Elmo on Safari with a Monkey!

This cake was made for a birthday party for twins at Cartwheels and Coffee.  I was told to include a monkey and Elmo and the colors pink and orange, so I came up with the idea of Elmo on safari, looking for a monkey.  The flowers and the bow in the monkey's hair fulfilled the orange requirement, and the pink car took care of the pink.  The waterfall was so cute and fun to make.  The rocks are brown/orange fondant rippled with brown gel coloring.  The cake itself is vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream frosting and filling.  Everything else on the cake is fondant and entirely edible.

I made the monkey using a tutorial online and I was very happy with how it turned out.  I love the bananas.  And I'm getting better at Elmo, as I've made the little stinker about 45,000 times now.  He really is the epitome of happy and glee, isn't he?  I have a pair of binoculars tucked under Elmo's hand in this cake.

Happy Un-Birthday to Aquarius!

This cake, while quite small, is just TOO CUTE!  I found it on SugarMamaTreats.com and had to try out a version of it.

It's a 2 layer, 6" Decadent Chocolate cake with vanilla butercream filling and frosting with fondant and gumpaste decor.  The "water" is fondant, and the Aquarius symbol and jar are gumpaste.  I started this cake by making the gumpaste structure first.  I freehand drew what I wanted and cut it out, let it dry, then painted it using color gel and vodka.  I use vodka instead of water because it both leaves a cleaner line, and dries quickly and completely.

Using water on gumpaste sometimes causes collapse.  Anyhow.  I achieved the shimmery gold effect by dry painting shimmer dust onto the places I wanted it and let it dry thoroughly again.  Then I baked the cakes, filled, stacked, and frosted.  I used the paper towel technique I posted about on the cake, then let it set in the fridge until it was hard.  The fondant I split into three sections and colored each one differently for the multi-colored effect.  My husband and I watched True Blood (HBO series) while I painstakingly made little snakes of fondant and curled them around upon themselves to set on the cake and the board.  I used fondant for the lettering as well.  This cake is a birthday cake for someone whose birthday it ISN'T, so it was just a super fun cake to let myself experiment with.