did we nail it?

remember when the bean and i did the nailed it at home challenge a few months ago?  well, they had a "to all the boys i've loved before" themed version, and this time the old lady joined me for the fun.  the now-familiar box arrived via fedex just a few days before:

and just like last time, there were a few tasks to complete before the live portion on zoom began.  first up - bake the cake.  i dig this part because it's like having a sous chef who pre-measures everything for you so all you have to do is dump it all out and get to work.  i mean, it's not really hard or super time-consuming to measure ingredients out, but still...this is extra easy.  

i got the cake in the oven and moved on to making the cookie dough.  i figured - well, sugar cookies, right?  easy.  i've done that a bazillion times.  except that the process as described in the recipe was different from how i do things.  still, i resisted the temptation to do things my way and followed the directions like a good girl.  the dough was a little dry and crumbly, but i wrapped it up and put it in the fridge as instructed.

making the frosting came next.  this was a very simple buttercream that mixed up like a bag of cement, and i ended up adding a little extra milk to make it a little more spreadable.

by then the cake had finished baking and cooling.  the last step required to be done before the virtual event was to cut it out into one 6" circle and four semi-circles, and i found that the piece from one of my small cake pans was perfectly sized.

my reward?  snacking on the leftover cake scraps, which both of the girls enjoyed along with me.

just before we joined the zoom call, we laid out all of the remaining items from the box.

we were admitted into the virtual room right at noon, and just a few minutes later we were joined by chef jacques torres and anna cathcart, one of the cast members from the movie.

the first step was to get the cookies baked.  the old lady took on that task, rolling the chilled dough out between two sheets of parchment paper.

we don't have pictures of it, but trying to cut out the rectangles out of that dough was...challenging.  i was doing it freehand per the instructions, but that dough was super sticky and really hard to work with.  the pieces looked pretty sad, but we only had an hour to get everything done and so we just put them in the oven as soon as they were ready and hoped for the best.

next, i cut out a hole in the middle of the cake circle and then we stacked the rest of the pieces to give them the first frosting crumb coat.

looks pretty sad, huh?  very worthy of the "nailed it" title.  i thinned the rest of the frosting out with a little more milk and busted out the offset spatula and it got a little better.  this is as good as it got.

after the old lady finished tinting the fondant with the turquoise food coloring, she rolled it out and cut out the pieces we needed for decorating the "hatbox."  

the rest of the hour went by in a blur.  the cookies, as predicted, were a hot mess when they came out of the oven.  the cookie icing was easy to mix up and tint, and while the finished product was definitely not up to my usual standards it was good enough.  we were joined by lana condor and jenny han, who also participated in the baking challenge and then "posed for selfies" when our time was up.

and then we closed it out with obviously pretaped segments from the show's hostess, nicole byer and a couple more "to all the boys" cast members.

so this is what the completed hatbox cake was supposed to look like - which was obviously done by a full team of pros, and likely not completed in one hour like we were given (do i sound bitter? heh):

and here's ours.

let me tell you...nothing humbles a confident baker like taking on a challenge like this.  i looked at that sample photo and was like, hell yeah i can do that!  that looks simple AF.  and if i were able to bust out my own personal arsenal of tools and recipes, i might be able to get it a lot closer.

then again, maybe not.  after all, it's been proven time and time again that cake decorating is NOT my forte.  ha!

nailed it...at home

so you've seen "nailed it" on netflix, right?  the show where they bring on amateur bakers and have them recreate some sort of crazy concoction usually made of cake and fondant and assorted decorations, which usually results in hilarity because it's just so ridiculous.  well, they started doing a "nailed it at home" challenge - you buy a ticket, which gets you a box full of (almost) all the ingredients needed to put together a fun themed baked treat that you assemble while on a zoom call with a host and the other participants.

you know we had to do this. we love watching the show, although i'm definitely no good at cake decorating.  that's been proven time and time again.  heh.  i was pretty excited when the goodie box arrived, just a few days before the day of the challenge.

the first two steps of the process needed to be completed a few hours before the start of the zoom call, so on saturday morning i pulled everything out and mixed up the batter to bake the cake.  this is also when i realized that i didn't have a basic 13"x9" cake pan in the house.  i don't even know how that's possible.  i ended up using the one pan i had that's slightly bigger, and i just hoped the cake wouldn't be too thin.

here's the instruction card i was referring to, with a picture of what the finished cake would look like.

when it had cooled fully, i sliced the cake as directed.  it baked beautifully, and luckily wasn't as thin as i'd thought.  body and wings, ready!

the bean came out to join in the fun, and we logged on and waited for the party to start.

a few minutes later, we got to see how many other people were playing along.  there were a LOT - which makes sense, considering this was a virtual event and you could join in from pretty much anywhere.

our "show producer" appeared next, to welcome everyone and then introduce our host for the hour - cathy ang, one of the actresses in netflix's "over the moon."

we started the decorating process by spreading frosting all over the whole cake.  this wasn't easy, with the cake so soft and fresh and the frosting slightly stiff and thick.  the logical step here would have been to thin the frosting out a little, but we were on limited time and just worked with what we had.

one of the show's judges and baking experts, jacques torres, appeared on screen to offer some baking tips.  too bad he talked about how to bake the cake, which we'd already done, so it really wasn't helpful for us at that moment.

they threw out some "challenges" throughout the hour, like having to work with just one hand, not being on your feet, and this one...not using hands at all.

when we'd covered the cake sufficiently with frosting, we put it in the fridge to chill a little while we rolled out the fondant.

pictures didn't really happen here because our hands were such a mess from everything we were doing.  here's when we spread the fondant over the cake and tried to pat it into place, only to find that we were a little short for the nose of the rocket.  oops.

no worries, though.  we just used another piece of fondant and covered it up.  not perfect, but good enough.  and i kept getting cake crumbs stuck in it.  d-oh!

the rest of the decorating process went pretty quickly, using all of the candy and the candles we'd found in the box.

i think we did a halfway decent job, considering.  we got to see some of the other participants' creations and ours was up there in terms of recreating the basic shape and style of the example.  and then it was all over.

the messy aftermath:

and the final photos.

we even managed to take a time lapse video of the whole thing.  here's an hour of cake decorating fun condensed down to about 23 seconds:

they're doing another challenge next month, holiday-themed.  you know i've already joined the waitlist to buy a ticket for that one.  we can't wait.