The Cakes, part 4

Okay, here is the only other 3D cake I have ever made. It was a Thomas cake for A's 4th birthday. Actually it was for the party we had in June for his birthday so the kids at preschool could come. His birthday's not until August, so I might be making another cake for him then...

This is the base I made for the cake out of styrofoam board and aluminum foil.

I made 2 cakes out of the Bulk Barn mix, next time I make a cake I will use this recipe for better carving. I used the same chocolate buttercream that I made for the frog cake (since I made them at the same time).

This was 2 9x13 cakes that I set side by side to get a sheet that was about 18x13, then cut it in to 3 peices, each about 5x13. The middle piece is two pieces together.

The carving...

Making Thomas's face. I used the regular fondant for this, but I think I added too much sugar because it was kind of cracked at the end.

After I was done with all the carving etc., but before I put on the eyes, mouth and eyebrows.

The wheels. I imprinted them with that piece of toothpick.

Here's the wheels and the face (and the graduation hat for the frog) set aside to dry.

Covered in the chocolate buttercream.

This was the regular fondant, that was cracking and breaking, but I was running out of time (and the kids are 3, 4 and 5, so I don't think they care).

Okay, then I didn't really take any other pictures until I thought I was done. I used this recipe for the black fondant and the yellow and red I used regular MMF with mint flavour (I don't like almond flavour).

Then as we were heading out the door I realized I forgot the smoke stack...

The Cakes, part 3

Okay, so here is the third cake I finished, but the 4th cake I started, I was making this one and the Thomas cake at the same time...

It is a graduating frog for B and A's preschool class. The preschool is called Jumpstart and their 'mascot' is a frog. This was for their preschool graduation/party. Don't expect too much from this one, it was really hard and the legs and part of the head fell off part way through so I just kind of made do since I didn't have time to redo it.

So I started out by baking two cakes, from the Bulk Barn's chocolate cake mix.

Then I stacked them, with homemade chocolate buttercream.

Carved a little and stacked using what I carved off.

This is what it looked like from the top, then I freezed it while I worked on the fondant, which was definately not as nice to work with as it was the first few times (or maybe I'm just imagining it was easier before...)

Out of the freezer and with a little more carving done.

Thawed slightly and more carving done (and eyes added).

And from the side...

This was the second attempt at fondant, the first time the fondant just broke when I put it on, so I ended up trying a marshmallow fondant recipe which worked a little better, but I didn't like the taste as much with the cake (it tasted fine by itself though).

From the side, nice leg hey ;)

Other side...

Now this is what it looked like in the morning, so excited (not!)

The mint flavoured, greenish coloured, Rice Krispie Square lily pad.

After I fixed it and added the hat I made out of the original fondant and let harden and put the rest of the decorations on. It looked pretty good from far away ;)

The cakes, part 2

Okay, so now it has been SEVERAL days since my last blog, and I really intended to get all these cake ones done on the same day, but life keeps getting my way...

So this is the 2nd cake I made. It was for my oldest (B)'s 5th birthday and it is of Sid the Science Kid (on PBS).

I ordered a cake from Safeway and asked for the icing on the side and they gave me this monsterous tub of buttercream. I tried saving what I didn't use (which was most of it), but we moved a little while later and it just got tossed (what a waste!).

So when I got the cake home I just cut out a general 'Sid' shape.

Then I made a bit more 3 dimensional and cut out eye holes so I could just put a ball of fondant in to make them look more realistic.

This is the super creepy picture of the eyeballs in...

The face looks better now with the yellow fondant on and the eyes cut out, I actually put the fondant on the neck first, then did the face.

The hair is just big pieces of fondant that I shaped by hand, the eyebrows and nose were also just shaped by hand.

Now his hands have fondant...

I didn't take a picture after I got his shoes done, but I did those before the jeans. I actually put little pieces of fondant around the ends of the laces later on to look like the holes laces come out of. The bottom of the sneakers had 'grip' on them too, but I didn't take any pics of the bottom of his feet.

And here he is with the hoodie done.

And from the top...

And done, with some of the icing sugar absorbed, more of it absorbed before I brought the cake to the party, but I didn't really take any decent photos of it.

You can see the shoelace hole things in this picture (and the crappy fondant job on the jeans lol!)

The Cakes, part 1

So here it is, my very first blog post, ever. In case you're wondering, the whole thing goes like this, "Rabbit holes and ant hill joys, the dearest angels are little boys." - Skeen It's from a picture hanging in my kitchen that a dear friend gave to me. I have three little boys - she used to have three little boys, but now she has three big boys, big enough to be buying their own houses! Anyway, on to the cakes.

I recently made two cakes (yesterday and Thursday actually), they were my third and fourth attempts at making 3D cakes. I'm actually going to tell you about my first one first though.

It was almost a year ago, for my middle son (A)'s 3rd birthday. He wanted Lightning McQueen and I had been watching Ace of Cakes and thought, "Hey, I can totally do that!" So I searched for a fondant recipe (I used http://thecookduke.com/fondant-recipe/), bought some cake mix, bought some buttercream from the Bulk Barn (which is also where I found the glycerin for the fondant) and got to work.

Okay, so this is the mix I used to make the cake.

This is what it looked like when it came out of the oven.

I wrapped my cutting board in foil as the base.

A bit of icing on the board so the cake stays put.

First piece on the board, ta da!

This is how I stacked the cake.

Okay, carving's done (except the wheels). In case you're wondering, in the background are decals and eyes I made earlier that broke and I didn't end up using.

Cutting out holes where the wheels will go.

Here is my crappy job with the buttercream - turns out it's better to ice a frozen cake - silly me for letting it thaw first!

White fondant all rolled out and ready to go.

First fondant on the cake.

After I cut out the wheel holes.

The wicked awesome eyelids I made from fondant.

Fantastic eyelids now on the car ;)

Covered in THICK red fondant. I didn't like the thickness, but any thinner and it kept breaking - I think maybe I added too much icing sugar...

After I cut everything out, I didn't want to hide those awesome eyelids I made earlier ;)

Here is the logo for the side (I made one for the other side too, but I thought one picture was enough).

Here is logo attached, but it would have been better to cut out the wheel part after I placed it on the car instead of guessing while it was still on the table. Oh well, next time right?

Here's the orangey circle for the Rusteze logo.

I mixed gel food colouring with vodka to paint (the alcohol evapourates before the kids get the cake, don't worry).

This is what it looked like after I painted it. I also piped some yellow (that I just bought).

I used the same cookie cutter that I used to make the wheel holes in the cake top cut out the wheels from the (sort of) black fondant.

This is how the wheels ended up.

I let the wheels dry overnight so that they would hold their shape better.

This is how I ended up making the spoiler, then draped the fondant over top.

Spoiler's done. If I make this cake again, I'll make it ahead of time out of fondant and just let it dry, that way everything will be edible.

For the eyes, I made light blue fondant and then mixed in some dark blue colouring, but didn't mix it all the way in.

Almost done...

I painted the black with gel colour mixed with vodka.

I made a road by putting some buttercream down and shoving chocolate cookie crumbs on top, then piping some yellow on it.

I decided to make a white cake too. I covered it with white fondant and painted it with a new and clean paintbrush with plain green food colouring.

I actually made tiny cars from the cake and covered them in fondant.

This is what the white cake ended up looking like.