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!)