How to Make a Jellyfish Cake
12 Mar 2012 3 Comments
in awesome, birthdays, cake, epic, fondant, friends, orange, projects, tutorial Tags: Jellyfish, jellyfish cake
My best friend has always wanted a jellyfish. I can’t afford to give her such a gift, so I went with what I know! Cake, of course. I knew to make this work I would need to build a stand.
I purchased two metal plates and a clear orange glass vase. I hot glued these together to make a stand. Make sure your top plate is the same size as your cake.
I dropped two battery operated tea lights in there. Thankfully, they stayed lit through the party, which was hours later!
My tentacles were next.
I used Airheads candy. I didn’t think fondant would hold up. I assumed it would tear and droop.
I microwaved each piece of candy for four seconds (based on trial and error, 5 seconds was too long, believe it or not.)… Then rolled it into a thinner strip. I cut those into smaller strips and twisted them, setting them aside to cool.
Each strip I then attached to the top plate with melted white chocolate. This will harden and hold the strips firmly in place.
Next I went to work on my cake. I baked three cakes in decreasing size in order to carve a dome. The bottom cake is the same size as the plate on top of my stand. That is important later.
I placed the cake on a board that was slightly smaller than the bottom layer. That way I will be able to easily lift the cake on to the stand, but it will also sit flush on it.
I carved the cake and iced it.
Next, I elevated the cake and laid the fondant over it. I trimmed it to hang slightly over the cake so that it would cover the stand plate and have the fluid jellyfish look to it.
I pleated it a bit and then transferred the cake to the stand.
Once on the stand I hand painted some details with food color gel mixed with high proof vodka. I even sprinkled a bit of luster dust over it.
I piped a happy birthday message for the birthday girl and it was done!
It was a huge hit at the party. Everyone loved pulling the tentacles off and eating them with their cake!
I’d say this was a great example of turning one of my crazy ideas from my brain into a real, working concept! Love it :)
Good News Everyone!
20 Jan 2012 1 Comment
in birthdays, buttercream, cake, chocolate, cool inside, Dayton, epic, fondant, party, projects, tutorial Tags: baking, bender cake, bender head, birthday, Blog, cake, colorful, deocorating, diy, fondant, food, futurama cake, how to, how to make a bender cake, tutorial
Well, it’s my very own birthday on Monday. I’ll be… twenty- eight. Woo. I had a brief moment of panic lying in bed last night thinking about how tragically old I am and how I’m going to be ancient and dead any time now.
Then I realized I’m not even 30 yet and I’m making myself a cartoon birthday cake and I’m going to drink like a 21 year old tonight. Then I felt a little better.
Anyhow, on to the cake!
My favorite show of all time is Futurama. And my favorite character on that show is Bender Bending Rodriguez!
So, first of all, this is my birthday, and I’m the cake chick… so my cake has to be awesome. I started with 6 layers of cake. Chocolate, strawberry and vanilla!
I leveled them and stacked them.
This thing is like a foot tall and weighs a ton. I stuck it in the freezer for a bit before carving it.
This was not an icing job for the faint of heart. That’s for sure. All that exposed cake is hard to frost without tearing if you aren’t experienced and using the proper tools. I had to keep heating my spatula in hot water, it turned out well though.
I set it in the fridge to cool a bit while I rolled out the fondant.
My fondant ended up with a weird line in it from when I rolled it onto the rolling pin, but it’s ok, his eyes will cover that.
I mixed up some of my edible silver and painted the whole thing.
Then I added a mouth, which I drew on with food color markers.
Starting to look Bendery! Also, I added his antenna which is part of the dowel I pushed into the cake to keep it from sliding around. It’s just a wooden rod I covered with fondant on top.
I’d LOVE to show you my process of making the eyes, but it was a mess lol. First, I cast eyes out of white chocolate, but they turned out to be too small… so I went with these. It was okay, but the visor was really hard. I ended up sort of stacking two fondant ropes around the eyes. It’s not perfect, but it worked. I also made a cigar, of course.
“Happy Birthday meat bag!”
Happy birthday to me! I planned on cutting it into pieces of each flavor, but who knows, maybe I’ll take the first slice and get a bit of each ;)
Like this:
Cupcake Madness
14 Jul 2011 8 Comments
in awesome, buttercream, cake, cricut, cupcakes, epic, fondant, friends, love, projects, three tier, wedding Tags: 200 cupcakes, baking, Blog, cake, chocolate, colorful, cupcake tiers, cupcake wedding cake, cupcakes, cute, deocorating, diy, fondant, food, friends, fun, girly, wedding, wedding cake tower, yellow
Okay, some of you know where I stand on cupcakes. I’m not a fan. Of making them. (Big fan of eating them, however…) They’re time consuming and painful, literally! Have you have piped swirls on cupcakes? Hand cramps!
Anyhow, my friends know this, but they also know I can’t help myself and I love a challenge. So I was given the challenge to end all challenges… 200 cupcakes for a wedding. TWO HUNDRED.
The best part was when I realized I only owned one cupcake tin… that would have been an issue. Can you imagine me making 200 cupcakes 12 at a time? lol! Thankfully, I hit the thrift stores and found two and my wonderful mother in law let me borrow a 4th. I was all set!
Just another day in paradise. No big.
The second best part was when I was baking and suddenly realized “Wait… Why do I have so many leftover cupcake liners..? I thought I bought 3 sleeves of 75… but I’ve only used a sleeve an maybe half… OH NO.” I only bought enough stuff to make 100 cupcakes. Fact: I am AWESOME at math. (NOT)
Ok, so I went to the store and got the rest of the supplies lol. I had bought enough of some stuff and not enough of other stuff. Because I’m, evidently, only selectively bad at math.
In the end it all worked out and everything came together wonderfully. I admit to using the phrase “cupcake hell” at one point, but I can admit I was completely thrilled to see them all done and frosted.
I also made this little stand and cake to go with the set as a center piece. I used my Cricut Cake to cut out the heart and boarders!
So… the moral of the story, I think, is do the math twice, shop once. Or… something like that.
And… buy a big piping bag, or you’ll end up cutting a hole in the powdered sugar bag and using that until it explodes.
Also, anything worth doing is worth doing right!
Oh, and I hope you’ve gotta big trunk… cuz I’m gonna put my cake in it…
Who wants to help clean?
