BUTTERCREAM

The grand parents in my neighborhood are keeping me busy.  They come up with the funnest ideas for me to try.  This one was for a four year old little girls’ cowgirl party.  Her grandparents used to own four horses and so their likenesses were on the side of the cake.  I learned the difference betwwen and a sorrel and bay and had lots of fun making this cake.  The cake itself was two double layer cakes stacked ontop of each other, with the top layer being carved into the “barn” shape.  It was a french vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream frosting.

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For a couple years now I have thought of entering a cake in the fair.  In California, it didn’t seem to be real popular, for the size of the fair in LA there were never very many cakes.  I wasn’t quite sure what to expect in my new home town.  There was a fairly good turn out and some very beautiful cakes.  Around 20 cakes were submited in four divisions, youth, amatuer, advanced, and professional. 

 I entered the advanced catagory, but there weren’t any guidelines and none of the cakes were labeled with the catagories.   My cake was “named” Something Blue,  we had to name our cakes and featured cornflower blue fondant and royal icing flowers and vines, with ribbon on the base and gumpaste flowers on top. 

The judging was a little hard to follow, everyone got a blue ribbon to start with, high blue ribbons were awarded next, then two sweepstakes, four best in show and lastly a special award of Judges Choice, there were two judges, hence two awards.  I recieved a high blue ribbon and a sweepstakes award, pretty satistifing for my first try.  The cake that won best in show in my division was very well done and deserved to win, I didn’t mind coming in second to a beautiful design like that.

What do you think of our local talent?

Ben loved his race car cake!  It was made in celebration of his second birthday and was “chockate”.  I held up two boxes of cake mix at the store, one vanilla and one chocolate, “DAT ONE”  was the imediate answer.  He now asks for “chockate” on a daily basis.  We’ve created a monster!

Now to the confession, this really is the first fun cake I’ve done for my own children! Sad!  Especially considering the fact that one of the reasons I learned how to do this stuff was to make fun cakes for my own kids.  However, in the past cleaning the house, preparing for guests, making food and coming up with games and etc… came first.   The thrill that Ben had with his race car was enough however to convience me that creative cakes are a must for the future, we will just scaled down other areas.

This particular cake design is one from 50 Easy Party Cakes by Debbie Brown.  Hands down it is by far my favorite kids cake book,  the designs are great, not overly complicated and fit a number of themes.  If you have any interest in making cake in fondant for any children in your life you’ve got to get this book.  I did use chocolate donuts for the wheels, instead of the big honking gob of black fondant that the design suggested.  She does love her fondant, after all she’s brittish.