Pretty Pink Flowers

A  butter cake with cream cheese frosting and three shades of pink fondant accompanied by 25 cupcakes with fondant blossoms.

 

Blast Off!

 

And the Award for Best Mom goes to…

my friend Shawnelle.  She came up with the coolest party theme- Mad Science Experiments!  Seriously what nine year old boy wouldn’t want to blow up mentos and diet coke at his birthday party.   She commissioned this lab flask to go with the carbonated ice cream they were going to make.   It was hollowed out on top so that a cup with dry ice could make the cake “smoke”.  Hopefully,  I can get a picture  of it in action later, but for now, here is the non-smoking version.

                                                 My son kept asking me if he could go to the party.

 

VOOM!

 

Can you tell this was a fun party?  I mean, look at all that ice cream!   It was fun.  My nephew turned two and is very much into CARS right now, hence the Radiator Springs style Lightning McQueen (if you understood that you must have a little boy or two in your life).  The flavors were child friendly too, vanilla cake with milk chocolate ganache.

 

How to make a T-Rex!

• I started with 6 inch round cake stacked off center on a 8 inch round.  Support the top cake with 4 dowels.  Drive a skewer or dowel through both cakes for stability.

Carve the front side with a slight slope and the rear with more of a slope, using larger part of the 8 inch cake to give your dinosaur a bigger backside.  Leave small sections on the sides of the larger cake for hips/legs.  Carve the top cake so that it is more narrow at the top, taking at least an inch from either side.

 

Once your cake is carved, give it a good coat of frosting.  I used a swiss meringue butter cream for both the frosting and the filling.  Place the cake on your cake board.

 

 

Using 2 batches of rice krispie treats, while they are still warm, shape into a tail that is thick  and wide at the base and tapering to the end.  To shape the head, compress the treats into a teardrop shape. Further shape it with a good size snout with indentations for nostrils and eye sockets.  Place in the freezer or fridge to cool and set. 

 

Attach tail to body.  Place two dowels in the front part of 6 inch cake.  Cut the skewer short enough so that it will not poke through the top of  your dino’s head.

 

 

For the feet, using the rice krispies or fondant, shape and place on the cake board in front of cake.

 

Cover the cake with fondant.  This color green was made using leaf green and forest green gel food coloring.  Roll it thickly so you can pinch a ridge down the back and tail.

 

Cover the head with fondant, taking care to press the fondant into the nostrils and eye sockets.  Pinch ridges over the eyes and down the back of the head coming together at the base of the head.  Use a bone tool to make identations for the mouth.

 

 Make arms by shaping two equal pieces of fondant (with gum tex added) into logs and then using a knife to make two cuts in the end of each.  Pinch the three fingers into points to make claws.  Push skewers into the other end.  Set aside to dry and harden.

 

Begin adding the details.  Add spots in differing sizes and shapes, using a darker or contrasting color. 

 

 

Using the big end of a piping tip, cut circles out of black fondant, attach to the nostrils.  Use white fondant to make pointed teeth.  Use two pieces of white fondant shaped like almonds for the eyes, layer with black circles and yellow slivers and attach to the eye sockets.  to make eyelids, roll two small ropes, and two more slightly smaller. Place the smaller underneath the eyes, then the larger over the top.

 

Attach arms.  Write a message and enjoy your Dinosaur!

 

 

Happy Birthday, Mindy!

My friend Mindy is having a birthday!   I wanted something fun and fabulous like her, she really is a super great woman.   The cake is  a lightly lemon butter cake with lemon curd and swiss merigue buttercream, all covered in marshmallow fondant.   Happy, happy birthday!

 

Chugga chugga, Choo choo

Every little boy (and some big boys too) love Thomas the train.  This one is for Peter, a grandson of a sweet neighbor of mine.  However,  it captivated the three little boys that were watching me make it.  I have the feeling that this won’t be the last train I’ll make.  It was an interesting challenge building this cake, I got some more great help from the new Confetti Cakes for Kids cake book.    Leave me a comment if you want details on how to make your own little choo-choo.

 

Baseball Birthday

We have a neighbor who just turned Eleven today.  His mom wanted something that was fun and reflected his current love of Baseball, but that wasn’t too childish.  I remembered seeing a hat like this in Elisa Strauss’s Confetti Cakes book, check out the link to the right.  We fashioned it after his own cap, and put his name and age on the back.  I used one half of the Wilton ball pan and a six inch cake pan to make the rounded cake without any carving.  To get the stiching effect I used a fondant tool also from Wilton and for the ventilation hole, two sizes of plain round piping tips were used.  The navy fondant was achieved mixing black, royal blue, and cornflower blue colorings.  This is a great cake design for any baseball fan and it is also pretty simple and quick.  It would be a great way to try working with fondant if you haven’t before.

 

Barnyard Birthday

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.

 

My Shameful Confession

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.