Ninja's

My nephew has been taking karate lessons this year. So, of course, when it came for Auntie to make his cake he wanted a ninja cake. This cake is actually a compilation of a couple of cakes I found that reflected ninja and karate themes. Because he is in the first grade, I wanted something simple for him. He also had ideas on what he wanted for his cake as well - fortune cookies for the eyes and ninjas. As you can see - the fortune cookies didn't make it on his cake, by his vote.

You remember that I got an airbrush for Christmas. Of course this was the perfect opportunity to play with it and work on shading for a cake. I wanted to blend the colors to make it look like that time of night when dusk falls. The top layer I used as his head and the bottom layer was not only the "body" of the cake, but I also wanted to reflect some of his karate moves too.

I had my nephew show me a couple of his katas and then I sketched them and cut out stencils of them. I then cut them out of black fondant and placed them around the body of the cake. The Asian pagoda was also cut from black fondant and put in the center of the cake. The face was a piece of skin colored fondant with black fondant folded and placed around it. The eyes ended up being fondant instead of the fortune cookies. The Ninja stars were made out of snowflake cookie cutters and a round hole cut out of the center. I painted them with silver luster dust paint (luster dust and vodka).

Overall, I really liked this cake. It turned out very cute and age appropriate for my nephew. He was thrilled and all his friends wanted a cake like his.

Pot 'O Gold

For March's birthday cake - of course there had to be some kind of St. Patrick's Day theme. Also, the birthday girl requested it! She also requested a German chocolate cake with pecan frosting. Hmmm... a challenge!

The cake ended up being German chocolate cake, but instead of frosting it in the pecan frosting, I used that as the filling. The pot was made with a Wilton sports ball pan and covered with black fondant. The bottom layer was covered with buttercream and then frosted with the grass in the center. The coins themselves were foil covered chocolates, purchased at the local grocery store.

I attempted a new technique - as usual - on the bottom layer with the brush embroidery. I like the look of that, however, I think I need a different size brush. Basically you pipe an outline and then use a dry paintbrush to fan out and brush the edges. The brush that I have on hand was a small detail brush and I think perhaps a fan brush would work better.

Overall - I think this is one of my favorite cakes. Next time, maybe add a colorflow rainbow....

Crazy For Cow's

My sister-in-law was in town this year for her birthday, so of course she had to have a birthday party complete with cake! SIL collects cows, so it was a foregone conclusion on what the theme to her cake would be!

I made Ferdinand out of 50/50 about two weeks prior to her birthday. I wanted to give the cow plenty of time to dry as it was so big. I also made some daisies out of 50/50 to accent with as well.

The cake was a triple chocolate fudge cake with my basic buttercream.

I made the cow spots out of black fondant, just by making random cuts. They were placed on the cake and I then piped with a star tip instead of the grass tip, just as an experiment. I think I prefer the grass tip, but I did like the effect this gave for this cake.

Ferdinand was placed carefully on the top of the cake and the daisies were added, after I piped the border.

Cute cake! I liked the way this turned out and SIL did too!