Wednesday, December 15, 2010

I have passed the Quarter Century Mark…

bithday1(Glasses courtesy of my Big Sis!)

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

It’s a Boy!!

I guess I haven’t mentioned that a really good friend of mine is expecting! For this I am really really excited! This past weekend we had a baby shower for her and her husband, and what else would I do but to honor her and the little guy to be with a really cool cake? I did a lot of brainstorming for this one, and even took a peek online to see what great ideas others have come up with. I wish I had not. Since I didn’t even want to post these pictures on my site, I’ll simply link to them if you care to check them out (some slightly NSFW)! I’m pretty sure you’ll stop looking after about the second pic.

Well after my eyes had been scarred forever, I took a took a few pain killers and started to think happy thoughts regarding a new baby boy and got to work! IMG_4775IMG_4779IMG_4780IMG_4782IMG_4786IMG_4791IMG_4795IMG_4800IMG_4801IMG_4803photo 4photo 1

These little guys were a lot of fun, but really time intensive to make! Holding on to one spot too long left very visible finger prints, and sometimes meant starting all over again! I got a lot of my ideas for these characters from this book, and others I came up with on my own. All characters were made of fondant, and were left out overnight to harden.

Once the entire crew was assembled, I had to visualize the cake, and how I would arrange the characters on top. I also needed to size the cake with the characters because I still had one very important element left to create! IMG_4808

Those Crate and barrel ramekins are imitating my baby letter blocks. I used the wax paper circle as a guide to the size of the top of the cake, and then with all the little creatures hanging around I needed to find something that would be a good size for the blocks. They needed to be big, but not so big that they out ratio the animals. I thought this looked pretty good, so I got back to work!

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You can see that I made a pattern for the blocks on regular printer paper and then covered it with the was paper. This is important to do because you just have to slide the bottom paper to a new spot to keep creating the exact same letter block- the exact same SIZE letter block. Very important in constructing the box!

So once all the frills were created and left to harden, I went on to the most important detail! Mmmmm the cake and icing!

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I had to make “baby” cupcakes!

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Then of course a proper cake. Two layer cake with a buttercream and raspberry filling. The Filling is quiet simple. I just eyeball the amount of raspberries I need (fresh or frozen), add to pot, add a tablespoon or so of white sugar and let them boil down while I mash! While the pot is cooling on the stove top I’ll add about a half cup (maybe more!) of my homemade butter cream frosting. Once the pot has cooled significantly, like to the point that I can touch it, I’ll put it in an ice bath (You will warp your pot if you put it in the ice too soon. Let the metal cool naturally). This lets it thicken up, annnnnd I don’t want to put warm filling in the cake; that’s asking for trouble. You can see that I also put a layer of plain butter cream on both insides of the cake layers. This does two important things. 1) keeps the fruit filling from making the cake gooey! and 2) More icing :) As I am not professionally trained, over time I have screwed up discovered a  few things. The first being if you put too much icing outside of the cake, it will breakdown and destroy any hope you have of covering your cake with fondant. The second being, everyone loves icing and lots of it! By me adding the two “safety” layers of buttercream to the inside, it ultimately allows for what everyone really wants. Again… more icing!!! 

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So here the cake is stacked, iced (lightly), and put in the fridge to set up over night. This allows for me to go to sleep start the day of with a really fresh cake, ready cover with fondant, decorate, and walk out the door to the shower.

The next morning consisted of:

IMG_4833Cover

IMG_4834Mold

IMG_4835Trim

IMG_4838IMG_4840Color, Prep, and match fondant colors!

IMG_4847The fun Part… Decorate!

edit1And Serve!

The cake was a big hit! All the ladies loved it… problem was, everyone felt bad cutting it up! I fixed that after they had taken a sufficient number of pictures! I have to tell you… there wasn’t one piece of cake left. Exactly 18 servings, and they ate the fondant too!

This cake was a lot of fun, and I’m really stoked to do a few more as I have several “mothers in waiting” in my life!

…oh, and don’t forget the cupcakes!IMG_4832

 
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