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! 

Dessert Cakes!

The office birthday cake for August was more of a dessert cake than a "decorated" cake - at least in my opinion.  The doctor whose birthday it was requested something different - a less sugary cake, more like the kind they make in Europe.  With that thought in mind, I researched cake recipes and came up with a pound like vanilla cake from Debbie Brown.  That thing used 7 eggs and hardly any sugar! 

Once that finished baking up, I turned to a new book that I got from Nicholas Lodge - International Sugar Crafting which has 24 lessons in all - dealing with chocolate tempering, marzipan figures and much, much more.  The first lesson in the book was the jackpot for me.  I had found the perfect cake that fit the birthday boy's request.

The nice thing about this cake is that it has a "wow" factor.  It just presents so nicely with the white frosting, dark chocolate and the red strawberries.

I tempered the chocolate and poured it out on to wax paper.  It took almost a full 24 hours to fully set before I was able to cut the triangles.  I also discovered - hot hands is NOT good when working with chocolate!  Once I cut the triangles, I put half of them aside to cover in powdered sugar.  The left over chocolate slab - for lack of a better term - I chopped up to put along the base of the cake.

The cake itself was a vanilla pound cake, which as mentioned earlier, was very dense.  I was actually disappointed with the way it turned out.  The flavor was good, but it was a bit dry.  Maybe I have been spoiled with "American" cakes, but I really like my cakes a bit moister.  The cake was torted and filled with a cooked meringue and fresh chopped strawberries.

From there - more meringue on the outside of the cake, apply the chopped chocolate and position the triangles, alternating with whole strawberries and powdered triangles. 

Oh!  And a shameless plug for my friend Denise - a wonderful glass artist who made my beautiful cake plate!  It set off the cake to perfection!

Camping!

We love to camp! This year we broke down and purchased a pop up tent trailer, affectionately known at The G.R.U.B. We decided that since we made this purchase we would commit to camping at least once a month. In July we were able to go for a long 5 day trip with our nephew and some friends. During our camping trip, our friends little girl asked if I would make her a camping cake for her birthday this year.

Marble cake seems to be the most requested cake right now. This cake was a classic marble sheet cake covered in butter cream. The tent is made of graham crackers, covered in fondant and I made a little sleeping bag and pillow out of fondant as well. The trees are sugar cones covered with royal icing, using the leaf tip. Super easy to do and they look so cute on the cake! I put two of the trees on pretzel rods at different heights to make the tree trunks.

The rocks are chocolate covered raisins and chocolate covered peanuts. Funny, I found "chocolate covered rocks" at Wal-mart in the candy aisle, but didn't think they looked enough like rocks. The wood pile is just regular pretzel sticks cut to various lengths.

My favorite thing about this cake though were the lady bugs. These were made by taking red jelly beans and "painting" them with black royal icing. I think they turned out really cute and just added enough to the cake to make it a little girl's cake.