Unfinished

Yesterday, I talked about the Tiki Cake.  I iced it with matcha buttercream and assembled it last night, colored and put the fondant on it, and started putting on the flower shapes I'd piped last week.  I also colored the smocked fondant I was making "bamboo" from, and dusted the tikis, big and small, that I piped along with the flowers.  I piped the "wave" and the stringwork before adding the flowers.

This morning, I finished adding flowers to the cake, set up the hut, attached the "traps" with rings and piping (and a little starfish inside one of them) and started piping the roof.  I also added the small tikis bounded by starfish to three points at the bottom of the cake (two of them were where the fondant had tucked in wrong).  As of 3:30PM, I have everything but the last, straw-colored layer of the thatched roof done. 

I have no idea what to do with the cake when it's finished, as the cake itself is an almond cake, which I don't like.  It's cloyingly sweet and has a weird aftertaste.  I just do not like almond extract.  I love almonds, and Chinese almond cookies, though.  But this recipe is just so, so, so very...sweet, like an Upson Daiquiri.

Here's the unfinished cake:

I probably will refrain from posting tomorrow, as I believe just about everyone will be doing something other than reading blogs.  I hope everyone in the US has a happy Thanksgiving.  I'll be with my hubby and daughter, trying to figure out what to do with a neat-looking but otherwise icky Tiki cake.

Also, congrats to my pal Paul Barrie, Jr., who is smart enough to ask Tairy Rich to be his Mrs.  They got engaged earlier this week.  Here's Paul a few years back when we had brunch on a gray, rainy day at Disneyland.