar in between the stone impression we pressed into the fondant.
Thursday we baked the cake and did more prep work (making icing, cutting the cake board and the foam boards we were using). Friday night we allotted as the time to get it all together. It was a nightmare project. Things went well, but every part of the job took a lot longer than we expected as it was the first time we had ever done this. We also had to adjust some of our pieces to fit the cake better. That part was hard because we had painstakingly measured everything before.
We decided we wouldn't stop working until it was done. We worked non-stop (not ever getting to bed) until 5 PM the next day when we finished the cake at the hotel. We had to transport the cake in pieces because if we would have attempted bringing it whole, we would have risked breaking pieces. We arrived at the Hilton in Old Town at 3 PM and worked until 5 PM to get the cake together. It was a marathon project but turned out amazing. We couldn't believe we had pulled it off. I cannot even tell you or explain how exhausted we were.
One of the neat things on the cake were the little lanterns we used. We bought them from a dollhouse company and they arrived just in time at noon on Saturday, before we left for the hotel. Lorne decided that they should be wired to light and so he figured out how to make that happen. It was so cool - I felt like Duff Goldman, doing extreme cake with lighting!
We couldn't have done this cake without the support of my amazing husband (more to come on all he did this weekend). Just making sure Jasmine was taken care of was a BIG help.
While we are glad this is over, we were happy to do this cake for 2 reasons. Firstly, there were 250 people at this even that have money. Our target audience. They all got to taste the product. They got brochures and business cards and I have already gotten e-mails for more orders. The second reason was because we thought this cake would be an amazing addition to our portfolio! We did give them an invoice so that they would know what the cake would have cost if they had paid for it - $1,875! Tell us what you think!