Torting and filling! Not so much....

September's office cake was a disaster in the making - at least in my mind.  First off, the cake was a french vanilla one.  So far, so good.  Loved the flavor, cake baked up real nice.  Tried a new leveling method from the cake forums I followed and it worked well!   The problems occurred when I went to torte and fill. 

It all started out okay - I torted, used a buttercream dam and put in my filling of white chocolate mousse.  Let the cakes settle.  Covered the cakes in white chocolate ganache.  Which, by the way, was the first time I have ever used ganache - I was always afraid to try it.  It sounded super chic and I figured I would probably mess it up!  Melissa convinced me to try it - thanks Melissa! 

Anyway - cakes have settled, looking good.  Next day I take the cakes out and cover with the fondant.  The hula girls are drying and looking more like girls and less like mismatched torsos.  Then... I get sick.  Here I am having to finish this cake and I feel horrible.  Oh well - figure I can work a little, take a nap.  Work a little, take a nap.  It was a good plan!  Sometime between a nap and pulling the cake out of the fridge to work on the roof, the cake settled more!!  Yikes!  Now instead of my beautiful tiki wood walls, I have bulging walls. 

I don't know if it was the ganache that caused the cake to settle more or if the cake was too moist to hold the ganache, filling and the weight of the fondant.  My research since leans towards the cake being too moist and therefore to "frail" to hold itself up.  Sigh.  Just when I thought I had the best fondant work to date! 

The good news - the cake made it in to work all in one piece.  The birthday girl raved about it - couldn't believe I was sick but still made "a fantastic work of art"!  The flavor was good and obviously we didn't have to worry about a dry cake! 

You want what?!

Back in January, I made the office birthday cake with an igloo and penguins.  My sister saw the cake and promptly informed me that for her birthday she wanted surfing penguins..... um, ok....

Several different design ideas went through my mind.  I know how to make penguins.  I can make a surf board.  But how to execute??  I thought about a tiered cake with the penguins surfing down the side.  I wasn't sure I wanted to make a sheet cake.  I thought about "beach cakes".  Then I thought about penguins on a beach  (on vacation) - wondered if it was possible to make a wave.  So - google to the rescue!  And the result.....

The cake is a box cake mix - Funfetti flavor.  It was cute when you cut it as they had all kinds of colored sprinkles in it.  The penguins, surfboard and wave are all made out of gumpaste.  The wave was actually double that size, but I ended up breaking it in half so it would fit more to scale.  Easy, easy to make!  Colored gumpaste rolled thin and draped over a liter pop bottle to dry.  I painted the surfboards with food markers.  The tree was a pretzel rod with royal icing piped over it using the leaf tip.  I put my mom to work making the sand for the cake.  Crushed graham crackers with brown sugar - sifted and then applied to the cake.

This was a really fun cake to do.  Thanks to my sis for wanting something different!

Birthday cake for a guy

I always struggle when it comes to cake ideas for a guy.  I want to do something cool, with a wow factor, but it always seems like those kind of cakes are more for women than men.  With my hubby's birthday coming up, I wanted a cool guy cake more than ever.  Thought process went like this:  hmmm, guy cake.  Guy cake colors.  Blue, browns, blacks maybe a little white and gray.  My hubby likes games - card games, board games, computer games - you name it, he's probably played it!  So the winner this year was:  a backgammon board. 

I modeled this board after his actual backgammon game - taking liberty with the colors!  We had someone attending his birthday party that was allergic to chocolate, so I had to make sure that I didn't use my chocolate fondant.  Instead I colored the fondant blue, brown and white. The colors turned out a little more retro than I liked and if I do this cake again, I think I will use the different shades of brown and white instead. 

Overall, I am happy with the execution of the cake.  It is probably some of the better fondant work I have done - very smooth.  I know there has to be a trick to make the seams disappear, but I haven't figured it out as of yet!  If anyone knows the trick - please share!! 

The cake itself was a white velvet cake - very yummy!  Again, due to chocolate allergies, I wanted a cake that everyone can enjoy.  Not only that, my hubby loves white chocolate cakes.  I paired that with a raspberry butter cream filling that had a consistency of mousse.  Thanks Melissa!  That was a yummy recipe!