My First Cube/Block Cake!

This cake was a different sort of challenge that I really enjoyed.  The cake itself is 5 (5!) layers of chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream frosting and filling, with fondant accents.  I decided to go with three layers on the bottom for stability, then a cake board, then the top two layers.  The cake itself measures 8" on all sides.  That may not sound very big, but TRUST ME, it's really really big and heavy!
I decided on a color palette using the color wheel and the split contrast color chart.  The birthday was for a little girl, so I wanted some pink in there, so I went with a dark fuchsia, sky blue, and a bright lime for the base.
The picture I have here I took without the flash...the ones I took with flash came out fuzzy.  I was hurrying to get the pictures taken so we could go, as my three year old was demanding we go to Cartwheels and Coffee.   The coloring in the photo of the back of the cake is closer to the true shades.

I've notoriously had a problem getting my reds really red.  It takes me forever to finally get it.  I followed the directions by SeriousCakes to get red buttercream, but used it on the fondant instead, starting with the colors rose, golden yellow (she uses orange but I didn't have that) and the AmeriColor Super Red.  That stuff is no joke!  I dyed my hands like crazy, but in the end I did have a nice Elmo red to work with.
Other than the sheer size of this cake and the issues of making sure it measured the same on width and height, it was a pretty straightforward cake.  I am so glad to have done one of these now!

Note:  Elmo's eyes fell off when I put the cake in the car.  I nixed those eyes and re-did them (with my engine running no less!) and after I took this picture I fixed the mouth to be more...puppet-like, I guess.  I was in a hurry though so I didn't get a picture of the finished Elmo.  It's not much different anyway.
I really hope they like their cake and enjoy eating cake for days!

1967 Dodge Coronet R/T - AKA MY FIRST CAR!

I've been wanting to make a car for a while now but I haven't had the occasion.  Luckily, I got this order and I was SO excited to start!
The cake is 2-10" yellow cake layers with vanilla buttercream frosting and filling.  The car is RKT covered and decorated with fondant.

I put the Rice Krispies in my little Magic Bullet and ground up about 2/3 of them before adding them to the melted marshmallows.  I did this so that the finished RKT would be a smoother surface for my fondant.  I printed off a good side view of the R/T, scaled it by hand, and cut out two, then laid them against the RKT and carved the side view shape, minus the tire wells at first.  Then I carved the tire wells, and put small ribbons of fondant where the shape of the body needed swells and dips.  The windows are chocolate fondant dyed black with powdered food coloring.  I love the black powdered food coloring.  It is more spendy but has no taste.  The black gel smells awful and tastes very bitter.  The same goes with the red.  Anyway, I rolled it thin and cut it to fit the top half of the car, then used my powder puff (a nylon stocking, never been worn of course, that I fill with powdered sugar and tie off so I can easily dust my fondant evenly) to dust it.  This made it so the gray fondant I laid on top wouldn't stick to it and I could carve out the windows easily.  I made the accent pieces out of fondant, except the license plate which is gumpaste.  There is a board under the middle of the car (fully wrapped in foil) that is holding it above the cake so the tires won't sink into the frosting.

I found myself so proud of my lettering on this one.  My son came in the kitchen while I was finishing it off and wanted to help me, so I had him read off the letters and make sure I spelled everything right by comparing it to the "Happy 60th Birthday" I had written on regular paper to make sure of the size of the message so it would be centered.  This was a really touching and special experience for my kiddo and I.  He got all the letters right, then told me that I did a good job writing my letters.  Awwww!
This cake was very fun to make and at times a little challenging.  I am so happy to have done my first car!

Storybook Cake

M-Pie turned 3 just recently and I made her this fairytale storybook cake.  The cake is my yellow recipe with buttercream frosting.  I was expecting a very small intimate family gathering, so imagine my surprise when we pull up to my Mother-In-Law's house and there are easily 8 cars parked outside her house!  At a mere 1-layer, 9x13 inches, the cake was too small for everyone to have some, but the kids all got a piece and some of the adults got one too.  It was a really fun event and everyone raved about my "skillz" and how good the cake was.  It made me feel so great!

As I mentioned, I baked the cake in a regular rectangular 9x13 pan, then trimmed the short sides so there was a gentle angle.  The scraps I mixed with frosting and shaped the humped areas where the "pages" would naturally fall bowed.  I then frosted the top of the cake with pink and the edges with purple and did the Viva paper towel trick.  The princess was made out of a small wonder mold cake.  The body of the princess is fondant molded onto a dowel, then shoved through the top of the little half-egg shaped cake, then dressed in a gown of red fondant.  I hand rolled the hair thin and attached with regular water.  The crown and mouse are made of fondant as well.  The little princess gems were bought at the dollar store (admitted sheepishly).  It was very fun to make, even though the first princess I made was too big for the cake and I had to do it over again!
Happy Birthday M-Pie!

A Halloween Anniversary!

This cake was pretty straight forward, and I very much enjoyed it.  I used the leftover navy blue BC from the last cake and made black by adding yellow, red, and brown coloring gels and more black powder.  The cake itself is two 10" decadent chocolate cake layers with vanilla BC filling and frosting.  See the baking powder can?  That's for size analysis (Thank you Christyl!  I keep forgetting!)  The numbers on top are gumpaste painted with gold edible shimmer dust.

This cake also had a specialty sturdy box.  I hate commercial cake boxes.  Something always goes wrong with them.  I'm so glad I've started making my own.

Catching up again...Chicago Bears Slouch Cap

I need to stay current on this blog!  Yesterday was Halloween and I sit here eating my child's enormous stash of candy, feeling guilty for not knowing what cake I put on this blog last or which one comes next...I actually had to check my own blog!

This cake was exactly the same size as an NFL cap.  It is yellow cake with vanilla BC frosting.  The frosting had to be a dark navy blue, and I was worried about the darkness, since you have to use a LOT of black coloring to get anywhere close to it and black food dye tastes like butt.  Thankfully, I had bought some Chefmaster black food dye powder from EBay and used that.  There was no strange taste at all, and it colored it very well.

The brim is made out of gumpaste that I tried to dye the same color as the BC, but failed.  So I just attached the brim and covered it in BC.
The cake was baked in an 8" round and a pyrex bowl, so waste of cake due to carving was kept to a minimum.  I used the Wilton baking core for the bowl to make sure it got baked perfectly.  I usually just use the flower nail #7.  Anyway.
After frosting and doing the Viva paper towel method, I let it get hard in the fridge, then brought it out to do the stitching with the Wilton quilting tool.

The NFL logo is hand painted gumpaste.  I think it came out awesome.  Interesting sidenote, the logo on the 2009 Bears slouch cap is a resurrected 1970's NFL logo.  I don't know why, I guess they just felt like bringing it back to the old school.  The Reebok and C logos are buttercream.
It was placed in a special-made, super sturdy cake box and my new card was attached to that.  Did I mention I got new cards?  They are too cute.  You can get free ones from Vistaprint, but I loved the design I got on mine.
This was a fun cake, and nothing went wrong in the making of it.  Such a wonderful blessing!
It's been a while since I posted my email, so here it is... alesharaelane@yahoo.com.
Have the best day ever!

My first Elmo Cake

This cake was made for a party at Cartwheels and Coffee.  The Elmo is RKT covered by tip 13 stars.  The cake itself is 2-10" yellow cake rounds with vanilla buttercream filling and frosting.  There is a little cake board under Elmo held up by dowels to provide support for the weight of the RKT.
When I made the RKT I used too much cereal and it was diffucult to pack tightly enough.  What I do to pack RKT is take some plastic wrap, coat it in a little shortening or butter, coat my hands as well, and grab a large amount (about 3x as large as I want it to come out after packing).  I set it down in the center of the plastic wrap, wrap it up, and start crushing.  After I shaped the body and head, I put a wooden dowel in through the top of the head down through the bottom of the body to pre-make a hole for it.  I learned that this was a good idea on the Frog and Monkey cake.  I left the dowel in until it was time to decorate Elmo.  It looked really funny as just RKT sitting in the fridge.  We had a friend come over the night before the cake was due and he thought I had a voodoo doll hanging out in there.
The arms are being held on with uncooked spaghetti pasta.  His mouth is a smile made of black fondant.  Interesting side note, I had an awful time dying the frosting red.  Awful.  I ordered two different kinds of food dye online the night before this cake was due, knowing it wouldn't get here in time but knowing I'm not going through this again.  After reading a whole lot online, I found that Americolor Super Red is the best for going straight to red, so I ordered some of that as well as dye powder.  We'll see how it works.  Anyway.  I piped stars all over his body and arms, and the front and top of his head.  I left the back bare so I could use that to support the head when I pushed the spaghetti in to help hold on the eyes and nose.  They are simply fondant rolled to the right size and shape.  The pupils are black fondant.  I piped the back of his head in, applied the fondant star cutouts, and piped a shell border with #22.  Then it was done and I delivered it to my favorite place to hang out with my kiddo, Cartwheels and Coffee in Carytown.  Chris (my main man at CnC) said he had a #1 candle for the cake.  I wish I had a picture of it with the candle in it!

Tie Dye Insides

This was a little personal cake for Stinkie's real birth day.  It was fun to make, but it did take some time.  I made my regular yellow cake to start off with, but I used two egg whites in place of one whole egg.  This cake is only 6" round, so it didn't take nearly as long as I suppose a larger cake would.  I'm thinking I might save this technique for family and friends' cakes.  Anyway, I divided the batter up into three separate bowl equally.  I added blue color to one and started pouring the cake.  One spoonful in the center of a sprayed-with-Baker's Joy 6" Wilton round cake pan.  I let it settle while I colored the yellow.  Then a spoonful of yellow directly in the center of the blue batter already in there, then I dyed the red and spooned in a little of that.  

I did have to rotate the pan (slowly!  Don't disturb the batter!) to make the batter spread evenly.  My counters are crooked :(.  Between each spoonful, I waited about 10 seconds to give the batter proper time to spread out.  Consistency of your batter is pretty important.  It must be able to spread but must not be too loose.  Finally finished, I stuck it in the oven and let it bake for about 30 minutes.  When I took it out, I was SO tickled pink!  I love the tie dye effect at the edges.  I think I might do some dragging from the center before baking next time for a more incorporated look.  Ethan of course had a special cake for his birthday party (see WordWorld cake post) but this little cake was just for his actual birth day, the day after his party.  I didn't put frosting on it, but left it as is to show off the pretty colors.  He dug into it like a boy possessed.  It was fun!

 I had been worried about the texture of the cake, as I had never substituted two whites for one egg in this recipe, but it baked up just fine (other than these little pinprick bubble looking things on the top...don't know what caused these, but it may have just been the layering of the batters gave rise to air trapped in the batter in the pan?)  I cannot wait to try this again and I am going to have the BEST time ever.  I might do zebra stripes.

I picked up a copy of Bakerella's Cake Pops book yesterday at Barnes and Noble.  It's so cool to hear her story and see all the wonderful things she's been creating.  I know I want to do some designed and decorated cake pops sometime soon...they are TOO great!

UPS Logo Cake

This was a quick little cake that was pretty fun to make!  The dimensions are roughly 10"x8"x2".  The brown frosting is chocolate, and the yellow is vanilla.  The cake itself is my favorite yellow cake.  People have been raving about this recipe. It took me a while to develop it, so I'm really glad it's working out!
Not much to say on this cake, other than the cake box I made for it.  I hate cake boxes.  I really hate them.  They give people a false sense of security because they can't see the cake and the flimsy boxes just DON'T do their job.  Anyway, the client needed a cake box for transport, so I made one out of foam posterboard. 

The thick stuff (it's about 1/8" thick).  It was pretty easy and incredibly sturdy, and I think I'm just going to make these from now and and include them in the cost of the cake.  I felt good, and the cake was totally protected.  I'll add a picture on another night, as I have a cake due tomorrow and I should be getting back to it!

Hair Stylist Cake

The cake is 2-10" yellow rounds with vanilla buttercream frosting and filling.  The blow dryer and straightener are RKT covered in marshmallow fondant.  The red clip is made of fondant, but the silver clip is gumpaste.  The scissors are gumpaste as well, and everything silver was painted silver with silver shimmer dust and lemon juice mixed together.

The cake itself was very simple, as it required no mixing of colors for the base.  Just plain white BC frosting plugs.  I think I need to post a link to the SeriousCakes video about that, as it's the bestest, most wonderful thing I've ever seen.
Aw heck I'll just post her video.  Te frosting plug part starts at 1:35.  I love her videos!  I don't pull the plastic wrap all the way through the tip.  I cut it off up close to the frosting before I plop it in the bag, but it still makes for super fast cleanup and changing of colors.
Anyway, I smoothed the cake and set the objects on top, ran a ribbon around it, wrote "Happy Birthday Cedric" (On a side note, I love LOVE the name Cedric), placed the "cords", and called it a cake!

Stinkie's WordWorld Cake

Everyone kept asking me what I was making for Ethan's party.  I have been so busy and planning for the party on top of that was a little stressful, so I looked at a bunch of mega-time consuming WordWorld cakes for inspiration and decided on EASY!  The cake I made is like the one that Pig makes on WordWorld.  It's very simple!  So I went with it.  The cake inside is 3 layers - chocolate on the bottom, strawberry filling on top of that, strawberry cake on top of that, then vanilla buttercream, then lemon cake, and topped with chocolate buttercream and strawberries.  It was very fun and I'm glad I went with the easy cake.  Stinkie loved his party and had the best time.  What a lovely day it's been.

Gardener's Birthday Cake

I am bone tired right now, but I'm pushing through it to get my blog up to date!  This cake was 12" round on bottom and 8" round on top.  I was advised by a friend to start giving a size reference for my cakes, such as a picture of a coke can or something so you can tell how big they are, so I'll be doing that from now on.  For these next two cakes, no dice.  Sorry!  The dimensions of this cake were 15" cake board, 12" cake round that was 4" high, then the 8" round on top that was 4" high, then 2" of decorations, so all in all the cake was 10" high.  It was pretty heavy.  There were almost 5 pounds of frosting on this sucker!
  The story for this cake is there is a woman who is turning 55 today and she has NEVER had a birthday party!  Can you imagine?  So her daughter sought my services to make a beautiful cake for her.  We all settled on this design and I got to it.

  The pots and tools are made out of gumpaste and the figure is fondant.  I used marshmallow creme for the fondant instead of melting mini marshmallows, and I have to say I'm not too pleased with how it turned out.  It was difficult to shape correctly.  The figure came out fine, but it was hard to get that way.  For the silver, I used lemon juice and silver edible shimmer dust, and painted it on with a food safe brush.
  There are a LOT of details on this cake.  I spent about 8 and a half hours making the decorations and putting the cake together.
  I used the Wilton cake board foil for the first time, and I have to say I really liked it.  I like the fondant look around the edges as well (and it's very customizable) but it's very time consuming.
  I used ground up chocolate chips for the dirt.  It was fun!  I used my Magic Bullet to grind them up and a silver baby spoon as my "shovel" to place the dirt where I wanted it.  The moss is just buttercream applied with the grass tip.  I forget the number.

  I really love this butterfly.  It was painstaking to make (it's made out of gumpaste) but I love it anyway.  I had about 4 heart attacks during the making of this butterfly.  Once my kiddo grabbed it off the shelf and started flying it around the room, once I kicked the tray it was drying on...the list goes on.  But it survived and so did I.  Did I mention I love it?
  Someday I will post on here about the frosting plugs I've been using.  They have saved me SO much time.  What you do is, basically, get a rectangle of plastic wrap, lay it flat.  Put a big old spatula full of frosting near the right edge and roll it up and shape it into a cone shape.  Then you roll it all the way up so you have a bullet of frosting.  When you want to use it, you cut the plastic wrap near the small cone end and put it in a disposable decorator's bag with a tip attached.  It makes the cleaning SO quick and if you want to switch colors, it's REALLY fast.  SO useful.  There's a video on SeriousCakes on YouTube if you're interested.
  Well, not much else to tell.  I set all the decor together on the beautifully frosted cake, said voila, took some pictures, and delivered it.  FUN stuff!  See you later!

My Birthday, my Dreadful Little Cake, and Two Other Cakes Too!

Hey everyone,

Yesterday was my birthday, I turned 29!  I had a great day.  I made myself a little cake.  It's ugly but it does the job!  We stuck a q-tip in the top and used that as a candle.  It was HILARIOUS.
I also had a cake for Cartwheels and Coffee, another castle cake.  I was instructed to work in pink and Barbie and Princess, but although I left a spot on the top of the cake between the towers to set a figurine, I couldn't find a small figurine to use!  It was SO irritating!  My brain completely deleted Party City from my brain during my search (for shame, Alesha!) and the great guy Chris at Cartwheels and Coffee said he'd pick one up while he was there later that day. 

Since this was the third time making this type of cake, it was pretty quick and painless.  I must reiterate my love of my darling hubby for drilling the holes in the bottoms of the towers for the dowels to set into so the towers were very sturdy.  Best. Thing. Ever.  I made the towers in Barbie Pink and used pearl nonpareils for the centers of the flowers (to go with the princess Barbie theme).  It was fun and pretty non-stressful.
Today I made another cake for a friend's son's birthday.  They are a Grateful Dead family, so we decided on the Steal Your Face design.  It was pretty straightforward.  I'm at the point now where I'm measuring how much BC I need for certain sizes of cake layers.  I can frost, fill, and decorate a 10" cake like this one with 42oz buttercream, or one recipe of my buttercream.

I printed off the design, flipped it over, and traced over the lines with black BC and a #2 tip.  I inverted that onto the smoothed top of my cake, then went over the lines, filled in the colors, smoothed with my finger, and waited for it to crust.  Then I used the Viva paper towel trick to smooth it out.

Hello Kitty!

The cake is 2-10" rounds tiered together with vanilla buttercream filling and frosting.  The kitty is made out of fondant, the flowers on the top are made out of fondant, but the flowers on the sides are made out of gumpaste.  The ribbon is simply food safe ribbon.

I am pooped.  This week has been so full, with my kiddo getting sick in the beginning of the week and myself not feeling too hot for a couple of days.  I knew I had to muscle through it, though, so I pulled myself up by the bootstraps and got down to it.  There's not much to tell, this cake was pretty routine, but I did stay up until 1:30 in the morning to finish it so that my nieces could come over this morning and we all could hang out, have a picnic, etc.  It was fun!  The client loved the cake and the kids in her car seemed overjoyed, so I'm happy!

Going Bananas and I Love It!

The cake itself is vanilla pound cake with chocolate butter filling and vanilla butter frosting.  I say butter instead of buttercream because this cake was made without hydrogenated oils per the client's request.  Many of the ingredients were organic as well.  I didn't have a recipe I could depend on for this cake, so I had to test out a bit and I wasted 3 entire 10" rounds to testing.  ACK!  Now I have it, though, for future reference.

The frosting was made without shortening, and I wasn't sure how it would behave, but it came out great.  The only difference was that once it crusted, it crusted a little harder than I was used to and was not very malleable.  I loved the blue color of the background.
The decorations on this cake are MMF.  The monkey is sitting on top of an inverted cupcake.  He was very fun to put together, and is made out of chocolate MMF.  I just need to take a second here to reiterate how much I love moulding fondant.  It is super fun, like playing with playdoh.  Speaking of, when my son is around and I need to work on cakes, I let him play with playdoh while I play with fondant.  HA!

The bananas were labor intensive but also a blast.  They're little crescents, each hand shaped and painted, then piled up on top of each other.  There's something like 60 bananas on this cake.  The "peels" are my favorite.  You just take the crescent shape, slice one end into four parts lengthwise, then flatten them out, paint them, and plop them on.  Easy peasy and oh so fun.
I have been using the hot knife technique combined with the paper towel technique recently.  I first pipe in the filling, hot knife it smooth, plop the top layer on, pipe a large, very close spiral on the top layer all the way out to over the edges, hot knife that, then go around the cake sides with a #12 tip to distribute the frosting evenly, filling in any weird gaps.  Then I hot knife that ONCE or TWICE maybe around.  If you take off too much frosting, then you're going to spend hours adding more frosting.  NOT fun.  Then I let it crust, use the paper towel trick, and continue decorating.

That was a long winded paragraph.  I'm done now!  I really enjoyed making this cake and it was fun to do a different sort of monkey cake.

Frog and Monkey Girls

This cake took two cakes and smooshed them together into one cute little (or should I say large) cake.  The cake is yellow cake with vanilla buttercream filling and frosting.  The animals are made of Rice Krispie Treats (RKT from now on, readers) and fondant.  The bottom tier is 2-12" cakes and the top tier is 2-6" cakes.
The frog(ette)'s body is made of RKT covered in MMF (marshmallow fondant).  It was a fun little piece.  The lily pad is just fondant rolled thin and frilled about the edges.  Isn't her bow just the cutest thing?  I used shimmer dust for her cheeks, as this little frog knows how to apply her blush just so.  The fly is made out of gumpaste.  The wings were pretty tricky to attach, since using the gumpaste glue made the very thin things flop over, but I persevered and was able to make it all work out.  The spring is just wire wrapped around a pen and pulled a bit.

The little monkey is made of RKT.  The body, head, ans ears were made separately and fitted together with toothpicks.  I cut out the pale fondant for the face and the belly and "glued" them to the RKT using just a little water.  I piped some chocolate buttercream on the side of the monkey closest to the 6" tier so that I wouldn't risk screwing up the BC (buttercream from here-on-out).  Side note here, I haven't learned how to make a good rich chocolate color without using cocoa.  I tried, goodness, I tried, but in the end, good ol' cocoa won over.  I shoved a dowel into the underside of the monkey and used that to hold the weight of the RKT.  I have learned in the past year how important it is to support your basic cake structure.  Anyway :) I piped in the rest of the BC with tip #17 and placed the arms, legs, and tail.  Looking back, it would have been easier to put the tail on before putting the BC on the monkey, but it came off without a hitch.  Then I drew on the face and there ya go! 

  Both bows were made out of fondant.  If you look at the frog in the monkey closeup, you can see her blush.  She really is too dang cute.

  Instead of doing the dots out of fondant, I did buttercream.  They don't look as polished as I would have liked, but I think they look okay too.  I very much enjoyed this cake.  I find that I love moulding fondant ever so much.  It really is my favorite thing about cakes.

All in all, this was a really fun cake and I look forward to the next challenge this amazing and consuming activity brings me.

Pregnant Mamma Silhouette Cake

I saw this technique online and so badly wanted to try it out.
Thankfully, I got an opportunity!  The cake itself is just yellow cake with vanilla buttercream filling and frosting.  The dark pink medallions are fondant leftover from a previous cake I made.  Fondant can stay good for up to 3 months in the refrigerator if stored properly.
In making a cake that is tall and thin, you need to have an ample support system.  I use wooden dowels for this support system in a thin cake like this one.  The cake is 4-6" round layers sitting atop one 8" square layer.  It is basically two 2-layer cakes on top of one another.  I use wax paper on the bottom of each cake board for (hopefully) easier removal of the layer without damage to the underlying frosting.
Getting a violet is touchy.  It is very easy to go from white to purple without using much color.  I use a very small amount of color, mix it in, then a little more as needed.

The silhouette I printed off the computer and cut out carefully, then rolled gumpaste very thinly and painstakingly removed the main section using a decorator's wheel, a razor blade, and a few other gumpaste instruments.  After the silhouette was cut out to my satisfaction, I marbled a piece of white gumpaste with light pink and rolled it thinly, then "glued" the silhouette to it with gumpaste glue (basically, gumpaste glue is a small piece of gumpaste dissolved in very little water until it's easy to paint on).  I laid the malleable gumpaste silhouette onto a sugar canister to give it a 6" curvature, and let it dry for a few days.
The daisies were pretty easy to do.  I let them dry on an egg crate I reserve just for that purpose to give them shape.
Overall, I am pleased with this cake and I learned a few new techniques along the way.

A Different Take on a Castle Cake

Well good Tuesday to you all!  I didn't get much of a chance to take a good picture of this cake, so I took it while I was in the car, on the way to deliver it.  It's for a little girl's birthday party, and she loves Sleeping Beauty!  The figurine I bought had on a BLUE dress, and as everyone knows, the dress is supposed to be PINK!  So I covered the dress in gumpaste (tedious work, I tell you), let it dry, then painted it pink.  Baking the cakes was a challenge.  SIX cakes worth of ingredients got wasted because I got cheap with the cocoa (didn't go Hershey's like I usually do, I went store brand).  UGH!  That was a very irritating night, let me tell you!  The cakes baked up rubbery.  It was very very sad!
I made another castle cake a little while back, and I haven't been able to get in touch with the client to get the hardware back, so I bought a partial set off Craigslist so I could mold some gumpaste to make the towers.  It was a long process, as I had to wrap the gumpaste around the mold, let it dry, then remove and do it again.  I made two extra just in case of breakage (something I've learned full well to do!).  After they were dry, I painted them lightly with gumpaste glue and sprinkled them with sprinkles.  The piping was done with tube #17 in a rope pattern.  The stars were made out of gumpaste and sprinkled with edible shimmer dust.  The ones sticking up from the towers were two stars, glued together around wire and stuck in the tops of the gumpaste towers.
Happy Birthday, Princess Veda!

Peas in a Pod Cake

So I had a super fun little cake this week.  It is based on two pictures.  One was a belly cake, the other was a one-tier round.  Each of these pictures featured only one baby, but this cake is for a baby shower for TWINS!
  I have been taking some time to perfect my recipe amounts.  I found the right amount of batter to make my cakes as tall as possible with as little waste as possible.  Before, I have been cutting the tops flat for a nice level surface.  For this cake I took the two 10" chocolate and two 6" yellow cakes right out of the oven and flipped them so the dome was sitting on a platter - face side down, I guess you would say.  Doing this made a completely level surface on both top and bottom without wasting any cake.  This is good for two reasons: 1.  The cake has maximum volume with no wasted ingredients.  2. I'm not eating the leftover tops of cakes anymore.  I'm sure my hubster will be upset with no leftovers around, but c'est la vie, non?  When I make cakes, I usually fill the pan about 2/3 full.  Each recipe has a different rise, so each new recipe has to be tested to make sure you're getting the full potential height but not overfilling to the point of overflow during baking.
  Well, at any rate, the cakes were baked and the strawberry filling was made.  I made the cake board by putting together three stiff foam poster boards and cutting out a 12.5" diameter circle.  I use a razor blade for this.  I have found that this kind of poster board is great for cake boards.  The technique I use for making the cake board has evolved over time.  I recently picked up a compass, which has made making perfect circles SO much easier.  It was 2 bucks at Walmart, and it was the best 2 bucks I've ever spent!

  So I filled the cake, let it settle (filled cakes are going to settle a bit, so it's best to wait a while after putting on the 2nd layer to finish the tier off.  Otherwise the filling will make a bump in your cake.  I just learned this) and rolled out my fondant on a counter lightly coated with shortening.  Wilton has a fondant coverage chart that deals with weights, and while it allows for a little more than I require usually to cover a cake, it makes sure that I have enough.  This fondant was white, so no problems coloring it.  I placed and smoothed the bottom tier and put cut wooden dowels into the bottom tier for the top to sit upon.  I did the 6" top tier next in much the same way.  After I finished covering it with fondant, I placed the top tier onto the bottom tier's dowel system, then I cut a dowel large enough to go through the entire cake, made a point on one end so it could go through the board under the 6", and put it through to give more strength to the overall structure.  I covered the remaining cake board with fondant, then I made ribbons out of green fondant and placed them.
  Making the babies and the peas with the pod was easier than I thought it would be.  It's like playing with playdough!  The vines were fun to make and to place.  I used my edible gumpaste glue to put them and the dots on the cake, created some leaves, and VOILA, there it is.  I had an excellent time!

Another Princess Castle Cake

This week went by so quickly.  My son is talking more and more each day and while I have been taking moments to step outside our everyday routine to enjoy the process, it feels like everything is either speeding or crawling by.  Does that make any sense?  No?  Well, I guess I should just stick to the caking of it all, then. :)

I had made a castle cake before for Dollbaby when she turned 4.  She just loved it.  This cake was for a first birthday party!  I did make a 3D crown smash cake, but dang it I forgot to take a picture of it!  Ah well.  Life goes on.  ANYway.  Today I tried out the hot knife technique.  Since it is ridiculously humid here (and hot), my buttercream hasn't been crusting the way I'm used to in order to do the VIVA paper towel smoothing I do.  Thus, I reverted to the hot knife trick.  You just get the frosting on the cake, then dip the spatula in HOT water and smooth.  It's very fast but it takes some getting used to and some practice.  I used that technique on the crown smash, so you don't even get to see the results!  I'm sorry!  Well, anyway, the castle cake was pretty much a repeat of the first time I made it, with a few small (or large, depending on how you look at them) exceptions.  This time I offset the 6" 2nd tier to the back so I could use the steeple roof.  I baked the cakes taller so I could use the provided door (last time my tier was too short and the door was too tall to fit properly, so I just frosted a door on).  I used fondant to cover the turret roofs, which proved much easier for me to do and much easier to transport for the client.
Last time I did this cake, I had such a hard time getting the towers to stay in place.  Last night, I was about to lose my cool when the new plans failed (using gumpaste to hold in place, using melted chocolate to hold them in place.  These just didn't stand up to it).  My INCREDIBLY SMART hubster came up with the brilliant idea to drill holes in the bottom of the towers, just large enough for the dowels I was using to fit through.  IT WORKED!  He is SO great!  He drilled every last tower to make my life easier.  I lurve him.

I worked as I went, placing a tower, decorating around it, then placing another.  I covered the cake board with fondant this time, which I like the effect of.  I used florist's tape around the cake board border to cover the raw edges.  The leaves were made using tip #67 and a bit darker green than the accent.  The bottom of the cake is 2-10" layers of yellow cake and the top is 2-6" layers of chocolate.  SO GOOD!  One problem I had was with the placing of the top towers.  They should have been placed farther apart to take into account the width of the tops.
I think next time I will try out another method of baking and preparing the cakes that I found online and review it for you.  It is a way of baking so you don't have to remove cake from the top of the layers to make it level.  I'll let you know.
I very much enjoyed making this cake after my husband helped me out so dramatically.  THANK YOU SWEETHEART!

Under the Sea Cake

I made one major mistake while making this 8", 2 tier cake-  I forgot the dowels in the bottom tier to keep the cake from squishing!  Thankfully, the squishing was kept to a minimum by keeping the cake refrigerated, as I pipe a border of buttercream to contain the filling.

It's a Decadent Chocolate cake with Strawberry-Blueberry filling - YUM!  The Ariel figurine is actually a candle I picked up at a party supply store.  Too cute!  The underwater effect was made by mixing green and blue frosting and layering it side by side in the piping bag, then squeezing it on thick and smoothing in only one direction with the spatula.  I was pleased with how it came out.  I was going for pink sea anemones with the flowers but I didn't want to detract from the figurine, so I kept them very small.  The seaweed was done with swirly green frosting (just frosting with the green not mixed completely in) and a leaf tip, I think #67.  I took two pictures only of this cake...I know, bad foresight!  One has the flash off and one has the flash on...I think I'm going to put both in here.
Why?  Well, just because I can!  :)
It was a fun little cake and the birthday girl was so pleased!