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!