Our First Icing Smiles Cake

 

A month or so ago, we received our first call to action from Icing Smiles.  This cake was to be for Corey, who is turning 15 on March 1st.  Corey's dream cake wish was for a Flatbed tractor trailer cake.  Corey's uncle drives for Sunbelt Transport and Corey's entire party was going to be Sunbelt themed.  The problem is that a flatbed trailer just doesn't equal up to a lot of cake.  So we decided that the flatbed truck needed to be hauling some presents for Corey.

But that wasn't our biggest challenge.  Corey had some dietary requirements; namely no chocolate, no caffeine, and no dairy.  No dairy!?!  But I'm known as the "all butter" buttercream lady!  I did some research and found that certain flavors of Duncan Hines cake mix (we used Vanilla for this cake) do not contain dairy.  And I made shortening icing which I haven't made since I was a wee decorator.  I had such a hard time trying to get that Crisco icing to do what I wanted!  It wouldn't firm up and  it wouldn't smooth properly!  And then I found that most of my fondants (even my candy melt modeling chocolate) contained milk products.  Only my Satin Ice fondant was completely milk free.  Luckily, the truck was supposed to be blue and I had a full unopened bucket of blue Satin Ice.

We were so excited when Corey and his family pulled up to get their cake!  Corey, all of his ailments aside, was still a typical 15 year old boy.  He liked his cake, but he seemed even more interested in the templates and the storyboard pages we put together.  So we gladly gave him those as well!

It was a very positive experience and I can't wait to be called upon again.  If any of you bakers reading this aren't already an Icing Smiles partner, please contact them today to join their expanding network.