Clump #241:  Bake and decorate Cake Walk cakes; day six of the seven-day bake-a-thon.

So it all started with the magazine pictured above.  A seductive collection of cute cakes that seemed sooo easy and fun.  I argued for keeping the Cake Walk in our Quaker Meeting’s Fall Festival — tomorrow — and I said I could throw together four cakes for four walks.  For those unfamiliar with the game, a group of kids stand upon carpet squares set in a circle.  Underneath each carpet square is written a number.  Music plays, the kids move around the circle, ideally dancing.  When the music stops, all the players stop.  Someone picks a number out of a hat, and whoever is standing on that numbered carpet square wins a cake.  Whoo hoo!

The cakes are usually snazzy numbers with lots of candy.  I used two boxed cake mixes (they were on sale for 99 cents!), figuring I only needed a half for each cake.

As they say, “Mistakes were made.”  I thought the lollipop cake below would be a snazzy one, but didn’t realize I needed to wear gloves in order to knead the food color into the fondant.

I was not happy with the process, nor the color of my hands (even though they were radiant orchid, the Pantone color of the year).

When I got to the part of the recipe that advised taking off the fondant before cutting the cake, I said, “No, I can not do it!”  Note to self: read directions thoroughly.

I went to Plan B, the Henry and Mudge cake from Cynthia Rylant’s book Henry And Mudge And The Best Day Of All, wherein Henry has a birthday cake made to look like his aquarium.  A family favorite.

The others were inspired by the magazine.  Sunflower:

Car (two halves of a round layer, frosted together with an L cut out of one side):

And baby owls:

Wrapped up and ready to go:

Let the games begin!