"crying dawson" - my favorite

in these next few days, private practice is closing its doors/tearing the whole thing down, and I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS ABOUT IT. all of them perfectly captured by james van der beek's tour de force of acting in the season three finale of the american treasure, dawson's creek:

i feel you overly verbose high-schooler, i feel you. feelings are hard.

now, obviously, the cake does not come close to doing this scene justice. i couldn't even do his hair justice. don't worry, dawson, that situation gets better in season five when someone at the cw wb pointed out to your stylist that you're a very decent looking human being without the eric matthews haircut. very decent. still, this has to be my most favorite cake ever.

in this scene from the finale, dawson basically yell-cries at suri's mom to run from him and into the arms of one pacey witter. the scene is highly reminiscent of the saddest scene in cinematic history: the one in air bud where the kid throws the basketball so buddy will leave because if you love something you set it free, you know? except, poor joey potter, no one left any pudding on the dock for her.

and that's how i feel about private practice closing up shop. JUST GO. GET OUT OF HERE. IT HURTS TOO MUCH JUST TO LOOK AT YOU.

in all seriousness, that has easily been my most favorite experience ever. not only was it awesome because i got to be around people doing exactly what i hope to be doing one day, but all those people doing what i hope to be doing were super great people. they were the first people i met out here in this terribly ridiculous city (great food, though, los angeles!), and they were above and beyond lovely human beings. 

so, if that's as far as i get in this business, if i never make another pot of coffee*, if i never collate another script, if i never write "c" on another can of the christmas coke to distinguish it from diet, if i never spend another two hours on a giant star of david, if i never glue another puzzle, then it will still be worth it. all of it. i'm terribly grateful for all of it. all the advice and support and free food. all of it.

and dawson leery is obviously the best way to tell you how much it all means to me. he's the best for most things, really. to everyone who i met there, upwards and onwards to great things for all of you. 

TOTAL DECORATING TIME: 2 hours + the 14 years of my life before i discovered dawson's creek that i want back.

i don't wanna wait,

sassy badger

*who am i kidding?

"frankenweenie" - new job

considering i've still been making cakes for my old internship since like forever, some of you might not know that i actually have a new, different job. some of you, like 99.9-100% of you don't care.

still, this is the first cake i've made for my new place of work, so it's a really big deal. as you can see, i made it for halloween, and we are actually past thanksgiving, but here's the thing about jobs... they make it almost impossible for you to come home and want to do something other than tweet/facebook/fall asleep at your desk/eat cheez-its for dinner/make excuses/rinse/repeat. all for $8 an hour! in this economy!?

people really don't say that enough these days.

anyway, my new job makes fancy "creative content" like behind-the-scenes stuff and featurettes stuff and stuff. i do the behind-the-scenes-behind-the-scenes stuff like making coffee and ordering office supplies and tying bows on boxes. you can call me the lynchpin of the operation. i wish someone would...

anyway, again, we have a bunch of different clients and we work on a bunch of different films, but they are all super difficult to draw except for frankenweenie, so that's what i did. except, and here's how i know i'm a creative type, i changed "frankenweenie" to "halloweenie" because the cake was for a halloween party. can you even believe it!?

people definitely don't say that enough these days.

i obviously didn't completely follow the look of the film, as frankenweenie is all black and white, but i mean, live a little, tim burton! am i right?

people really can stop saying that these days.

TOTAL DECORATING TIME: 1.5 hours + 20 minutes walking around the fox lot looking for ed o'neill because i was in my "icebox" costume from little giants. that would've been a reunion for the ages. am i right?

it's alive,
sassy badger

"donna" - maturing

i made this cake on the same night as the previous post, so i don't remember much about this one either except that this was the first time i've put boobs on a cake. first time i learned what boobs are, too. talk about growing up.

however, i had no choice, as donna is not donna without her donnas, ya know? excuse me while i just go throw up and write each of you a personal apology.

it, of course, was not really a big deal. i mean, i've done naked starfish butt in the past, so this was totally prude-y in comparison. still, it was kind of strange thinking about what i was tracing, as donna is played by a real human being, whose icing boobs i would soon be eating with my friends.

i wish i was seeing a therapist so i could talk about my sexual hangups with pop culture baked goods.

boobs aside, i thought this turned out pretty well. the eyes are judgmental enough, and i like to pretend that she is bugging out over that shitty text alignment. probably had something to do with the fact that i closed my eyes to erase the image of boobs from my mind. i gotta stop saying boobs.

anyway, i'd like to include a previous cake here because i think they make a nice set, and, maybe, some day, i'll do a whole parks and recreation line. collect them all for seven easy payments of $9.99!

TOTAL DECORATING TIME: 1.5 hours + 1 emmy for you amy poehler. in my heart.

ginuwine's cousin, 

sassy badger

"true blood" - why not?

this cake was made about infinity weeks ago, so i don't remember what super intelligent things i was going to say about it. i do, however, recall that this cake was pretty easy... like all those vampires in true blood, am i right? heyooooo.

i have not seen enough of the show to know if i am, in fact, right. anyone? are they easy lays? do they sparkle?

anyway, this cake probably had the worst ratio of "time spent deciding how to decorate it and then pretending to draw it for a hot minute before giving up and tracing it" to "time spent actually decorating." but, i have to say, like, really, what a payoff. puns like that, fully formed expressions of comedy, don't just reveal themselves for any poser. it takes a real kind of artist to free something so beautiful.

and it takes a really pretentious twenty-something with a blog to regard a vampire pun written in icing as high art. lucky for you, i am a pretentious twenty-something with a blog.

pretentious twenty-something with a blog, coming to your television sets in 2013.

speaking of icing, though, that is legitimately some of the best black icing i have ever mixed, and it was because i cheated and half-mixed-half-bought the pre-made black icing. excuse me while i go pray my 6 hail mary's and 3 our glory be's, the typical fare for crimes against baking. oh by the way, father, while i'm here, we good on eternal salvation?

TOTAL DECORATING TIME: 30 minutes + the year of my life i spent reading twilight fanfiction that i would like back. vampires, man, why the have to be so sexy?

i wanna do bad things with you*,
sassy badger

*depends

"breaking bad" - blue cake

although i wasn't the first of my friends to jump on board with breaking bad, i've certainly jumped on said board with a fierce ferociousness, and i'm finding it incredibly difficult to talk about this cake without delving into spoilers, conspiracy theories, or shot-by-shot episode deconstruction. so, i guess i'm just going to talk about random shit, which, i know, is a huge detour from the usual fare here on this blog.

first things first. this cake taught me that i could totally be a drug dealer.

our kitchen sink is broken, so i wasn't able to mix icing colors, as my whole apartment actually fits in the sink, and i didn't want to flood my domicile... kind of just like dogs not wanting to crap where they sleep. well, that led to me mixing as few colors as possible and cleaning out the bowls in the bathroom. in terms of meth scouts, i totally earned my "mixing things" and "working out of tiny spaces" badges. excuse me while i ask my mom to sew the badges onto my sash, which can also act as a stranglehold should you be attacked by a member of a drug cartel. look who just earned her "resourcefulness" badge?

because i had to adjust my original design for this cake, which was so high concept that i won't even bother you lesser minds with it, i decided that i should, at least, make the font as breaking badass as possible. omg, do you see what i did there? so, i set up the font to look like that in the opening credits of the show. i didn't have to research what "h" stood for on the periodic table or what tiny little number went up in the top corner. "basic chemistry" badge? check. however, i did have to look up "bi" or bismuth. now, a lot of people in the internet-verse apparently think it is really funny to say that bismuth's atomic number is 69... bi 69. hilarious. so, i was about to put 69 on the cake, but, luckily, that little voice inside my head, aka my genius, said i better check that. so, i did. after extensive research (a second google image search) i learned that bismuth's atomic number was actually 83. with that, "attention to detail" and "nothing gets by me attitude" become the fourth and fifth badges on my sash, respectively.

i had originally written "perspectively," but then i changed it. there goes my genius again, screaming "nothing gets by me!"

anyway, my next meth scout badge, "hiding things in secret places," is hard to show you in the first picture, so here's a look at the cake before it was baked:

if you've never seen breaking bad then you might not know that the main dude makes blue meth. this looks nothing like meth, but it is blue cake. oh, that's another great badge, "knowing what meth looks like." i was able to hide this blue cake like walt is able to hide his blue meth in SOMETHINGSPOILERY... i won't ruin anything for anyone, but, if you really want to know, the letters to the answer are sprinkled throughout this post. 

wow, that's really something. i made one of my easiest cakes to date, and, yet, i still came away with eight meth scout badges. two more, and i will be upgraded to master cook! can't wait to get my "lying to my wife and kids" one out of the way.

TOTAL DECORATING TIME: 1 hour + 1 joke stolen directly from tina fey's bossypants, the letters of which are sprinkled throughout this post.

in the empire business,

sassy badger

"dr. sheldon wallace (in a purple suit)" - just because

guys, in case you were worried that i was going to branch out and try new things, this is yet another private practice cake.

the italics make it seem like there is a show called another private practice. same characters, just set like twenty years from now, when they all move to florida together and open a practice on the beach. oh, don't mind me, coming up with super innovative ideas over here...

also, to answer the question that i know you all have been dying to ask, yes, this is a pun riffing on brian benben's name. puns are the pathetic underbelly of jokes/humanity, but i can justify it because it's on a fucking cake and you can fucking eat it. i mean, that's like a well-known, totally not made up rule about comedy, of which i am not an expert.

on imdb, this website on the internet, they describe brian benben as a "charming, compactly built, extremely affable american actor."

charming? yes. compact? yes. affable? yes. american? who can say?

but seriously the guy is 100% charming and affable and translating that in icing sucked. i'd say i semi-failed. i gave him a little eye light to try to capture that twinkle he gets, but have you ever tried to wrangle a rainbow? can't be done.

similarly, when he smiles he gets these wrinkles up in the corners of his eyes, so i tried to do that too at first. well, the "wrinkles" made him look like an old man geisha... that's a thing.

so, basically, this looks like brian benben because of 1. the hair part and 2. he's in a suit, which, unfortunately, came out very purple. i swear on old man geishas everywhere that this was the result of mixing black dye with white icing. i skipped color class in kindergarten (i had to see a guy about a thing), but i'm pretty sure black + white = grey.  whatever, sheldon might own a purple suit. i don't know! i hardly know the guy!

finally, i made this honestly because i was starting to feel out of practice, and i was like, "sorry chris*, i'm going to have to cancel our date because i would rather spend three hours in my hot, tiny kitchen." that's partially the truth!

TOTAL DECORATING TIME: 2 hours + 30 minutes being distracted by mindy kaling and b.j. novak's twitter fight last night.

married to madeleine stowe,
sassy badger

*hemsworth. obviously.

"apples to apples" - super specific

i'm really craving pizza right now.

anyway, what else do you bring to an apples to apples party for your soccer team? i would ask jeeves, but i recently learned that that's not a thing anymore. rest in peace, 90's internet.

so, rather than bringing wine, because apparently people my age like to drink(?), i brought this cake. 

spitfire f.c. is the name of my soccer team. f.c. stands for "football club," but this is america, so i like to pretend it stands for funky cold and then, understood, medina.

i'm not going to even bother explaining the quote. i'm not even sure that i understand it, but it was a huge hit at the party, along with the wine(?).

now, i've played my fair share of apples to apples over the years, but the amount of times i've played since moving to los angeles is like infinitely greater than what i was expecting. literally, infinity, because i thought i would be playing zero times. i mean, we weren't even playing it ironically. 

each time i play i learn something new, like how funny i am and how unfunny everyone else is... i also like to throw down my own name for the green "humble" card. obviously. 

quick question, and, again, i really do wish i could be asking jeeves about this, but - why are the apples on the cards sweating? they're clearly running. so, have they been running for a long time? is it hot outside? where are they going? where are any of us going? i mean really?

come back to us, jeeves. bring my sixth grade geocities website with you. keep the xanga though. 

TOTAL DECORATING TIME: 1.5 hours + 6 strange looks from party-goers when i pulled a can of tea out of my purse after turning down a glass of wine (?). not sure what that was about.

the game of hilarious comparisons,

sassy badger

"schmidt" - a cyber birthday

ok, first and foremost, if you're reading this, please go wish my sister a happy birthday @friendlychuckle... her birthday was last week, and i made this last week, but i'm just getting around to posting it (i'm super busy and really important, obviously). my bad, charlotte. also if you want to send her clothes and gifts from me, that'd be great too.

for those of you who don't watch the exact same television as me (sorry for you) this is schmidt from new girl. there really aren't enough words to describe schmidt so, i'll let him speak for himself:

(quick pause while i give myself a high-five for doing a bit of html decoding or whatever to get that video to fit on the screen)

right, so there you have it. unfortunately, i couldn't capture the intensity of that "judaism, son" expression. schmidt's just too passionate about things... like menorahs, cheeses, and kimonos, but i'm still pretty happy with how it turned out.

anyway, my sister lives just a quick 21 hours down I-10 in houston, while i'm here in los angeles. however, she made me make her a chocolate cake, which i will now enjoy all by myself. seriously, i won't be sharing. sorry i'm not sorry.

also, great work by me for snapping a few pictures of this before i proceeded to accidentally punch a hole in his chin with my pinky finger. i was wearing my glasses today, and i felt like taking them off for a quick bit... it's like a completely different reality without them. who needs drugs? stay in school.

i did have a bit of fun adjusting his eyebrows and eyelids to get them "just right." it felt like doing make-up... not my make-up. i still don't know what that is, and i always end up getting hurt.

TOTAL DECORATING TIME: 1.5 hours + 18 wonderful years with my cat coconut who is, in fact, a year older than my sister, and i always like to point that out.

who's that girl? it's,
sassy badger

"scandal" - trying new things

guys, i know i promised i wouldn't let hollywood change me, but the time has finally come for sassy badger to move on to bigger things... that's why this cake is 14.5 x 11in. when every other cake i've made has been 13 x 9.

woah, calm down. catch your breath. i'm still the same member of the weasel family i've always been - just as sassy, just as poor. 

this is also the first cake i've ever leveled (it's like really complicated, don't worry about it). it's the first time i've iced the sides (also SUPER complicated), and it's the first time i had to flip it from the pan to a tray. but, unlike landing a boyfriend, i turned out to be super good at all that stuff. 

anyway, this cake is for scandal, the new brain-child of shonda rhimes. i've seen the pilot. it's good. watch it.

like the cake i made for the finder, the show hasn't started yet (april 5th, ok?!), so there are only a few promotional materials floating around the interwebs for me to pull ideas from. when i saw the quote, the idea followed quickly after... she says her gut tells her things, and then her gut tells her to watch the show.  you see, it's funny because her stomach is talking. GET IT, GUYS?

i should mention that she/her is kerry washington in the lead role of olivia pope. and, if you're looking at the cake and thinking one of her arms is longer than the other, you're wrong. kerry just stands like a badass. that's why she has a show. take note.

can i also point out that, when kerry washington wears her hair back with a headband (like every day at soccer ever for me), she looks like this: 

but i look like this:

like, what gives, hereditary gods?

anyway, i ran into a couple of problems on this one... i bought "creamy peach" icing dye, thinking it would be this nice, calm, professional color. like the color of resume paper. i thought it would look nice. i now have two cans full of a highlighter pink icing that i got instead. at least i'm ready for every fraternity cake party ever. i didn't really go out in college, but i think those are things.

i also dropped a bag of icing on the top right corner of the cake, so that's why it looks so shoddy. the more you know... oh wait, that was a thing on nbc, and i've already sold my soul to abc. it won't happen again. 

TOTAL DECORATING TIME: 3.5 hours + one giant bowl of leftover "cake parts" just staring at me. baking during lent when you give up sweets is like the ultimate test of willpower. so, you're welcome, jesus.

famous for playing ray charles's wife,

sassy badger

"princess tiana" - stressed

every sassy badger (so far there's just been the one, me) must enter an era of his/her/only her career (i don't make money for this) when she makes cakes that solely make obscure references to television shows, and, thus, require a detailed explanation which is so... blah.

everyone should just watch what i watch and know what i know and have the same brain as me. it's such a simple request. i'd do it for you. 

before i break this down, i will say... no, i'm going to break it down first.

on private practice, taye diggs's's character has a sister. his sister, corinne, suffers from bipolar disorder. his sister, corinne, is played by anika noni rose. anika noni rose was the voice of princess tiana in disney's (keeping it in the family, abc) the princess and the frog. ok. those are the facts.

so, cartoons are literally infinity times easier to ice than say... aj langer as rayanne graff from my so called life, which was an early version of this cake. it's another pp reference. ugh. GET IN MY HEAD NOW.

right, so i settled on princess tiana. autocorrect keeps changing it to "princess diana." too soon, autocorrect, too soon. 

again, right, settled on the design. and then i stressed for literally 26 hours on the text, and, as always, my idea came to me at about 1:40am. which was fine because i was up reading castle fanfiction on my phone anyway. no shame.

in case you don't get how it all makes sense, and, for some reason, you're still reading, here it goes: in my head, corinne, a television character, claims to be an animated princess, because she was, sort of, in another life... so, the doctors misdiagnosed her when she was actually telling the truth, sort of. get it? I DON'T CARE. IT'S PRETTY AND TASTED GOOD.

i wish private practice was that self-referential. i also wish they would bring the cat back. i worry about him. and... if he got sick, then addison could take him to a pet hospital, where six incredibly beautiful vets happen to work. boom. another spinoff... feral. because it's animals, and also because the doctors are wild in the boudoir, if you know what i mean.

[patting myself on the back]

alright, so there's a nice little, concise explanation for you. i would also like to say that i developed a new, innovative technique that is dope, but i will not bore you with the specifics. you're welcome.

TOTAL DECORATING TIME: 1.5 hours + 67 minutes to write this post because it was so confusing and i didn't want to do it, and i spent 16 minutes of it searching variations of "how to get hair like stana katic."

almost there,
sassy noni badger

ps - i'm thinking about starting to include a "soundtrack" from now on. for instance, aguilera's "this christmas" was a hot track during this decorating experience.

"leonard" - i'm trying to get a job, ok?

so this cake was solely made as an addition to my resume that i sent out to a new bill lawrence (scrubs, spin city, cougar town, clone high, things i only dream of doing) pilot called like father. basically the guy hiring is his producer who happened to play the hook-handed security guard on scrubs... hence this cake.

i figured i had nothing to lose. except that it's ash wednesday, and i gave up sweets and i COULDNT EVEN LICK THE CAKE BATTER OUT OF THE BOWL.

so, randall winston, if you're reading this, i suffered a ton while baking. i'm sorry that looks nothing like your face. there should really be more pictures of leonard on the interweb. again, i'm sorry this doesn't look like you. although maybe you'd be weirded out by that too much? maybe you're already super weirded out?

right, well, like i said, who knows if anything, probably nothing will happen. however, if any of my twelve readers is looking for a PA for their television show... here's my resume. oh yea, mom and dad, there's my resume.

oh, did i forget to mention the awesome pun? that's because it speaks for itself.

TOTAL DECORATING TIME: 2.5 hours + 3 episodes of scrubs that i "had" to watch through to find a screen cap of this guy. word of advice, don't yank your arm out of the ice machine.

like father like,
sassy badger (now that's a tv show)

p.s. - mom and dad and other concerned citizens - i am applying to jobs in the traditional fashion, too.

"cougar town" - penny can!

yea... i accidentally deleted the picture of the whole cake, but at least people seemed to enjoy it?

anyway, cougar town, had a contest where fans were supposed to take pictures of themselves playing penny can (it's a game about throwing pennies in cans, moving on) in crazy places. so, obviously, my friend, ben, and i went crazy X-TREME. although, i'm sure my twelve readers have already seen this, but WATCH OUR VIDEO.

BEN AND BARBARA'S X-TREME PENNY CAN

but, like, here's the thing. when the people said "photo contest," they really meant photo. not moving photos or anything. sorry, we're film students. sorry we're not sorry.

so, apart from a shout-out on twitter (which is basically social currency these days), we did not win. the winner played penny can in egypt... big whoop... on a camel... oh, ok, yea pretty sweet.

still, we had an awesome time making it, and we got to drink and eat cake. win-win. everyone watch cougar town!

TOTAL DECORATING TIME: 1.5 hours + about 17 cents down the drain after shooting that video.

not about cougars anymore,
sassy badger

"black eye violet" - pretty terrible

this is supposed to be violet turner with a black eye, as per episode of 512 of private practice (written by gabe llanas, available on hulu). now, if you're either a man or younger than 43, you're probably asking who is violet turner? what is private practice? i've said it before, and i'll say it again - ask your mom. 

[SPOILER ALERT] basically, violet gets the crap beat out of her:

yea, your mom's show can get violent, too. sometimes. very few times. but, in the words of janet jackson, this episode got "nasty boy."

this obviously doesn't look a whole lot like what it is supposed to look like, except for the hair. that hair was not fun to figure out, but i think it turned out pretty good. other than that, it's a pretty generic face and the "black eye" looks more like a bottom-lid purple eye patch. do they make those? dibs on that invention.

oh yea, i made this for a viewing party for the episode. it's not like i make cakes for myself while i watch tv... i buy frozen "dinners for one" when i do that.

TOTAL DECORATING TIME: 1.5 hours + one square foot of counter space in my new kitchen, absolutely terrible

that chick from judging amy,
sassy badger

ps - the new sassy badger banner art is courtesy of my friend jenno. i appreciate when she does things like that rather than things that she is supposed to be doing.