Okay, I already committed to a cake for this weekend for a "going away to college" reception. The girl is going to be a pharmacist. The design I'm shooting for is to make a huge pill bottle out of cake. I'm nervous/excited to see if I can pull it off.
NOW, tonight I get a call from DS's sargent. (#2 son that's in Young Marines) They're having a celebration at drill this weekend for the YMs that graduated & will no longer be in YM. They want me to do a sheet cake (easy) w/the YM logo on it (HARD!). I did one w/the logo on it for them before...but that was when that was the ONLY cake I was working on. I don't know how I can do that logo again WITH the pill bottle cake too. But the logo cake is for my own kid's platoon...not someone else's kid's reception. That logo was tons of work & pretty difficult to pull off the FIRST time I did it. (Photo in my gallery)
I need a cake genie. 
I can understand when it comes to the whole feast or famine or as I like to say when it rains it pours!! It seems that my Fridays/Saturdays consist of cake, icing and about 4 hours sleep to get my cake orders done! I know you don't want to cut too many corners as it is for your son's platoon, but maybe you could use edible images or frozen buttercream transfer. The giant pill bottle sounds like a fun but challenging cake - I can't wait to see pics of both cakes. I hope you are able to get it all done!
I've thought about the edible image thing...but I've never done one of those & I don't have a printer. I've heard that some people get the image printed at WalMart or someplace like that. I'll have to check w/our WM to see if they do that. But then, how do you put those on the cake??
Edible images are actually fairly simple. I'm not sure what grocery store chains you have, but here in my town, I take it to my local grocery store bakery and they print them for me. I also have a cake supply store/bakery that prints them for me. I'm sure if you call local grocery, cake supply or any bakeries they probably would be able to print them for you. Here they cost me about $7 for basically an 8x10 page. Usually it is whatever (whether one or six) pictures, etc that you can fit on one page. I've taken actual photos or if it is a logo like yours, I've taken a printout from my computer of the logo to them and they've made it. Once for a cake I had, I took some blueprints to them to make an edible image. It usually just takes them under 15 minutes to make it. They don't hold up to high humidity or rain, so don't leave it in the car too long. What I do is ice the cake, let it crust just enough so I can smooth it and then immediately put the edible image on. If your icing is already really crusted over, you can brush the area where you want the image with a little bit of water and then lay the image down...though I've never had to do this. The image comes on a piece of paper, so you just have to peel it off and lay it on your cake. The hardest part is just getting it where you want it and flat. I usually just run my hand over it to smooth it down and press down edges and let it be. It will kind of meld into the icing as it sits. And then you're done!! I have an actual instruction sheet here at home...should you run into any problems it gives a lot more detail than what I am giving you here. Feel free to email or pm me or post a reply here. Hope this helps you!
Quote by @%username% on %date%
%body%