Betty Boop-boop de doop!

Two fun cakes for one fun event!  This Betty Boop cake was requested by the client based on her photo.  It is yellow cake with vanilla buttercream filling and marshmallow fondant (MMF) frosting.  I thought the composition of this cake would be more difficult than it was.  It turned out to be pretty fun!  I have always loved Betty Boop!

The hardest part for me was getting the flesh colored fondant.  It was a total pain.  The red fondant should have been the hardest, but I made up a special batch just of the red and added all the coloring to the melted marshmallows before adding all the sugar.  That made things very easy there.  I used powdered red as well because it has no taste whatsoever and the Americolor Super Red because it has very little flavor.  I will never again use the Wilton no-taste red...it certainly DOES have a bitter taste!

I love her little eyelashes.

The second cake is yellow cake with vanilla BC frosting and filling.  I usually use the chocolate BC as the base for any black frosting, but this time I tried something I read on a caking website.  I used the Wilton Juniper gel color first (man is that an ugly color) and then used a bit of the Americolor black (just a tiny bit) and a package and a half of the Chefmaster black food powder.  It darkened overnight and turned darker still when it was warmed by my hands.  The hearts are simply fondant cutouts.

The picture I took used flash and it came out looking gray, so I took another quick snapshot of it next to my Adidas bag in natural lighting and it looks much more true to life.  YAY! Oh, and yes, that is one of my custom made, super sturdy crazy awesome cake boxes.  I rock.
These cakes were not as stressful as I had anticipated and I am very glad I got a chance to make them!

Sesame Street!

I have always loved Sesame Street.  Always.  Even now that they've changed the opening jingle and added such magical creatures as Abby and her flying faerie school, Rosita, and...yes, you guessed it, Elmo, among others.  Though I'm still in love with what was, I can absolutely appreciate what Sesame Street is still doing in helping little ones (like my 3 year old) and their parents have some quality time together talking about the letter Q and the number 17.

My client sent me an inspiration photo for this cake and I was beyond excited.  What a cute cake, what a great show, what a perfect 1st birthday party theme.
I used Americolor Super Red and Wilton Rose to get the red tint.  The yellow is a mix of Wilton's golden yellow and lemon yellow.  The cake itself is yellow cake, 2-10" layers and 2-6" layers with buttercream filling and frosting and fondant and gumpaste decor.  The smash cake is yellow cake with buttercream frosting.

Cookie Monster, Elmo, Oscar, and Big Bird are made out of fondant, and it was SO much fun making them.  The bow loops, spirals, and balloons are made out of gumpaste so they would dry nice and hard.  The little border balls are fondant rolled to (approximately) the same size and randomly stuck on.  The blue "ribbons" on the bottom tier are fondant rolled thin.  The street sign is fondant rolled thin and cut to shape.\ with buttercream lettering and border.
I would love to explain in more detail what I did with this cake because I did truly have the best time making it, but I am just now overcoming bronchitis (hence the long wait on posting this cake I made two weeks ago!) so this will just be brief.

Happy Birthday to you, Avery!

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!