The Web Slinger!

One of my co-workers wanted a birthday cake for her grandson's 5th birthday. He really, really likes Spiderman. She really wanted a brownie ice cream cake. This is what we came up with. Square brownies with a Neapolitan ice cream filling in the middle. Chocolate buttercream was the icing of choice. I wanted to try and recreate the city that Spiderman stands guard over with the fondant panels and the web of course in the center would later be sporting a toy Spiderman for the birthday boy.

I used fondant impression mats that were brick and wood textured and impressed them onto the fondant. To make the dark fondant, I combined black and white fondant to make it the gray color. The lighter fondant was white that I later "spray painted" with a silver edible spray. That took A LOT of spray just to make it a darker color. Next time, I think I will try coloring the fondant itself. The spray mists all over the place and was pretty messy!

The web I made out of royal icing and made sure to leave the center for the action figure. It was tricky trying to frost, panel and construct this cake as it had to be kept frozen for the ice cream. I molded the ice cream in the same pans I baked the brownies in, that way I was able to keep everything the same size. It took some time to keep the panels attached to the sides of the cake but once in place and then frozen, it was no problem.

I do enjoy the brownie ice cream cakes - something I will do again! This design was a much better "super hero" design than the one I did for my nephew. Still a few design kinks to work out, but I think I'm getting better!

3-D cakes.... not so sure about them!

The office birthday cake for June was a special request. The girl who's birthday it was turned 21 this year. She requested a naked man cake.... Well - since it was going to the office, that wasn't really an option. Instead.... I ordered Debbie Brown's Naughty Cakes and found the Greek God cake. Good option - mostly naked man with bulging muscles. That could work!

Next time I will use a petal cake pan to do this cake. I can not carve cakes. I have difficulty getting them equal and properly proportionate! Not only that - cake crumbs EVERYWHERE!!! With this shape of the base cake, it was difficult to get the fondant to lay smoothly - fondant being a challenge for me anyway!

Making the figure was pretty easy overall. Debbie Brown has marvelous instructions that make it easy to do!

Overall, this cake did turn out pretty well - The birthday loved it (and yes, under the toga it was anatomically correct!) ;-)

Geoff's Creation

My son, Geoff, wanted a say in the design of his birthday cake this year. After all, a guy only turns into a teenager once! That being said, Geoff designed his cake to reflect his interests. Then it was up to me to try and re-create his sketch. Here's what happened:



Geoff's favorite color is purple, so the butter cream had to be that color. He is interested in magic tricks, so we made the wand out of black and white fondant. He is a trombone player, but unfortunately I lack the necessary skills to pull off a trombone, so we placed a Christmas ornament on the cake. We attempted to mold a chess piece out of chocolate, however our molds just didn't turn out right. Finally, after making several molds and failing miserably, we decided that a chess piece from an actual set would work just fine!

The game controller in the back (propping up the trombone) was made from our first ever attempt at modeling chocolate. I love the flexibility of modeling chocolate and that it can be made very easily! I don't care for the "oily" residue I got while I manipulated it though! I don't know if this is a normal for this medium as I haven't played with it enough! After it hardened though, I will say that those who tried nibbling on it really didn't care for the flavor.

So Happy Birthday to my teenage son! I think he has a great career ahead of him for designing cakes!

Confirmation

My youngest son was confirmed this May. Our church has a very special confirmation ceremony with a reception afterwards, so I thought it would be nice for me to volunteer to make the cake.

In my mind: 1/4 sheet cake with gumpaste chalice and loaf of bread. Congratulations confirmands written in script. A second cake on pillars in the shape of a Bible with all the confirmands names written in script, roses and a ribbon bookmark with a cross on the end.

The reality:
It turned out okay, just not what I had pictured in my mind. The gumpaste chalice was very cool, but as it was life sized, it just didn't fit on the cake properly - especially when I wanted to add the pillars. So - scrap it! The ribbon bookmark didn't work as some of the kids' names were very long and the ribbon would go over the names. So - scrap that too!

Basically - we have a 1/4 sheet cake done in white cake. The Bible was chocolate fudge (request of my son) with the kids' names. Red buttercream roses. I dry brushed some gold luster dust on the edges of the pages to jazz it up a bit. The tilt was achieved by propping the back of the Bible up with clear pillars. Yay! Got to use my pillars! :-)

As a caker - I saw the flaws and was disappointed by not being able to use my original plan. However, cake muggles who saw the cake were amazed and awed!

Between a princess & an ice cream cake....

was a quick birthday cake for a 6 year old. I seem to be destined to make cakes for little ones! That's not a bad thing, because it certainly allows me a little more creative license.

This little guy is a big fan of the Rooty Jr breakfast at Ihop. He only ever orders this breakfast and that's all he wanted for his birthday. Mom decided that instead of the actual Rooty Jr., she would order a cake that looked like one.

This cake was a simple strawberry marble cake - (which tastes a lot like the new Starbucks raspberry swirl pound cake) covered in buttercream. I made the sausages (because he NEVER orders the bacon) and strawberries out of fondant. The pancakes are made from the scraps I had after I leveled the cake and then covered in fondant. The scrambled eggs I made from modeling chocolate. I had never made modeling chocolate before, but found a recipe that was very easy and simple to do! A friend of mine recently went to the Washington State Sugar Show and saw an exhibition on modeling chocolate. After hearing her reviews (Thanks Melissa!) I had to try it! She was right - its super easy and lots of fun. A whole new medium has opened up for me! Is it bad when you look at something and think.... wow, I could make that in modeling chocolate! :-)

The plate itself was more of a challenge. Originally I was just going to put the food on the top of the cake - it was white - but I really didn't like that idea the more I played with it. I covered a plate in plastic wrap & powdered sugar and draped gumpaste over the back of it. I let it dry a couple of hours and then removed it, turned the plate over and draped/molded it to the top of the plate. Next time, I would put a band of color along the rim of the plate just to break it up a little, but my client only wanted a white plate - just like in the picture at the Ihop!

Brownies & Ice Cream

What a sweet dessert! I love brownies and I love ice cream. So what to do but pair them together for a sweet cake!

Ok - what really happened! I WAS planning on making my first carved cake for the office birthday cake. I had made the sails and mast out of gumpaste for the sailboat, but unfortunately I discovered the broken sails when I went to assemble them for the cake. I hadn't started the carving yet, but without the sails, it just wasn't a sailboat! So I improvised.

My kids had gotten me a brownie decorating book which I hadn't really done much with. I was at crunch time coming up with an idea for the cake due in 3 days.... my weekend had been spent in making a Confirmation cake for my son and entertaining the guests. Looking through the book, I found the brownie layer cake. Ah hah! Inspiration has struck! A quick run to the store for brownies mixes and Tillamook vanilla ice cream and I was set!

I baked the brownies in a round cake pan and put the softened ice cream in a round cake pan lined with plastic wrap. Once the ice cream was hardened it was a simple matter to stack the layers. I found out a couple of things though. 1) You can't crumb coat and ice cream cake. 2) Ice it fast because it melts really quickly! I spent most of my time putting on a layer of chocolate buttercream and sticking it in the freezer. Pull it out, ice another section, back in the freezer. Rinse & repeat until the cake was completely covered. I put Whoppers around the base, did a basic shell border on the top and put more Whoppers around the top and in the center. The circles are left over colored fondant (from various projects) that I cut out with the back end of a piping tip.

The verdict at work "the best one evah!". It must be so, because I got an order for a 6 year olds birthday cake for the end of June. :-) Best advertising evah!

A Cake Fit for a Princess

My bosses granddaughter was turning 4. She is in love with anything "princess" - so naturally mimi wanted a princess type cake for her! We decided on a princess castle - which I was dying to try! I have a couple of books that show how to make castle cakes, so after much thought decided to incorporate the two. That way I could use the pieces of the cake I liked and skip the details that I wasn't so crazy about.

This was a multi-process cake! Very simple to decorate once all the pieces were made, but time consuming in the beginning. Time management skills were put to the test!

The main stipulation of the cake was that it had to have pink in it! Every self-respecting princess has pink on a birthday cake! With that in mind, I first made the turrets for the towers. Basically these are sugar cones covered in pink fondant, then trimmed so that the edges were straight and flat. I cut out some tiny pink fondant flowers in light pink and some tiny hearts in a darker pink. I found out later - Wilton sells them in large jars - all I would have had to do was separate them out! Ah well - lessons learned! I did find the white flower centers from Wilton, those were in a jar filled with yellow, pink, white and green flowers. I didn't have a cutter that small, nor could I find one in time. I also filled in with silver dragees. These are difficult to find, however I found that the Decorette Shop in Portland has many different sizes and colors of these for sale.

The towers themselves are a mixture of fondant/gumpaste. I rolled these out very thin and wrapped them around empty toilet paper/paper towel rolls that were covered in plastic wrap and powdered sugar. These took about a week to dry. I did lose one when I was removing it from the "mold" so that the insides could dry - so glad I made extras! I failed to completely smooth the edges on these, so after they were dry I discovered that I could use a dremel on the edges to smooth them down. The windows on the towers were just black fondant I cut in the shape I wanted and then piped with royal icing.

Once the pieces have dried, its time for assembly. The turrets are placed on top of the towers and held in place with a layer of royal icing. I let these dry for a day before I started on the assembly of the cake.

This cake was a yellow butter cake with french vanilla buttercream. The cake itself is an off set stack (the top layer is placed towards the back of the bottom layer instead of the center). I did this so I could make the "balcony" look. After the cake is iced, the fun part starts! The two towers on the top are placed and settled into the cake itself. Using a rope of fondant, I wrapped it around the bases of the towers to help stabilize it. The bottom towers are also placed into the cake, on the sides. I made the doors out of chocolate fondant, used a scoring tool to make them look like panels and a silver dragee for a door knob. The balconies were made from a fondant rope which I cut into squares and then topped with more pink hearts. Borders were piped and voila! One princess cake!

I hear the birthday girl loved the cake - went straight for the pink turrets! This one was one of my favorite cakes to make. My niece saw the pics and told me that she wants this cake - I can't wait to make it for my niece when she turns 4 in December!