Everyone has a different experience during student teaching. I had two. My first experience was pretty awful. 6 weeks in a K-1 self-contained classroom with a teacher who had no interest in helping me or even letting me lead a lesson. Luckily it was only 6 weeks. After the annoyingly long 6 weeks, I moved to a new school for a 10 week stint in 5th grade. There I met a Jenn, my cooperating teacher. Jenn and I got along immediately, and I spent the next 10 weeks co-teaching for the first, planning ELA and SS lessons, and learning what it’s like to be part of a team.
I also remember this time as the period when I really started baking. I used Jenn and the fellow teachers as taste testers on a large variety of new cakes, cookies, and brownies. I’m sure when my ten weeks were up, they were both sad and happy (for their waistlines) that I was going.
So, when Jenn told me she was getting married last summer, I immediately offered to make her shower cake.
Jenn’s shower theme was “cocktails.” Our favors were martini glasses with cocktail flavored jelly beans.
I used the theme as my first opportunity to create my own cake design. (In the past, I’ve googled images and used someone else’s cake as inspiration)
I decided on melding together three “cocktail” related ideas.
The bottom tier is a punch bowl shaped cake with fondant embellishments. I was able to find some “ice” at the local candy store (cotton candy flavored rock candy).
The middle tier is embellished with lemons and limes. I like the overall look, but wish I was able to make the lemons and limes more realistic, and with more depth from color.
The top tier is a cocktail, with its very own straw and umbrella. The umbrella and straw are 100% due to my amazing fiancee, who created the inner structures out of wire. Thanks babe!
A final touch of some rock candy “salt” along the rim of the cocktail finished off the cake perfectly.
The top and bottom tiers were Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Frosting. The middle tier was Yellow Cake with Strawberry Buttercream,
