Julie and Catherine Bake a Cake

The title of this tale should really be "Catherine Plans, Bakes, and Decorates an Ornate Cake despite Julie's Sabotage Attempts." In favor of clarity, however, the editor in deep self-consultation with the author has chosen the more succinct and elementary title that you will observe affixed to the top.
Editorial notes aside, we may now proceed with the story proper: Long, long ago (last weekend), Catherine came over to stay at Julie's house for several days. Although both had completed a tiring week of VBS, they decided in their typical genius style that that weekend and no other would be the perfect time to complete a mission of epic proportions and disastrous repercussion - it was time to begin their long and laborious pursuit of fondant cake making. Yes, that is correct. Catherine and Julie chose, of their own volition and at a time of unideal conditions, to bake and decorate a cake with that stuff professionals use for wedding cakes, presidential balls, and UN committees (well, the part about the UN is mere supposition, but it sounds like something they would spend their time on!)
It all began on Friday night, when they returned home from the VBS ending program to make the fondant. NO! They did not purchase the fondant because it costs something close to twenty dollars. Instead, they made fondant. I will now divulge a secret known only to the masses: fondant is made out of powdered sugar, marshmallows, Crisco, and water mashed together and kneaded from a gooey mixture into a semi-firm ball. Right. Just what I would have chosen for a Friday night after VBS. Furthermore, rather than following the typical dying procedures, they chose to make brown fondant by adding coco powder. (In their defense, somewhere on some website, the suggestion to use coco powder was made, and therefore was not a mere whim of their hallucinating brains.) They also cut strips and started drying rings of fondant over a foil-covered broom handle for their bow.
Saturday morning, the adventurous explorers awoke early and baked the chocolate cake, which would serve as the top half of the two-layered cake. After a brief intermission, they returned to make the larger bottom layer - yellow cake. Then, Catherine left the yellow cake in the care of Julie to run quickly back to her house and do vacuuming or something like that. Vacuuming at a critical time like that was not Catherine's wisest move. Less wise was her relinquishing of the task to Julie, master saboteur of all kitchen productions. The batter made it into the pan, and the pan made it into the oven, but the cake never made it out of the pan. Or at least not in one piece. Following the clearly delineated plan of the mission hidden in the recipe, Julie tried to free the still very warm cake from the pan only five minutes after the cake had left its warm and secure place in the oven. DISASTER #1! The bottom half of the cake fled the warm environs of its pan, leaving the hapless top to fend for itself as it clung to the bottom of the pan. Disaster #2 followed shortly on the heels of the first: Julie panicked and swiftly dumped the remaining layer of cake onto the top of the other, causing it to crumble hopelessly into crumbs and pieces. Sheryl and Mommy flew to the rescue, but it still looked sadly mangled.
Leaving the cakes in the freezer to cool and reassemble at will, Catherine and Julie took a much need break to attend a picnic/pool party for five hours in which time they thorough exhausted all the remaining energy they didn't have after VBS.
By the time they returned home to continue the cake production, life was not looking up!!! Catherine immediately started making icing for this beautiful cake. Unfortunately, all semblances of powdered sugar had departed the house (ahem, we will not pry further on the whereabouts of that sugar), so Julie was dispatched on the mission detour "Operation Get Sugar," otherwise known as a trip to the grocery store. Victorious, she returned with two bags of sugar and one bag of flour.
Icing was made, the bottom layer assembled, fondant was warmed and rekneaded. And suddenly, both girls experienced Disaster #3. Coco changes the consistency of fondant. The wonder substance of fondant suddenly becomes a crumbly and simultaneously gooey (but delicious) mess of coco, marshmallow, crisco, and water. Julie suggested adding more crisco, and at first her second attempt at sabotage seemed to gain the upper hand as the mixture turned more gooey and even more crumbly. Catherine saved the cake with some well timed water (I told you it was the universal solvent) and together they got a sheet of coco fondant rolled out, only to find it hopelessly affixed to the counter top. They huffed and they puffed. They pulled and they pushed. But the mixture had no desire to move in one piece.
Admittedly, they were at a stand still until Catherine's math degree saved the day. They remembered that two halves make a whole. Consequently, Julie rolled out half the fondant, which only covered a third of the cake. A little more manipulation got the entire bottom covered (if you call a holey, crumbling sheet of brown goodness a cover). Assuring themselves that all would be well, Catherine and Julie recalculated their decorative imaginings and chose to ignore the other ball of hopeless coco fondant in favor of some blue and normal fondant for the top covering. Success was short lived. Although the blue cooperated in the rolling department, there was simply not enough of it to cover the entire second layer beautifully. Undaunted, the adventurous duo placed the blue sheet of fondant over the top of the cake and stood back to admire their work. This is what they saw:Please go ahead and laugh. It's very funny!
To cut an already too long story shortish: this cake somehow was transformed from the blue blob perched atop a brown blob into something much more satisfactory thanks to a few well-positioned circles, bows, stripes, and ribbons to mask the underneath. And the following pictures will allow you, patient reader, to judge how far their art of camouflage succeeded.And so as all good things come to an end, so ended the adventures and misadventures, the sabotage attempts and the happy successes of Catherine and Julie's cake. And there too must end my chronicle, because an author can only roll out a story so far before it and its readers are thinner than fondant!
So they all lived happily ever after, except for the cake which was cut up and devoured.

The End