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!