Strawberry Shortcake Cake

My two-year-old has been begging for a Strawberry Shortcake cake for her birthday for the last 2 months. I already decided I was going to try making my own fondant and use it to decorate a cake. After much searching, deciding, changing my mind, and then searching again, I found the perfect cake to make. I started with finding a fondant recipe. I have heard from many people that the store-bought fondant tastes terrible. I wanted to cover the whole cake in it, so I definitely didn't want horrible tasting fondant all over it.

I went to allrecipes.com and found a recipe for marshmallow fondant. After reading many of the reviews, I decided I would try using marshmallow fluff instead of following the directions for melting down the marshmallows. I took 2 cans of marshmallow fluff and stuck them in the refrigerator over night. I'm not sure why, but that's what the reviewer said to do. The next morning, I took them out and emptied them into my mixer. I continued to add powder sugar into the fluff until I thought it seemed like a good consistency. I have never made or used fondant, so I had no idea what the right consistency was supposed to be. Apparently, it's done when it is not sticky anymore. I ended up kneading it with my hands quite a bit, adding more and more powdered sugar. I probably used a whole 32oz bag of powdered sugar by the time I was done.

Next, I divided the fondant into different sized balls, estimating how much of each color I would need. I then proceeded to knead in the pink, red, green and yellow into the different balls, adding more powdered sugar as the coloring created stickier fondant.

I wrapped the balls in plastic wrap and put them in the freezer until I was ready to use them.

For the cake, I took 2 cake mixes, followed the directions on the box, and then poured them into four 9x9 round baking pans and baked them. While they were cooling, I took a whole container of Cool Whip and mixed in a small container of cut up fresh strawberries. After the cake was cooled, I cut out part of the top of each cake, scooped the Cool Whip mixture into the cake and layered the cake, making a 4 layered cake. Then I wrapped the cake in plastic wrap and put it into the freezer until it was completely frozen.

Next, I took a can of buttercream frosting and frosted the cake. I have read that this will help the fondant stick to the cake. Then I put the cake back in the freezer for when I was ready to tackle the fondant.

After letting the fondant thaw a bit, I realized I needed to mix in more powdered sugar, because it had become sticky again. I took the pink fondant and rolled it out using my wooden roller adding lots of powdered sugar, since it kept sticking to the roller. I rolled it out as much as I could and then placed it over the cake. Unfortunately, it was not large enough to go over the whole cake, so I improvised. I cut off some, so that it draped over the cake nicely. Next, I took the green fondant, rolled it out and wrapped it around the bottom of the cake.

I still had powdered sugar all over the fondant, so, after googling what to do, I grabbed my vegetable oil and paper towel, and proceeded to dab away the powdered sugar from the fondant. It worked very well. As for taste...well, I guess we'll find that out at the party :).

Now, I had a problem. I had the whole middle of the cake to figure out what to do about. I had a little bit of buttercream frosting left from a different jar, so I took that, mixed it with a lighter green color. After that, I took the red fondant and made little strawberries out of it. Using the green fondant again, I cut out small daisy-like flowers to use for the leafing on the strawberries. Next, I placed the strawberries as evenly around the cake as I could. I filled in the rest with the green buttercream frosting I had.

Thankfully I had just enough buttercream frosting. I did not want to have to go to the store again! I used the white fondant for the lettering on top of the cake and threw away the yellow.

I'm not sure if I will use fondant again. It wasn't the easiest or cleanest stuff to use, but I was determined to make it work. I am pretty happy with the end result, and I'm hoping it will taste good.

Extraordinary

This evening I was praying that God would speak to me. I feel like there's been this lingering silence and I was needing God to say something to me. I'm not sure if I've ever felt this desperate to want to hear God speak to me before. I've had this nagging tug on my heart the last few days and the tug has just gotten stronger and stronger.

As I prayed, I prayed for God to show me something...anything. I don't know if it's normal to get desperate for some sort of sign from God that you're on the right track when you feel like He's given you a vision to do something, but man, I feel like that a lot these days.

These last few days I feel like God has shown me an area of my life that I need to surrender to Him...more. It's a really ugly part of me that I like to keep hidden away. Unfortunately, like anything else I've tried to hide, God saw it. It came out rearing its ugly head a few times this last week, surprising me. I felt defeated, insignificant, and ashamed the times it happened. It completely ruined my weekend, because I felt so unready to serve God in any area of my life.

This evening after praying, I opened up my Bible to Isaiah. I read in chapter 1 verse 17 God's calling for Israel:

"Learn to do good. Seek justice. Help the oppressed. Defend the cause of orphans. Fight for the rights of widows."

That first sentence caught my eye. "Learn to do good." I asked God, "how am I supposed to learn to do good when I'm so messed up? How am I supposed to learn to do good when I feel so ashamed at my badness?"

I continued to read and I got to chapter 6. I absolutely love Isaiah chapter 6. As I read Isaiah crying out to God saying he was a sinful man, I felt this overwhelming peace wash over me. Isaiah was so scared because he saw God and knew he was going to die because he was a sinner. Verse 7 says:

"He touched my lips with it and said, 'See, this coal has touched your lips. Now your guilt is removed, and your sins are forgiven.'"

Right after that you read that the Lord asks who will go be the messenger to the Israelites and with no hesitation Isaiah says:

"Here I am. Send me." Isaiah 6:8b

Ah! I need to be like Isaiah. He was overwhelmed with God's presence until God forgave him. As soon as God forgave him, he was ready for his calling.

It's really easy to allow our faults to hinder our growth. We believe that once we have made the decision to follow Christ, we must be perfect little Christians. I'm learning that there is no such thing as this perfect little Christian I have made up in my head. There is, however, someone God is transforming me into, that is if I allow Him to do the work He needs to do in my heart. When I turn my focus from Christ to my faults and failures, my growth is stunted until I re-focus my eyes back on Jesus.

I have written in my Bible along side Isaiah 6:5-9:

Isaiah was not a perfect man, yet he was willing to go where God sent him.

Am I willing to go where God sends me?

Do I want to be a stunted Christian or be the extraordinary child of God I have been called to be?

Am I going to continue to focus on my failures, or allow God to forgive me so we can move on with the growth?

Dear Lord, You have called each and every one of Your children to be extraordinary. You have called us to go wherever You send us and to focus our eyes on You. God, I need You to teach me to be good as I grow closer to You. May I not focus on my sin and guilt, but You, Lord, only You.