Sweet, Sweet Things

Today has been the most productive, and creative, day I've had so far this summer. It wasn't exactly a 'bright and early' start, but when I eventually woke up, it wasn't too long before my dad and I were on the road, set out on an epic journey to go in search of all things sweet, or at least just edible.
I've been nagging for a few weeks (or months) now to go to a shop that sells baking supplies, because I've developed a slight fascination with baking and decorating cakes. We were terribly confused at first, looking for fondant, but not being able to find it. Eventually, when we've finally searched the entire store, we asked a lady who worked there for help.
Here's what I learnt:

• In the USA, fondant is called fondant.
• In the UK, it's called sugarpaste.
• In South Africa, it's either called pettinice or plastic icing. The first one sounds strange and personally, I find the second name to be a little troubling.

Anyway, we left the store with two kilogrammes of fondant, two 101 piece cookie cutter sets, a 5 kilogramme bag of icing sugar, six colours of gel food colouring and a little modelling tool set. This little excursion set us back quite a few bucks, but that's my dad for you. At least now we have whatever we might need, until I use up all the fondant that is. For my first attempt, I tried making a little cat I saw in one of my cake books and I was pretty happy with the results.

It doesn't totally suck, right? It was harder than I thought it would be, that I have to admit, but after playing with it for a while, I really got into it. The only problem now is my fingernails and tips are still kind of black from the food colouring and I'm not sure how to get it off... It kind of looks like I've been working in a coal mine. I'll see how things look when I've done some practising.

Also, I made dessert today! My aunt and uncle and friends of my parents came over for dinner tonight and I was responsible for dessert. It was pretty simple. Very simple, actually and I didn't poison anyone in the process, so... Good for me! I'll share the recipe tomorrow, but for now, check out the yummy pudding.

It's not very impressive to look at and I am kind of disappointed that the layers didn't come out a little bit better, but hey, it sure tasted good!