Posts Tagged ‘cakes’

Frozen & 3 Easier Cake Hacks

| Decorate

Frozen Cake HacksI pretend to be tired of Frozen.  After endlessly watching the movie, reenacting the scenes, and listening to the soundtrack…after stocking a wardrobe with Frozen attire and filling a playroom with Frozen toys… I realize that another dramatic interpretation of “Let It Go” by our beloved 4 year old should send me screaming in search of sanity.  The terrifying truth is… I am not tired of Frozen… or the Little Mermaid, or Tangled, or Beauty and the Beast, or Cinderella.  

I do understand how totally crazy and completely inappropriate so many of these princess stories are for our kids.  I mean – I am desperate to raise well-rounded, competent, compassionate, intelligent, and independent, young women who are prepared to tackle the complexities of a global society that honors and respects equality and social responsibility.  But… I feel the love and really can’t shame the obsession of Disney princesses.    I am so thankful for Elsa and Anna who make me feel a little less guilty about our love of princesses.   

Turns out this may be the strangest intro to… I made another Frozen cake and learned some new tricks to simplify my cake decorating!  

Here are three great cake hacks that helped simplify my cake decorating, so I could get everything done in one night:

  1. Forget the fondant and frost with buttercream (sometimes)!
    I read about the VIVA paper towel method for smoothly icing a cake, but didn’t think it would actually work.  Turns out… those soft, white, pillowy paper towels are just perfect for smoothing out your buttercream!  This was my first attempt and it still needs work, but I can’t wait to try it again, and again, and again!  Frost Me Up has a great video tutorial to get you started!  As a wannabe cake decorator, this frosting method saved me a lot of time and money!  (check out all those exclamation points!)
  2. Pearl dust! (AKA edible glitter)
    Wilton Pearl Dust (available at Michael’s, Jo-Ann’s, Amazon, etc.) is fabulous for adding a little sass and hiding imperfections.  As I mentioned this was my first attempt at the VIVA paper towel frosting method, so it was definitely not perfect by any means.

  3. Not everything has to be edible.
    I love the challenge of making everything on a cake edible, but I am trying to simplify and let’s be serious – no one is actually going to eat a fondant Elsa, a gumpaste Anna, or an Olaf made out of modeling chocolate.  I cleaned our Frozen figurines and topped the cake.  I actually got out two bowls, one with soapy water and one with clean water, and had our 3-year-old Samantha give Anna, Elsa, Olaf, Kristoff and Sven baths, which she thought was pretty much the greatest thing in the world!

Confession of a *wannabe* everything… I’m sure it would be super helpful to see before and after pictures of icing a cake using a VIVA Paper towel, but I blew it!  You can see pretty great documentation of the paper towel trick Frost Me Up.

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Disney Frozen Ice Cream Cake

| General

Frozen Easy Ice Cream CakeWe are in full-on mermaid mode in our house.  I am not sure if our two-year-old is subconsciously dreaming of warmer days to cope with all this snow and cold, but there is not much we can play, read, listen, watch, or color  if it is not  somehow associated with a mermaid!  While I love The Little Mermaid, I was pretty excited that my niece requested a “Frozen” cake for her 5th birthday.  I haven’t actually seen Frozen yet (apparently there are no mermaids in Frozen), so I hit Pinterest for some inspiration.  How amazing is this Frozen cake from Bubbly Nature Creations!

I had to try those blue ice shards!  Seriously.

Turns out simple sugar candy is surprisingly easy and the shards turned out great!  We also created a simple vinyl stencil to put over one of the shards, and then scratched the surface with sandpaper to create the etched 5.  I say “we,” because that was actually both Allen’s idea and execution.
Frozen Easy Ice Cream Cake
I made a simple ice cream cake, frosted with Cool Whip, and then kept the decorations simple to show off the shards.

Fairly simple and definitely fantastic!

You can alter the amount of ingredients in your ice cream cake  depending on how many people you need to serve, available space in your freezer, and the size of your bowl.  I did have a huge bowl, so I just went to town.

Confession of a *wannabe* cake decorator…. Sometimes while brainstorming, you find an idea that is so fantastic, there aren’t many improvements to make! Thanks Bubbly Nature Creations for such amazing inspiration.

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Harper’s Ribbon Cake with Birthday Bunting

| Decorate, General

Ribbon Cake with Bunting

Ribbon Cake with Bunting

My dear friend Audra truly appreciates a good party plan and is amazing with the execution! I was ecstatic to make her daughter’s first birthday cake, but also seriously nervous. I love decorating cakes for friends and family, because at this point I am pretty confident that whatever I put together will be more fun than what they could pick up from our local grocery store or Sam’s Club.

Audra, however, is a different story.

Audra always knows what is hip and cool, before it is hip and cool.  Yeeks!  I just said hip… and cool…  I am sure that Audra could find a fantastic cake from one of our amazing local bakeries that would turn up in our favorite blogs and magazines in a month or two as the hottest new trend.

The pressure was on!

Ribbon Cake with Bunting

Ribbon Cake with Bunting

Audra found this adorable cake bunting from Boo Bah Blue to provide inspiration! I wanted to keep the cake pretty simple to showcase the adorable bunting, so I decided to try a two-tiered ribbon cake, with a gum paste plaque. I used a 9 inch round cake for the first tier and a 6 inch round cake for the second tier.

To keep this project manageable and fun, I organized my time and spaced out the work. I created the gum paste name plaque on Wednesday, baked the cakes on Thursday, and I frosted and assembled the cake on Friday.

 

 

DECORATE:

1. Apply a thin crumb coat of vanilla buttercream to both cakes and refrigerate for 15-30 minutes, for the icing to set.

2. Once the icing is set, apply an additional smooth, thick, coat of buttercream to the top of each cake.

3. Fill your favorite piping bag with the vanilla buttercream and affix a Wilton 104 piping tip. (I believe tip #104 is typically used for piping petals, but I am a serious piping novice!)

4. Start at the base of your 9 inch cake, with the thin side of the piping tip facing up and the thicker side of the piping tip facing down. Pipe from left to right (or right to left!), about ¾ of an inch, in a figure eight motion. Continue this back and forth motion, moving from the base of the cake to the top. Continue this around the entire cake.

5. Trim 3 wooden dowels to the correct height of the cake, and insert the dowels in the center of the 9 inch cake, for support (I usually space them about 3 inches apart, in a triangular shape).

6. Gently place the 6 inch cake on top of the support dowels.

7. Pipe the 6 inch cake in the same fashion as the first cake.

8. Once both cakes are complete, pipe one final ribbon around the top of each cake to complete the look. Angle the tip with the wide base touching the cake and the thin side facing up. Gently pipe, in about a ½ inch back and forth motion, from the center to the outside of the cake around the circumference of each cake.

9. Before the icing complete sets, affix the gumpaste name plaque to the top tier. If the icing is already somewhat dry, simply wet the back of the gumpaste plaque and firmly hold against the icing until it sticks.

10. Top with an adorable cake bunting!

Confession of a *wannabe* cake decorator…. In my excitement over the ribbon cake, I overlooked the ever-important smash cake! I wanted both cakes to compliment each other, but I didn’t have time to bake, cool, and decorate another cake before the party! I hit up our local grocery store and bought a small cake from the frozen section. I scraped off the frozen icing from store and quickly iced the cake in complementing colors. This worked great… a trick I *may* remember in the future!

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Oh, The Places She’ll Go!

| Celebrate, General

Dr. Seuss Cake

My daughter is rapidly approaching 2.  Seriously 23 months and some change.  Didn’t we just perfect the ultimate swaddle, conquer the squeakless door close, and master the art of stacking milk in the freezer?  Our routines change so quickly with this bundle of energy, it is tough to comprehend that we are already building choo-choos with blocks, whisking pancake batter, and talking about friends at school (okay, maybe just repeating their names at home).  I realize this is not a new phenomenon and time flies for everyone… I just wish it were a little more selective to the Monday through Friday, 8:30 to 5:00 time-frame!

  1. I have a daughter (this is still sinking in).
  2. She will seriously be 2 in a mere number of days.
  3. We celebrated, we celebrate, we will celebrate!
Door Sign

Oh, The Places You’ll Go Door Sign

I love to decorate cakes, plan parties, and am always up for a good celebration  no matter how big or small… we celebrate Pi day.   I have to admit, however, that I was totally overwhelmed at the prospect of planning my own daughter’s first birthday party!  How would I ever pick and finalize a theme?  How would I decorate her cake?  I checked all my usual sources for inspiration: Pinterest, Hostess with the Mostess, Pizzazzerie, etc., and despite all the amazing party plans, I wasn’t convinced.

I am a sucker for inspiration.  I am a sucker for independence.  I wasn’t ready to let go of little Sammie’s nursery theme, so we stuck with, “Oh the Places She’ll Go!”

Invitation: We found an adorable invitation  in the Meghily’s Printables Etsy Store.

Decorations: I played with my Silhouette SD and found great hot air balloon shapes by SnapDragon Snippets in the Silhouette Studio. I selected several different shades of Bazzil cardstock to use for all my decorations  and outlined the cutouts with a black marker to give it more Dr. Seuss sass.   I downloaded the Doctor Soos font, for free, from dafont.com.   I created  a banner for the fireplace, hot air balloon bunting for the entryway, a door sign (re-purposing an old frame), and fun photos from Samantha’s first year hanging from helium balloons.

 

 

 

 

Dr. Seuss Cake

 

 

 

Cake: I had some serious trouble coming up with an idea for this cake that I felt I could actually execute!  I decided to use gum paste, fondant, and edible markers to re-create scenes from “Oh the Places You’ll Go.”  I loved the effect of the edible markers on the dried gumpaste.  I did learn that you have to wait for the gumpaste to dry completely before using the edible markers, or the colors may bleed!

 

 

First Year Photo Collage

 

Photo Collage: We spent the year taking monthly black and white photos of Samantha on a plain desk calendar.  We happened to have some extra wall space and found matching extra frames… all the night before her party.  With the assistance of a little Urban Chestnut, we put together this photo collage in no time.. we (the beer) *may* have miscounted our photo-to-frame-ratio… which explains the somewhat random monogram in the fourth frame!  D’oh.
Up next… la la la la… la la la la… Elmo’s World!  Let the celebration continue!

Confession of a *wannabe* party planner…
I wish I could ditch the 8:30 – 5:00 job and execute party plans everyday!

Happy 1st Birthday Samantha!

Happy 1st Birthday Samantha!

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Penguin Cake with Amazing Vanilla Frosting

| Dessert

Penguin Cake

Penguin Cake

It was snow much fun making this Winter Onederland to celebrate my nephew Miles’ first birthday!  I was a little nervous with my friend Tim coming to join in the cake decorating fun, because let’s be honest, there is really only room for one chef in the kitchen, especially one as small as mine!  It turns out… we actually work pretty well together!  I think this cake adventure was even disaster free.

With every cake adventure I seem to learn a few good cake decorating tips:

  1. Definitely apply a thin crumb coat to your cake before icing, especially with white icing.  I recommend refrigerating the cake for 15-20 minutes after applying the crumb coat, to provide time for the icing to set.
  2. Sugar cubes are amazing for winter wonderlands: ice blocks, igloos, snow, the opportunities are endless!
  3. Insert a toothpick in fondant figures to secure the figures in place on top of a cake.
  4. In order to minimize the mess, add sprinkles immediately after icing before the icing has opportunity to set.

Confession of a *wannabe* foodie….. While I always make homemade icing, I occasionally , okay frequently,cheat on the cake and filling, if I am decorating a cake.   Before I started decorating cakes, I had no idea you could buy pudding in cans, but it turns out that canned pudding is pretty fantastic as a cake filling.
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Hello Kitty Cake

| Dessert

Hello Kitty Cake

Hello Kitty Cake

Hello Kitty. Pink. Sparkly.

Those were the instructions from my beautiful niece Elise for her 3rd birthday cake.  I should probably rearrange those instructions to reflect the true enthusiasm of Elise in her birthday cake request…

Sparkly!  Pink!  Hello Kitty!

In an attempt to be the ultimate aunt, I added one more to the list:

Sparkly. Pink. Hello Kitty. Gum. (one of Elise’s favorites)

Who knew the most challenging mission of this cake would be to locate and acquire gumballs!  Once gumballs were included as part of the mission, however, they could not be removed, as they were now an essential element in the cake completion.   Fortunately, my mother and sister voluntarily enlisted in the overt gumball operation.  Three stores and several phone calls later, a large box of gumballs appeared, concealed in a Dierberg’s bag, between the side door and screen door of our quaint brick bungalow.  With the success of the overt gumball operation, it was time to move on to the next phase of cake completion.

Hello Kitty Cake

Hello Kitty Cake

Pink pearl dust, applied with a paint brush (clean, and cake-specific, of course), provided the perfect pink sparkle to make this cake Elise approved.  I intended to make this cake over-the-top -sparkly with actual sparklers, but lost too much time with the overt gumball operation.  Next New Year’s Eve, I plan to purchase several packs of sparklers to use throughout the year.

Confession of a *wannabe* foodie… My free hand Hello Kitty failed, so I cheated a bit by creating my own Hello Kitty stencil by printing and cutting an image I liked online.

 

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Batman and Iron Man Cake

| Dessert

Batman and Iron Man Cake

Batman and Iron Man Cake

I don’t consider myself a necessarily girly-girl.  I love to camp, spend time outdoors, watch baseball and hockey, listen to loud rock and roll, love crime shows, etc.  I have to admit, however, I seem to be missing the superhero gene!  I appreciate a good superhero in the occasional movie or great costumes at Halloween, but if you ask me about Bruce Wayne, it may take a second before I figure out if you are referring to Batman or Superman.

I am always up for a birthday cake challenge, so I thought I would attempt Mason and Alex’s favorite superheros: Batman and Iron Man.  Despite my superhero ignorance, I am fairly confident with Batman.  Iron Man, on the other hand, is where that ignorance returns in full force!  I tried my usual hot spots for cake inspiration: blogs, Google image searches, Pinterest, movie/cartoon clips, etc., but Iron Man continued to elude my creativity.  This creativity block continued for several days and as the birthday approached, I began to fear that stifling creativity might, in fact, be Iron Man’s ultimate super power.

I unleashed a few of my decorating superheros, and the gold and silver pearl powders ultimately saved the day by kicking up the Iron Man mask and power supply.

I welcome any suggestions for future superhero cakes!  It can be difficult to find that delicate balance of awesome… that remains within my ability to execute!

 

Batman and Iron Man Cake

Batman and Iron Man Cake

Confession of a *Wannabe* Foodie… Boxed cake mix, layered with pudding, and frosted with homemade icing can be pretty fantastic and great for kids’ birthday cakes.  The kids get way more excited about the decorations than homemade cake!

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Robot Cake

| Dessert

Robot Cake

Robot Cake

I started drafting a few cake ideas for Robotto Otto’s first birthday when my husband Allen nonchalantly mentioned that I could not make a robot cake without some electronics!  My knowledge of circuits, however, ended with grade school science.

Needless to say, we decided to divide and conquer.   I added the lights into the cake design and Allen headed off to RadioShack.  Allen created a series circuit with three LED’s, two nine volt batteries, a switch, a bunch of wires, a project box, some solder, and a bit of electrical tape.
(he totally wrote this section, see my aforementioned self proclaimed electronic ignorance)
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Racecar Cake

| Dessert

Racecar Cake

Racecar Cake

I saw a tutorial for these adorable racecar toppers, on the Cake Journal site, several weeks ago, and was ecstatic when Elliott decided he wanted a racecar cake for his birthday!  The tutorial is excellent!  I did not, however, have all the supplies, so I improvised a little, but I still think they turned out great.

When looking at tutorials, don’t get overwhelmed with materials you may not have, you can usually cope with the materials you do have on hand (okay, I realize not everyone has fondant in the basement). As a novice cake decorator, I adapted the tutorial by using mostly fondant, instead of gumpaste, since I already had the fondant colored appropriately for the racecars.  I used plain water to adhere the separate pieces, instead of tylo glue (shhh… I truly have no idea what that is).  I only have one fondant smoother, so instead of using a pair of fondant smoothers to shape the car, I used my one fondant smoother and a box of graham crackers! (more…)

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Beach Cake for Casey

| Dessert

Beach Cake

Casey’s Beach Cake

My friend Casey is getting married, on the beach, in less than two months!  To celebrate her upcoming nuptials, I created a 3-tier, vanilla and chocolate buttercream, beach cake for her wedding shower, as any cake-loving friend would do.  Casey loves all things teal, which coordinates perfectly with her beach-themed wedding.  I knew if I started with teal water, I couldn’t go wrong.  Once I finished the teal water, however, it was time to get creative! (more…)

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