The March Cake, Part V: The Sting

SURPRISE, BITCHES! I bet you thought this was going to be a Marchie-only week! Wrong wrong wrong, here comes Hattie with a twist ending (everyone's favorite kind, right?). So as you've seen, Marchie's pretty much a bakery/cakery wizard, and my contribution to the whole cakesy process mainly consisted of photography and eating bits that fall off (with the exception of some potentially-questionable artistic advice). While I consider myself to be in most matters smarter than the average bear, I am pretty much hopeless when it comes to all things domestic. I mean, I can bake a mean chocolate chip cookie (Nestlé Toulouse, anyone?), and I'm a master when it comes to the food-consumption angle, but that's about my limit. Cut to last weekend. Harester was doing her best to cheer me up after a tough day, and let me tell you a story about that. It worked. BIG TIME.

Step one: cook duck legs. Cook potatoes in duck grease.

Step two: serve above to sad Hattie, who quickly becomes much less sad and very full about the tummy area.

Step three: inform Hattie that there are numerous leftovers from Br'er Rabbit's b-day.

Step four: tell Hattie she can make a cake with said leftovers. ANY WAY SHE WANTS. Mildly sad Hattie is now happy.

Yes indeed, baby Hatter was allowed to play house using cake and fondant and buttercream and yummy-ness, and you will be witness to the incredible results! Regard these photos:

My ingredients and implements!

Layers! (white icing and strawberry filling in between)

Buttercreaming the exterior while fashionably be-jeweled.

Buttercreamed!

A flower I (yes, I aka me aka Hattie) made out of fondant, after multiple coaching sessions by Harester.

My two fondant layers added! Can you tell what it's going to be? OH THE SUSPENSE...

Piping frosting. That's right, my cake was a piece of cake! Clever, right? 

Obviously I wrote "Hatter Rox" on the outside in fondant letters, and then bedazzled them with frosting. What other choice did I have?

Beautiful detailing, no? 













And that's the story of Hattie and her cake. Much much much help was given from Resident Cake Expert M. Hare, of coursity course. I'm working my way to baking greatness, one cake slice at a time!

The March Cake, Part IV: The Wire

I'm just going to jump right in here without recapping what I've done so far. Good? Okay

This is where things start to get wacky. Way way back in the planning process, before I knew that I was going to be creating a mash-up of BoSox and Slim Shady, I had entertaining the idea of making a topsy-turvy cake. I'd never made one before and given that this was supposed to be 'special' I thought I might give it a try. Once I realized what the design elements were going to be, however, I realized that this crazy concoction was not going to lend itself well to offset layers, and I scrapped the idea entirely. HOWEVER while I had moved on, Hattie was not giving up on the idea of whimsical bakering, and insisted that even if I was not going to carve the layers at a tilt, I should at least make them flared because, quote, round is boring, unquote. This was an example of POOR DECISION MAKING. You know how they say too many chefs spoil the soup? Yeah. Regrettably, here I am carving the cake into an un-boring shape:

In my own defense, that is a work in progress, but still. Still. This is a great learning opportunity for those of you out there who are no good at saying no. SAY NO. Anyways.

Once I had sufficiently defaced my previous hard work, I set about applying the buttercream. I mainly use buttercream to even out the shape of the cake and to provide a layer of sticky to which the fondant can properly adhere. Also it's delicious, so I like to use as much as humanly possible. Below is what the above disaster looked like, after being buttercreamed:

Don't worry, don't worry, I smoothed it out a little more than that.

NEXT STEP: Applying the fondant. Perhaps I should back that thang up a little bit. Let's start with: what is fondant? Well, dear reader(s), fondant is basically sugar that's been cooked into play-dough form. It's the stuff on the surface of wedding cakes that makes everything look smooth and even. You can make it at home, but I don't like to, so I buy it in five pound tubs instead. First thing is, you have to roll out the fondant on a work surface. Coincidentally, I have a ginormous wooden cutting board exactly for this purpose!

Please note that the fondant here is black. Not chocolate, black. My mom has a saying: no one want to eat a black cake. Which is too bad, because my mom was definitely coming to my brother's birthday party and that cake was sure as molasses going to be black. Take that mom! Once you have a good sheet of fondant, it needs to go on the cake, like so:

AHH! A GHOST! A SHEET ON A TABLE! A CAKEWRECK IN THE MAKING! No, no, and very very yes. Fondant behaves a lot like really thick cloth, so you have to smooth it out until it becomes a-like so:

Looks like a giant black pylon, no? Yum.

So at this point I have a confession to make. I was planning on posting the pictures of the final product today--it seemed like it was time, I mean enough of this already--but the truth is that I don't have them. My dad took all the final-stage photos and he hasn't sent them to me yet. Sad. Face. HOWEVER, in an attempt to achieve some kind of backward continuity to this crazy undertaking, I planned ahead and instead drew you a delicious cake. Read: doodled it during my class last night. Sigh. Who am I fooling, really.

And there it is. I promise that as soon as I obtain actual photographic evidence of this ...masterpiece... (NOTE SARCASTIMARKS PLZ THX) I will be sure to share. In the meantime, come back tomorrow to see how this crazy caper concludes. (with consonance. Ahahaha)

The March Cake, Part III: The Tale

Alright, so after being suckered in and assembling my troops, I got down to the dirty business of actually a baking cake. Since I only spend about 5% of the process actually baking anything, there's not much to say about this part: lotta mixing, lotta folding, lotta cleaning bowls. Hattie was impressed by the amazing edible egg whites, and I can't say that I blame her:

Egg whites are pretty much da bomb. Their superpowers include: delicious; nutritious; and the power to grow many times their normal size. I find that this last one makes for a good party trick, if you ever need to impress someone and you also happen to have some separated eggs, an electric mixer (or whisk, if you want to really show off and have guns of steel), and a bunch of people who are easily amused (holla!). At this point I also want to give a shout out to my main homie, KitchenAid standing mixer, without whom this whole endeavor would not have been possible, and because of whom my whole life is enriched immeasurably, each and every day. I love you, baby.

MOVING ON. As I mentioned yesterday, I planned to have alternating layers of chocolate and vanilla cake with strawberry filling, which means that I had to make two separate cake batters. For the vanilla I went with a plain white cake recipe, and for the chocolate I chose a German chocolate cake.

FUN FACT: Did you know that German chocolate cake is NOT thusly named because it comes from Germany, but rather because it was created by a dude named German?? The more you know...

Anyanyanyways, the main diff between the two cake batters (aside from flavor), for those of you interested in these finer details, is that the white cake rises mostly due to the above-mentioned Super Egg Whites, while the chocolate cake is all about steam. I'm just cracking eggs of knowledge all over everybody today! TOPICAL.

Because there were going to be two tiers, I made four different cakes: a 6-inch cake in each flavor, and an 8-inch cake in each flavor. And since I doubled the recipes in both cases, this resulted in a whole mess o' cake. The whole baking process took a couple of hours, and one I had them out of the oven and completely cooled, it was time to set about slicing those mothers up.

Firstly, I slice off the top of the cake, a-like so:

This provides the dual benefits of a) giving the cake a flat platform, and b) creating lots of extra cakey bits for Hattie to eat. [EDIT: That's just the kind of helpful helper-slash-photographer I am. Anyone else requiring similar services need only ask.] Next I slice each cake into layers. How many layers, you ask? Well since you're asking, I guess the answer is however many I damn please! Haha, jkjk, actually I just kind of eyeball how thick I want the layers to be and then I cut as many as I can fit. In the case of this cake that ended up to be three or four layers per cake:

There I am using my fancepantsy cake-slicer to slice the layers evenly. Cake-slicer and I have sort of a love-hate relationship, mostly hate, so honestly I really just included that photo to impress you with my crazy baking skills; actually I did most of the slicing freehand with a regular old knife. Bo-ring!

Jumping backwards in time a little bit, if you've been paying attention thus far you may recall that I was concocting a mysterious strawberry-sauce a while back but never finished it. I will address that little loose end now, as we have arrived at the making-all-kinds-of-fillings portion of our show. For this project I made three kinds of filings: white icing, buttercream, and strawberry preserve.

White icing is basically just sugar syrup into which I've incorporated some--guess what--egg whites.

Now if you've been reading everything I've written thus far (and if you have, god bless you), you may be wondering what happened to all the egg yolks during this crazy experiment; I've been all 'egg whites are le awesome,' so why don't the yolks get any love? I have one word for you, dear reader(s): buttercream. The process of making buttercream is (in my opinion) fun, but it's labor-intensive and time-consuming, so I'm not going to explain it in detail here. Suffice to say there's a fair amount of heating and cooling and whisking, and it involves a crapload of egg yolks.

Lastly, the ad-hoc strawberry filling gets made by first dumping a bunch more sugar on the already-saturated sugar/strawberry mixture from yesterday and then boiling the shit out of it. The strawberries get all tiny and sugary and delicious, and the liquid reduces to a delicious strawberry-flavored syrup which Hattie and I have a lot of left over and fully intend to incorporate into all manner of alcoholic beverages. You know, in case you were thinking of coming over.

Having all three handy, we move to the process of icing and assembling the layers. First goes on a layer of white icing, for flavor and also to help caulk the cake against the drippiness of the strawberry goo:

As you can see I am using Mr. Offset Spatula, my trusty gentleman friend. Next goes on a layer of the strawberry filling, and then another layer of cake (opposite flavor), and then another layer of white icing, and then another layer of strawberry filling, and then another layer of cake...this is the song that never ends...until all the layers are layered and we have:

Layer cake! As you can see the cake ended up having seven alternating layers when all was said and done; not too shabby, if I do say so myself. Alright kats and kittens, that's all for today. Come back tomorrow for the next episode of Way Out Of My League, when Hattie convinces me to do something CRAZY! You'll never see it coming!

The March Cake, Part II: The Hook

So how to begin with the caking making? Well typically I find it's best to start with an idea. LAME, I know, but it's true. Since this was my brother's 15th birthday, I decided I was going to try and make something that 'represented' him and his interest. Which naturally led to the question: what the hell does my brother like?

The answer to that question, dear reader(s) is: sports. The Junior Hare  is a big jock, so my first thought was to make a kind of amalgamated athletics cake, with different sports he plays or different teams he supports a la this cake, only a little less...holy.

This didn't pan out. Mostly because my brother is really only a fan of two sports (one of which is baseball) and one team, and that team is the Boston Red Sox. So instead of going with the whole sports theme, I decided to make a two-tiered cake with the bottom tier representing the BoSox (natch) and the top tier representing something else he's into like...I have no clue. So I picked up the ol' tellular cellophone and rang up my dad to ask him:

Me: Hey dad, what does my brother like?

Dad: He likes the Red Sox.

Me: I know that, what else is he into these days?

Dad: I don't know. He likes shoes. Why don't you make some shoes?

Me: Hmm...no. No shoe cake. What else?

Dad: He likes rap music. Can you do an Eminem cake?

Now at the time I thought this was the dumbest idea ever--how in the world do you make an 'Eminem' themed cake? Oh wait, here's how. I know I said I was going to bring dishonor on my ancestors, but that my friends, was never coming out of my kitchen, so I had to think of something else. In the end I decided that I was going to do the second layer in a manner that suggested Eminem. Yeah, yeah, I know, it still sounds like a pretty bad idea and if my stupid brother would just like Lost or something normal, I wouldn't have had to do it but those were the cards I was dealt and those are the cards I was going to have to play.

So to summarize:

+= Cake Concept

Yeesh.

Anyways, the next leg of our journey involves requisitioning the appropriate tools. I have a fair amount of baking paraphernalia already, but I needed a few extra things so I hit up my trusty NYC cake store, aptly named New York Cake. It's expensive, and they're surly and the customer service is terrible but if you're an amateur baker like myself then baby, they got what you need. I picked up a couple of things and, combined with my own not-unformidable arsenal, I assembled:

THE TOOLS OF THE TRADE

There you have an assortment of cake boards, stakes, spatulae, parchment paper (my bff), knives, pans, racks, pastry bags and nozzles, edible dyes, candles, and of course, about 20 pounds of fondant. From here on in Hattie gets the credit for the photography, and I will just say that Nigella Barker spent quite a little bit of time arranging these things in the most appropriately pleasing configuration on our dining room table. Just giving credit where credit is due.

As far as flavors go, I had talked to my brother and knew he wanted a Neapolitan (chocolate/vanilla/strawberry) flavored cake with the vanilla and chocolate manifesting as cake and the role of strawberry flavor being played by Ice Cream. I actually considered this idea for about five minutes and even did a little research (read:google image search) on tiered ice cream cakes, but after I scrapped that idea in a hurry. Instead I decided to make strawberry filling between the layers, basically a kind of homemade strawberry preserve. I didn't have a recipe so I kind of winged it, which in retrospect was probably completely retarded given this I wanted to at least start off like I knew what I was doing, but miraculously it actually worked out. Here is the March Hare's recipe for Fresh Strawberry Cake Filling:

-6 Quarts Strawberries

-All the sugar in the world

First hull and quarter all your strawberries, a-like so:

If you happen to be simultaneously watching The Millionaire Matchmaker so much the better. I'm not saying it necessarily improves the flavor, but it can't hurt.

Second, put your strawberries in a bowl and cover them with half the sugar. Let 'em sit like that in the fridge overnight while you contemplate early onset diabetes.

And that was how we ended Day 1 of Operation Death By Pastry. So far it seems not so hard, no? Don't worry, that's how I fool myself, too. Come back tomorrow to see me burrow even deeper down the rabbit hole (god, sometimes I'm so relevant it hurts)

Tomorrow: Bakin', Slicin', Stackin,' and Icin'

The March Cake, Part I: The Set-Up

Hello dear reader(s) and a Happy Monday to you, sir or madam. I hope you are all excited because this week we're going to be doing things a little differently. Allow me to a-splain.

A few weeks ago I was strongarmed into had the pleasure of making a cake for my brother's 15th birthday. Now if you know me already (in the real-people world, not in the literary or biblical sense), you probably know that I have a...problem. Okay, just say it, Hare, it's not that bad, it's not...okay...the thing is...I...am...a...compulsive baker. Wow, I feel like a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders! I've been waiting so long to say that out loud and-okay shut up, shut up now, be serious. Serious times.

Truthfully, I am a compulsive baker, meaning that when I'm stressed rather than squeeze a little ball or go for jog, I make chocolate chip cookies. Or brownies. Or pie. You get the idea. This can get out of hand if I'm by myself since I really don't need an entire peach cobbler most of the time, but my roommates/friends/strangers passing by seem to appreciate it, and really on the scale of neurosis it's pretty no harm/no foul. Moral of the story is that I bake a lot. Moving on.

A few weeks before my brother's birthday my mom and I were discussing what to do to celebrate, and she decided that what she really wanted to do was get him a cake from Colette. For those of you who don't watch too much Food Network, Colette Peters is a professional cake designer who makes things that look like this:

Which while very pretty and celebratory, is not something you can waltz in two weeks ahead of time and say GIVE IT TO ME. In fact, Collete's web site recommends at least one months notice for any order, which I pointed out to my mother as one of the main reasons why this dream was not destined to be a reality. BUT WAIT says mommy dearest, why don't YOU just make his cake? WHY NOT INDEED? Let's pause for a second. It's already been established that I do like to bake, and while trying to replicate a professional confectionery masterpiece might be fun times, doing it on a deadline, for an audience, in half as much time as a professional requires seemed a twee bit of a tall order. Okay, unpause. What I should've said was nothing. What I actually said was 'sure.' And...that's why I'm an idiot.

So now I've dug myself a hole out of which I cannot possibly climb because as everyone knows mom guilt is the strongest, most potent flavor of guilt and once I agreed there was no way I could go back to my mother and say 'Psych! Not gonna do it after all!' No. I was going to have to buck up and take it like a man; a man who makes ridiculously complicated cakes. (SIDE NOTE: I WANT ONE OF THOSE)

At this point I'm going to level with you and pull a Modest Molly: I am an amateur baker. [EDIT: Insert loud and protracted snort of disbelief/sarcasm from the Hatter here.] I can make things that are more complicated than could the average bum on the street (I'm guessing, as I've never asked a homeless man to make me a cake. New Life Goal!), but I'm nowhere near a professional. I don't even live in that neighborhood; I live downtown with all the actors slash models slash call girls. Barely talented, that's me. To prove it to you, here's an example of some cookies I made a while back, for reference:

[EDIT part deux: ...Those look like cookies a homeless person's DOG could make. You should be too ashamed to even post this picture... (Note sarcastimarks)] HOWEVER, just because I have to suffer crushing guilt and disgrace, is no reason you can't benefit! Right? OF COURSE RIGHT! And since we're no stranger to plumbing the depths of our awkward experiences for the blog, Hattie and I decided to chronicle the whole, messy, cake-making process in a five part series I am officially calling:

The March Cake: Operation Unrealistic Ambitions

Each day this week I'll post a few steps in the process of making this cake, so you can see how I did it, how I succeeded, and where I went wrong. It's a little bit of a departure from our usual biting wit and insightful commentary, I know, but I'll try and inject a little bit of punch and pizazz into the process as we go along. Hattie assures me that this is interesting to people, regardless of the fact that it makes my intestines burn with shame, and so we're going to try it. So tune in every day this week to see how the 15th Birthday Cakestravaganza is progressing!
Tomorrow: Conception and Heavy Machinery

Friday Is Trying To Kill Me Again

As it does every week, my friends. This week it has sunk to the new low of trying to do me in through physiological trauma, which in my opinion is way below the belt. Hit me with the sleepys, the worky works, fine, I can deal, but nausea and the spins? Not cool, Friday, not. cool. Especially when you consider the fact that I totally tried to beat the system by going to bed at 6PM last night and sleeping until 8AM this morning. You would think, would you not, that this would result in a fresh new outlook on life, a spring in my step and a song in my heart? WRONG. It resulted in sitting on the floor for 20 minutes trying not to throw up and pass out at the same time. Ugh ugh ugh, Fridays you are a cold-blooded mother. If it weren't for the bottle of Aleve that I used to keep in my bag (and currently keep in my stomach) I would probably have called it in, which would have been a shame because I am trying to save up my vacation days for something spectacular. Respect.

ANYWAYS.

Hmm...seeing as how I didn't really plan anything for today and seeing as how a brigade of Taiko drummers has established residence in my cranium, I think today is the perfect day for...

The March Hare's Top 5 Reality Shows I Don't Not Watch

Before we begin, point: I am neither confirming nor denying the suspicion that I watch reality TV. In general, ON PRINCIPLE, I am against the idea of plopping down a camera in the middle of whatever the hell might be going on and being like, viola! instant television gold. HOWEVER, if I were to watch 'unscripted' television, these would be the shows that I would theoretically be watching. That's all I'm saying.

5. The Amazing Race

This is really Hattie's show (seriously, seriously), but I'm not going to deny the fact that I do enjoy it when it's on. I think it's the combination of random activities (my favorite kind), jettsetting (awesome), and scavenger hunts (aweseome) that appeals to me. I think that if activities in my regular life were structured more like a scaveneger hunt, I would be approximately 151% more productive. Example: instead of my boss saying 'Hare, make 15 copies of this document,' he would leave me a note on my desk with a cryptic message that led me to the copy room where I would have to use nothing but paperclips and my ingenuity to hotwire the copy machine. Then when I succeeded a secret door would open and out would fall a totally blank document which I would have to copy, revealing the secret message written in invisible ink. I'm going to file this under 'Elaborate (Business) Plans' for now, but I see a serious market opportunity.

4. Dancing With The Stars

Someone told me once that this is the most-watched show, or most-watched reality show, or something like that, and having watched exactly 1.5 episodes of it thus far I can totally believe it. Translation: I have been totally suckered in by this show. The judges are hi-larious, the costumes are ri-dunkulous, and the dance routines are really, really entertaining. Let's not lie: the main reason I started catching the replays on Hulu is that my boy Evan Lysacek is one of the 'stars' this season, and man he does not disappoint. Pop Quiz! So far Evan has a) stepped on his own feet; b) complained that he is getting dizzy because 'the spins go in the wrong direction and it confuses me'; c) pinched his incredibly Russian partner's cheeks (she was not amused); d) impersonated a spagetti noodle; e) all of the above. Read: won my heart all over again. That boy is doing his best impression of a human wind sock and it is working for him.

3. Flavor of Love

I remember the first time I saw Flavor of Love: I was visiting Hattie at college and it was christ o'clock in the morning and she was like, FLAVOR OF LOVE IS ON LET'S WATCH IT NOOOOOOW and I was like, wahuh? What are you talking about, crazy lady. And we watched it, and the rest is history. [EDIT: You're welcome.] I don't know if I can put my finger on what made this show great. Could it have been the inexplicable viking helmet Flavor Flav wore in the confessional? The jammin' personalized clocks he gave the girls who got to stay each week? The fact that he rechristened all the ladies as soon as they arrived with names like 'Hottie,' 'Bubbelz,' 'Miss Latin,' and 'Hoopz'? The ex/jealousy subplot with Brigitte Nielsen was definitely a high point, because you know Flavor and that girl had history.

2. RuPaul's Drag Race

Okay, okay, I'm going to level with you here. Drag Race is currently on our DVR queue. I know I said I don't necessarily 'tune in' to these shows, but I make an exception for Ru. As Hattie pointed out at the beginning of this season, when I introduced her to the show (you're welcome) this is basically the ANTM Tyra wishes she were on. And by that I mean, a show where there are pictures of her everywhere, all the songs are written and performed by her, and she gets to walk the runway for the judges each week so they can tell her how fabulous she is. Because that is how RuPaul rolls on RPDR, and RuPaul is MONEY. Now that my girls Jessica and Pandora have been eliminated (sad face, but we all saw that coming), I am pleased to announce that SUWA is officially endorsing Jujubee for next Drag Superstar.

1. Dance 360

My introduction to this show was pretty much a carbon copy of #3 but with different ingredients. [EDIT: You're 360 times as welcome. For you readers: I loved Dance 360 so much that at one point I had a dream in which I was a contestant but I forgot to tag my man and was therefore disqualified from winning the main prize: an XBOX 360!!!  Remembers, dear readers: always TAG YOUR MAN!] More delicious ingredients. I think I can just come right out and say that Dance 360 is the best reality show I have ever seen. It incorporates all the best elements of the worst television:

-production value of approximately $5 and one can of diet coke

-drunk/stoned/crazy coeds

-gimmicky catchphrases

-dance battle

-Kel (of Keenan and)

I'm not sure that there was anything you could've added to this magical mix of genius that would have improved it. It was pretty much 100% perfect as it was, and I still harbor an eternal flame of hope that one day when it's really late and we're watching reruns of Jeopardy at 2AM (don't judge) Hattie and I will casually flip the channel to an episode of Dance 360 and all will be right with the world. Enjoy:

New Life Goals

Oh boy, this week, this week. I'm not even getting into it right now, all I am going to say is that when I get bit by a radioactive spider amongst my new and awesome powers better be time travel/Ability to Stop Time/Manipulate Time/Whateva + Time. Small favors, is all I'm asking.

So Sparks, who is a good friend of ours, recently highlighted for me the fact that my priorities are WAY out of whack. It's true. So starting today I am wiping the slate clean and starting a new plan to take charge of that situation. The problem is that up until now 'Ive been focusing too much on the short-term, little things, like work, family, romance, &c. &c. I know, I know: totally ridunkadonk and shame on me. Thankfully I've seen the light and can set myself on the right path towards some serious life goals, namely: meeting a prince.

I know right! So obvious! I don't know how it escaped me for so long. Here's the plan:

1. Meet this guy. Done and DONE. Techincally Sparks met him, not me, but apparently she's allowed invited to bring friends, so I am in like Anna Paquin. SIDE NOTE: Can we take a break and talk about how much I love middle-aged French people? Let's do. SO MUCH. In college approximately 80% of my music professors were of this rare breed and it was like living in my own little Rou Royale each and every beau jour. They would speak just-imperfect-enough-to-be-adorable English and tell us all how lucky we were not to live in Paris where the honkings of the automotives are tojour the whole day  and the examinations are très très difficile so you should feel so lucky to be studying l'musique in America, no? Ah, l'université, mon cœur de cœur deluxe.

2. Attend all of the swankiest, hottest parties looking fabulous. Having accomplished Part1, I imagine this part will be easy peasy lemon sqeezy. Having lived in New York all my life I know that there is a 'scene' of 'cool' people who go to 'parties,' but I never really though about how that all got taken care of. I am far too lazy busy doing karaoke and going to the same bars every weekend to worry about such things, obviously. But now that I have a hookup to the hip nightlife I figure it'll be a snap to bring my brand of special sauce to the rich, powerful, famous, and most importantly royal set.

3. Attract the attention of an eligible princely bachelor. How hard could this possibly be? When I lived in London British men were always like, ooh, an American girl, wot wot! I'm not 100% sure why, but I think maybe they all saw Love, Actually and thought that they were this this guy. In my experience...not so much. HOWEVER I imagine that it's a similar situation on the Continent and beyond, and I intend to press my advantage.

So far my extensive and thorough research has turned up several strong contenders for the position of prince to be dating me, including Prince Carl Philip of Sweden, Prince, Andrea Albert Pierre Casiraghi of Monaco, and Prince Félix of Luxembourg. I'm leaning on Monaco because I have a suspicious that Sparks has already called dibs on Prince Carl and Luxembourg just isn't my type. Plus, bonus: Monaco lives in New York so I am basically 75% of the way to becoming Grace Kelly already.

And to those of you who are like what? Are you SETTLING??--I know, I know, he's no RDJ, but unfortunately that is (currently) married and I am no Suzy Homewrecker, thank you very much; I am a capital C to the Lassy Lady--I say don't worry! I've got all my bases covered. I fully plan on prepping Andy on the list situation before we seal the deal, but given my high market value (several chickens AND a goat!) and how ridiculously in love with me I am planning for him to be, I don't think it'll be a problem at all. If all goes according to plan And given his international fame and fortune and his swinging lifestyle, I'm sure we could come to an agreement and set something up...

We will be registering at Tiffany's, Sacks, and Bed Bath & Beyond, for your convenience