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:
Tutorial Tuesday: How to make a checkerboard cake
06 Sep 2011 5 Comments
in awesome, buttercream, cake, cool inside, friends, lemon cake, party, projects, sliced cake, tutorial, tutorial tuesday Tags: baking, Blog, buttercream, cake, checkerboard cake, colorful, cute, deocorating, diy, fondant, friends, how to, how to make a checkerboard cake, no special pan, tutorial, tutorial tuesday
This was my first attempt at a checkerboard cake. If I could do it all again, there are things I would do differently, for sure. So keep an eye on that commentary. I’ll say this is a more advanced project. If you’re not already pretty great at frosting cakes, this probably won’t end well for you.
I started with two different color cake layers which I then sliced into four thinner cake layers. Mistake #1. I either should have made four layers the original size… or I should have just worked with the two layers as they were.
I let the cakes freeze for a while so they’d be easier to cut. Then I found some round things… like bowls and containers that I could use as guides to cut rings out of the cakes about two inches apart.
I arranged my layers and then put some wax paper on my board and some frosting to hold down the first layer.
Carefully place each layer and carefully frost the top of it. Using hot water on your spatula will help you to keep from shredding the cake. Stack and frost each layer. Don’t forget to alternate color schemes. It’s a labor of love.
Once it’s all stacked, you can sort of smoosh it down with your hands maybe… you can see here why my layers being too thin was an issue. Once I got to this part, I was starting to panic. It sort of looks awful…
Somehow, I used my cake frosting magic to turn that into this:
From there I chilled the cake for a while and then covered it in fondant.
My results were decent…
If nothing else, strawberry and lemon always taste wonderful together.
I had a great time this weekend in Wisconsin with my bff Liz. If I get time, I’ll add some great photos from our trip at the end of this post soon!
Tutorial Tuesday: How to make gum paste
09 Aug 2011 Leave a Comment
in tutorial, tutorial tuesday Tags: Gum paste, tutorial, tutorial tuesday
Gum paste and fondants are two different things. Fondants is softer and doesn’t dry hard. Gumpaste will dry and harden to create decorations that really hold up.
You only need a few things to make gumpaste.
-1 tablespoon of gum-tex
-1 table spoon of glucose
- 4 cups of sifted powdered sugar
- 4 table spoons of warm water
Wilton makes gum-tex and glucose which you can find at almost any craft store’s cake decorating aisle.
First, sift together THREE cups of the sugar with 1 tablespoon of gum-tex into a large bowl.
Next, you’ll want to make a well in the center and set it aside.
Next, mix one tablespoon if glucose with 4 tablespoon of warm water in a glass container.
I had to scrape my tablespoon out with another spoon to get it all in there.
Now stir it a bit and pop that in the microwave for 30 seconds.
Then pour it into your well.
Now start mixing from the center with a silicone spatula. Much like when you make dough, incorporating the liquid into the dry ingredients a little at a time.
Once you’ve almost reached the edge of your dry ingredients, add any food coloring you’d like to add.
Then continue to stir and mix until you can knead your mixture.
Keep kneading until your gum paste becomes a satin finish, pliable ball.
Now seal it tight in a ziplock bag and let it sit for 8 hours or over night at room temp.
When you’re ready to use it, mix in the last cup of powdered sugar and knead well.
I’ve already had great results with my Cricut cutter!
As always… Happy caking!
