Sunday, September 28, 2014

Livvy & Gabe The Cake Man meet Muhammad Ali at the Ali Humanitarian Awards

Muhammad says, "I will float like a butterfly and sting like a bee!"
Wow!  Where do we start with this?  Back in June the Muhammad Ali Center had called us and asked us to be part of the Congo14 celebration.  If you remember, we spoke at their press conference when they announced that Bruno Mars was going to be the singer they were hosting.  The Ali Center asked us if we would come be a part of their annual Humanitarian Awards to be held on 10/27/14.  We said yes because we have never seen something like that and it sounded like fun to go to a banquet.  They also asked us to make a cake for their silent auction.  This would be raffled off and 1/2 of what they got for the cake would go to our project and the other half would go to the Ali Center.  We said yes for that too.  Well, this week was the week of the concert and then yesterday, was the second annual Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Awards.  Livvy and I found out that Kid President (Robbie Novak) was going to be there, so we asked if we could make him a special cake.  We also wanted to make a cake for Muhammad Ali so that when we met him, we would be able to give him a special treat.
We can't even describe how amazing it was to meet Muhammad Ali in person!

This is the cake we made to give to Muhammad Ali on September 27, 2014
They had a special table just for our cakes!

Kid President was so much fun!  He liked the cake!

As the week got closer and closer we got more nervous.  It started to seem like it was going to be hard.  My mom decided to see if we could go to Sullivan Bakery to decorate the cakes so that if we needed some help, Chef Richardson was there to help us. We were so glad we did this!  She was so helpful with smoothing the big cake and for helping us get the piping right and not turning it brown with the colors mixing too much!  Here are pictures of the cakes and the event.  It was like nothing we have ever ever ever done before!  If you click HERE you can watch our speech.  (if you watch all the way to the end you can see a really amazing video of the project the Humanitarian of the Year did).  Matt Lauer from the Today show was the MC for the evening.  It was fun to meet him.  He is the person that interviewed Dr. Brantley who lived to tell about having ebola!  Dr. Brantley is a missionary for Samaritan's Purse so that was fun to have as a common connection.
Livvy is putting on the first layer of frosting for our auction cake

Chef Richardson was giving advice about the number 1 cake for Muhammad WAVE3 was filming it

I had the edible image on the cake and was starting the piping around it

Finishing the piping.  I love the rainbow!  Chef Richardson approves!

Such a great feeling to be done!  I came up with the image and Big Idea Media Group helped make it on the computer!

We had a auction table for the silent auction and set up our display

When we got up to speak they had a picture of us up on the big screens
Here we are practicing in the afternoon before the banquet

Both Livvy and I spoke to about 750 people!

Saturday, September 20, 2014

Livvy & Gabe The Cake Man Need Crafters & Vendors October 18, 2014 9-2

CALLING ALL CRAFTERS & VENDORS!


We could also use helpers to set up and clean up
Our friend, Robin Ernst is helping to organize a craft fair to benefit our project.  We will also ask each vendor/crafter to donate one item worth a retail value of $25 toward our raffles.  If you have a business and would like to donate an item or service to be raffled, we will start listing your company on our blog/facebook page and what will be raffled off.  THANKS FOR YOUR HELP!   We are doing this together!  When we started the project and realized we needed it to not be a "me" project, but instead to be a WE project, we never dreamed that so many of you would step up and do so many wonderful and creative things!  THANK YOU SO MUCH!!

Monday, September 1, 2014

Gabe The Cake Man Baby Shower Reveal Cake



We have some friends that have been friends for so long, they seem like family.  This past week we got to be a part of a really fun baby shower!  Our friend, Jimmy Monteith and his wife, Elizabeth are expecting their first child in a couple of months.  Their mom and a couple other friends were giving them a baby shower and they asked us if we would make the cake in the color of the gender of the baby.  We told them not to tell us until right before the shower because we didn't want to accidentally reveal what the baby was if someone asked us.  Even my mom didn't want to know because her Gap Sisters are all friends of this family too and everyone wanted to know ahead of time!

Livvy was at the enrichment program she goes to on the day the cake needed to be made so I had to do it all by myself.  I chose to make it out of pound cake because then the cake would weigh about as much as the baby!  ;)  I added blue food coloring and kept trying to think of something special to do to the cake so it wasn't just ordinary cake.  I finally decided to add blueberries to the cake mix so it would have a surprise in it when they cut it!  I didn't know it at the time that I did that, but the mom and dad of the baby had already been calling the baby, "Blueberry" because when they had seen him on the ultrasound he was only the size of a blueberry!



When Livvy got home from her "school", we got to work on the frosting of the cake.  Livvy mixed all the colors and she put the raspberry filling on the middle layer of the cake.  That proved to be a challenge to get the filling to stop dripping out of the dirty-coating of frosting.  (It really isn't dirty, that is just what it is called when you put on a crumb coat).  We frosted the crumb coat with white so that no one would get a glimpse of the color of the cake in case we had a tiny spot that didn't get covered by the swirls.  I decided to go with a half-and-half look and not complicate it with anything else.  Their invitation had said, "Rifles or Ruffles, which will it be, come to the party so you can all see..." or something like that.  I did write a little note and put it on a piece of paper that I had burned the edges of.  That way, we could just take it off but people could still see the design of the pattern.
raspberry filling between the layers

Filling in some gaps between the swirls
Close-up of the swirls
Everyone was so happy to see that the cake was blue except one person.  The baby's cousin, Coraline broke out in tears because she wanted the baby to be a girl!  She stopped crying when her mom explained that the baby would still be fun to play with, just because babies are fun no matter what!  Livvy and I are super excited about the baby too because these friends come for Thanksgiving and we want to hold him and play with him too!
Almost ready to cut the cake!

And it is a BOY!
Good to the last blueberry!