christmas bake-a-thon

The Christmas season was definitely a busy season for emiecakes. I really enjoyed baking and decorating cakes and cupcakes that I new would be a part of families' Christmas celebrations.

Even though every order I filled was special, one holiday order definitely stands out...

My grandfather, aka "Pa", aka "Sheriff" ordered cakes for all of the fabulous people he works with at the sheriff's office. In fact, he ordered a cake for EACH of them...60 cakes in all! Yep, that's right...I said 6-0! When he first approached me with the order, I wasn't sure if I could do it, but after my fabulous assistant (my mom) agreed to help, I knew that emiecakes could pull it off.

We began our planning session by making a grocery list. I wish that I'd saved the list so that I could quote it for you and make your jaw drop, but I don't have it anymore. I will tell you that it included 180 eggs, 5 gallons of milk, and more butter than Wal-Mart carries at any given time.

I have to thank my mom and my grandmother, aka "Ma" for chipping in and helping me to gather all the supplies. (And for letting me use their refrigerators for storage!)

We decided that we would start baking on Saturday and see how far we could get. Here's what the scene looked like before we got started.



Before you think I'm completely nuts, let me tell you that these cakes weren't decorated cakes. I don't think I could have tackled the task of decorating 60 cakes! We did four types of "old fashioned" cakes: red velvet, coconut, chocolate, and carrot.

We baked and baked and baked! Each cake had 3 layers so there were 180 layers in all...there were cake layers EVERYWHERE!!!

At the end of the first baking day, we completed 28 cakes!

The next morning, we started bright and early and were determined to finish before the sun went down. We tweaked our system and finally finished all 60! That's 60 cakes in two days!!! As you can imagine, taking pictures was the last thing on my mind. However, I did grab my camera to capture the HUGE mess that my mom made! (It's very amusing to me because I am usually the one to do things like this!) I'm not sure exactly what happened...

This was definitely an experience and an achievement for emiecakes! Thanks again to my Mama...I love you!