Latest Cakes

In the past couple months, I have been busy with 2 occasions in which I had to make cakes. I had both my daughter's birthday cakes to make within about 10 days of each other.

Here are some pictures of my latest cakes and some of the tips to decorating them.

The first cake was my oldest daughter's cake for her 10th birthday and she is a Hannah Montana fan... a BIG fan! I call this cake the Best of Both Worlds cake and it was double layer sheet cake with one chocolate layer and one white layer. The frosting is just basic buttercream with some tinted purple for the trim and between the layers. The music notes are made with Junior Mints candies with the stems of the notes just piped on. The guitar is made with chocolate bark melted and freehand cut into the shape of a guitar and then decorated. The star is also made with chocolate bark.





The second cake was for my daughter Vanessa's 4th birthday. She is a Dora the Explorer fan and that is what she wanted. So we just went and bought the pan and I made the cake. I just used a basic buttercream icing recipe and tinted it all those colors. The eyes and trim are with a Wilton tip #3, the stars are with Wilton tip #16, and the border was with Wilton tip #21. It took me about 4 hours to frost it but she loved it for her birthday. It was a great success!



Here is the closeup of the face so you can see how intricate it gets piping on those stars for most of the cake.



It was a lot of fun doing these cakes. I also make the cakes for my co-workers monthly birthdays and some of them will be getting creative and I will post the photos from those also. This should be fun!

Fun With Cakes (Part 4)

Are we still having fun with cakes? I figured I would spread out the tips so cakes do not get old. While we are still on the subject of candy clay... I want to show a picture of a cake I did for another friend's baby's first birthday. Their whole family is Atlanta Falcons fans (not my choice but it wasn't my choice of cake LOL I go for the Seahawks, and am going to look at trying to do one of those for a football party of some sort, will take some planning though.)

Anyway, with this cake, I made 3 sheet cakes; 2 for layers and one to cut for pieces to put together a football jersey cake with Atlanta Falcon colors. I did this right down to the Falcons logo on the sleeves, I used my friend's actual jersey as a model. It was a fun cake to make, except the headache of trying to make the pieces I had cut for sleeves stick with the whole cake. You can tell it wasn't professionally done LOL I had a few mistakes, but the family still loved it anyway (well they had to love it, I didn't have much time to throw it together and they got it for free since they are dear friends, despite their football choice.)



With this cake and cutting of the pieces of the sleeve logo, every single small piece had to be cut just right for it to go together. Each of those Falcon logos has about 20 pieces to it pasted together with royal icing (which is like cake decorator glue) I used Candy Clay (you can find it at any craft store or stores that carry a wide variety of cake decorating supplies) and the color scheme for this was Over the Hill since I needed black and white, and then tinted some of the white into red with cake decorating paints (which again, you can get at any craft store or store that sells cake decorating supplies).

When you roll this stuff make sure you use a little cornstarch to make it so you can roll out the candy clay. To cut this particular design, I had to cut it all freehand piece by piece. I printed out a design for the shape and size and then outlined it on the sleeve where it should go and then constructed it piece by piece. Each logo took me about 2 hours each to cut and put together,it was very detailed indeed.

It ended up being enough cake to feed about 40 people which was about how many there were at the party and everyone loved it! It was fun to make but next time I need more time to plan a little better to avoid some of the mishaps and mistakes that this cake contains. Definitely not my best work!

Fun with Cakes (part 3)

(Photos coming soon for this post)

Who wants crumbs in the frosting? Surely not me... which is why when I make cakes to decorate them nice, I freeze them first before frosting. That way I can take a pastry brush and brush off excess crumbs and then frost.

After a cake is all the way cooled and it is inverted onto wire racks to cool, put it on a cookie sheet and freeze it. Don't bother to brush the crumbs off of a thawed cake, because that doesn't work. It actually creates more crumbs. Freeze it for about 2 hours before frosting and make sure to brush off the entire cake while frozen. After the first brush off, freeze again for about 30-45 minutes. That way you can frost it frozen and still will have no crumbs to deal with.

How I learned this, you may ask; I was making a cake a long time ago that had fondant over the top and you had to freeze it and brush it off before rolling out the fondant to put on top. Well, I thought I wonder if it works for regular frosting... so I experimented and tried it and it was wonderful the way it worked.

If you have a filled cake; cool the cakes off as directed, put the filling in (it could be a fruit filling, a creme filling, frosting, or even a cheesecake type filling)and then freeze it. This time for about 3-4 hours to allow the filling to freeze as well. Oozing filling can create messes for frosting a cake, and can ruin a whole look, especially when using raspberry or any colored filling.

Then frost as usual after brushing off crumbs and refreezing. The frosting goes on smooth and you can get it as smooth as you can for decorating. Or, if you want, after the crumbs are brushed off,it is a good time to put fondant on (if that is what you are using to give the cake a very smooth finish).

This can work with sheet cakes or layer cakes. Yeah, it takes extra work, but for a special occasion like a loved one's birthday or anniversary or something, it is worth it to make it look as good as you can.

Fun With Cakes (Part 2)

What has the consistency of PlayDoh and tastes like Starburst candy?

Give up?

It is called Candy Clay and I usually get mine at Joanne's Craft Store (formerly Joanne's Fabric Store) or you can get it at anyplace that sells an extensive stock of cake decorating supplies.

This is the picture I took of the cake I used it for a while back. My daughter Nessa had her first birthday cake and this is called the Bear Frolicking in the Meadow cake.



You can make any decoration with this Candy Clay simply by rolling and cutting it either with cookie cutters or freehand (if you are that talented) with an exacto knife. If you cut with just any knife, you could stretch it out of shape and ruin your design; so, you need a very sharp knife to cut intricate details to make any cake or cupcake look fantastic.

The flowers, sun, ladybug, and butterflies are all cut from candy clay. The flower cookie cutters were what I used to cut out the flowers, and I cut the rest out freehand just as I thought about what I wanted on her cake. It takes a bit of time to roll and cut, but hey, if it is for a special occasion cake than who cares, it was well worth the effort when she saw the cake. Not to mention, the ohhhs and ahhhs of the guests who thought I bought the decorations like that and just put them on. Much to their surprise when I told them I made them.

Candy Clay can be used for anything you need. Cakes for any occasion, school cupcakes, bake sale items (it adds pop so that it sells well), or cookies and even candy can be decorated with Candy Clay. And, it tastes good; I had a hard time not eating the clay while I was making the decorations. You can get it in other colors as well other than primary colors. They even sell black and white for over the hill cakes. Which gives me an idea for a cake for my mother-in-law for next year!

Fun With Cakes Part 1 (continuation of chocolate base)

Ok to go with the chocolate base idea, this picture is what my middle daughter would like for her birthday this year. It is a castle cake and I am going to attempt to make it for her. (attempt is the operative word here, I mean I can build but this is going to be tricky) After all, you only turn 10 once, right?



Photo courtesy of 2008 Wilton Industries, Inc.

This one I am going to build on a white chocolate base. Same idea as a brown chocolate base, only you buy white chocolate almond bark. Harden it as described in last post, and place on top of cake and start building.

Only thing is with this cake (I have already started planning because her birthday is Dec 31 but it will take time and effort so plan early with a big project so that hopefully it turns out right for the special day). With this cake, they say to use fondant, but since it isn't the best tasting substance in the world (trust me, it isn't LOL) then I am going to have to modify using more edible substances. So I am going to make it out of chocolate and just build it on top of the base on top of a cake and the kids can just eat the castle (talk about a sugar high there LOL)

For the towers, I am envisioning sugar cones then frost them the right color, and I have started figuring out how big I want it and I am using thin cardboard to make patterns for the cake so I can cut out the chocolate and then use royal icing to paste it together.

The great thing about being able to make cakes like this is that if you go to www.wilton.com, they have all the ideas with detailed instructions so that even the most inexperienced decorators can make these. If you can follow a recipe and instructions, then there is no limit to what you can do. So wish me luck on this latest endeavour and if it turns out right there will be pictures of it coming probably January (after her birthday anyway).

Update: I didn't get a chance to get the castle cake planned and shaped the way I wanted since I couldn't get my hands on the appropriate tubes for castle towers and some other tools so she chose her second choice of Hannah Montana Cake. That is in post called Fun with Cakes 6.

Fun With Cakes (Part 1)

Remember when you were a kid and your mom made the most wonderful cakes? Me too! I loved it when my mom made cakes for my birthday, so I make them for my kids also. I love to decorate cakes and sometimes I even decorate for other people when I am asked, if I have time of course.

This post I am going to focus on what is called a chocolate base. Where I got that idea is from when I agreed to create a motorcycle track cake for my friend's son's birthday party. The only problem was that I didn't have time to bake a cake myself since she lives 3 hours away, so I had her get the next most logical solution for a cake... Costco cake (we know how good those are! yummy!) anyway, (yeah I know its cheating when you do not bake it yourself, but oh well, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do).




What you do to make a chocolate base is get almond bark from the store (or you can get the meltaways for candy making from the craft store or the Wilton's cake decorating site but for my purpose I use chocolate bark since it's less expensive and does the same job). Melt the chocolate and pour it into a cookie sheet lined with wax paper. Smooth it out flat and freeze it for about an hour (that makes it such a nice hardness that you can build anything on top of it); or you can let it sit out for about an hour and it is still hard but more pliable if you have to cut it to fit a cake or whatever.

After it is done being frozen, then just pick it up and place it on top of the cake and you are ready to build on it. Let's face it... if the kid wants or you think they would enjoy a fun cake; building on actual cake is just calling for disaster to strike since cake is soft, you cannot build much on top of it that wouldn't fall. You need the chocolate base. The picture above is of the cake I made (the motorcycle cake) with the track built on the base. I wish I had taken a better picture of it to show how tall the hills were but I didn't. (Hindsight is always 20/20, go figure!).

That is it for this segment of Fun With Cakes. Check back for more cake decorating tidbits in the cake decorating section in my labels. It is just plain good fun to decorate cakes. I love it!!