Preparation and Supplies

The cake competition is right around the corner, one week and one day away. Unless you read this tomorrow then is will just be one week, of course if you read this next week it will be less.
I have been buying supplies, stocking up. Knowing I have planned a very large cake. We not talking Cake Boss type of cakes. This will be quite mediocre in comparison to professional cakes, and should not be compared to what you see on TV.  But it is a cake I have envisioned, thought about, and built in my head for over 3 months. Now it is time to start putting all the supplies together and see what happens.
When making cakes for friends or my family, I try to make a cake from scratch. Good flavors, real fruit, internet recipes... Since this cake will require 12 different cakes, and will not be eaten, but simply on display for a weekend. Or crumbled on the driveway... a fear I have. A few weeks ago the store had a sale on box cake mix. A buck a box. Works for me!

I actually bought 12 boxes, but have determine I will only need 8. But I bet I can use all of the boxes with the mess ups that are bound to happened. Like dropping cake on the floor or forgetting them in the oven.

The on-going pre-cooking project has been the candy light bulbs.

I bought the light bulb candy molds online, they accidentally sent two. I am thankful for that now that I have been making these little candies for about a week. This is a first for me. I bought the bottles I thought I needed for this project, to help me squeeze the melted candy into the small molds. However these cheap little bottles didn't have a secure cap. The bottle flex too much for having one turn for the lid to be secure. I had many experiments on filling the cavities that ended with me flustered and with a mess. The caps popped off too easy with a little pressure. A couple days ago I used the last of the ketchup shortly after actually breaking one of the bottles. Then it happened. My Ah Ha moment. I cleaned the ketchup bottle and combined the soy sauce bottles and ditched the cheap annoyances. The last couple days I have made very good progress on what I was considering a bad idea. Now I am happy with them again.
This last weekend I went to Sam's club with wonderful husband for his work needs. I looked for more supplies. A 25lb bag of powdered sugar and a 6lb tub of Crisco. Hello butter cream frosting, to be mixed 2 batches at a time in a small kitchen mixer. But will need to be colored all at once, probably in a five gallon bucket, with a mixing drill bit. Wonderful husband recently bought one for concrete, however, that has not been used, yet.

Oh yeah, I will need most of it... Hopefully not more than that. I do not have the set up for this quantity of cake!