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.