Quack, Quack, Quack

So a couple weekends ago was Spencer's 24th Birthday. I haven't written about it because I suck at blogging  have been really busy. And I suck at blogging. Anyways, I don't know if it's so much as a tradition or a joke among the Pingel family, but they tend to celebrate "birthday week" instead of just birthday-day. Not sure how well I accomplished this in my first year of Pingeling. Pingeldom. But I tried my darndest. His birthday was on Saturday and I had been telling him that was planning on making him a cake. So I made this one on Sunday.

Ps. How handsome is this guy? For real.

It was super neat because I made it say 24 in rainbow sprinkles. Free hand. (But I betcha can't tell. #skills) Little did he know, sprinkle cake was simply a decoy cake for the larger plans I had in mind.

Spencer always talks about his favorite birthday when he was 9, and his mom gave him a Mighty Duck themed birthday party. He had a Mighty Duck cake and got D2 the Mighty Ducks on VHS. (Which he still has sitting lonely (lone-ily?) on our shelf with no VHS player to keep it company.) Naturally, I was not about to have his favorite birthday be one before he even knew that I existed. (No offense to my mother-in-law that gave him his first favorite birthday.) So being the underachiever that I am, and given that Spencer's maturity level concerning all things birthday has plateaued since his first Mighty Ducks birthday, I decided I would at least try to give a similarly awesome experience, which by default he would have to count as his favorite since he's married to his wonderful wife, right? ... Right? Right.

I came across this tutorial on how you can put pretty much any picture on a cake you want really easily and look like you are a regular Monet at frosting art. And so began Mighty Duck cake part deux. I bought all the best frosting colors and what I thought would be all the right frosting tools. (Only later did I find out that I forgot an essential piece and had to tape my frosting tip to the bag, but that's neither here nor there.)

With telling Spencer "don't look over here" as my best defense in our tiny apartment I started to pipe away. Although I'm not going to give a tutorial on how to make a frozen buttercream transfer, I would like to give a few tips on how not to.

1. Don't forget the couplers for your piping bag and have to secure the tip with scotch tape.

2. Don't snack on black frosting. Your mouth, lips, and hands will be black for 3 days. Then purple for 2 days. Then pink... then yellow. In that order.

3. Don't let your arms get too tired and drop the piping back onto your beautiful creation and smear the frosting around.

4. Don't assume that since the frosting is smeared that your project is ruined.

5. Don't burst into tears thinking you ruined the best birthday surprise ever.

6. Most definitely don't allow the suprisee to come see what is the matter, thus ruining the surprise.

But if you do.

Do let the suprisee console you, tell you that he (or she) loves you and that it's his best birthday ever.

Checkmate.

The finished product:

You can still kind of see the smudginess around his the bill, but overall not too shabby, right? 

I also made the logo far too big for the cake. 

Minor details.