Woodland Owl Birthday Cake

Sweet Kaeley is one of the only kids I still make a birthday cake for these days.  Her mom is a vendor and sends me lots of business, so it is pretty cheap pay for an unofficial outside sales person.  This year's party was at the Chattanooga Nature Center in their "Tree House" and they were having a real owl come to the party.  Birthday parties were not that cool when I was a kid.....jealous ,  I am.

I love it when  I'm given a few parameters and let to go.  A "fairy, owl, woodland, princess theme" is what I was told.  I didn't want to use "traditional" forest colors, so I went with a silver bark bottom tier, purple owls and mushrooms and bright green leaves!  That's the kind of world I want to live it!   I finally got to use a tree bark impression mat that I just love.  I 'm sorry to say, they don't make it anymore :(

My "lesson" on this cake is to tell you about over building or cake insurance.  When you have any type of heavy fondant figure or item, like my owls, put a wooden skewers up the middle with plenty of skewer to go into the cake.  All my mushrooms and letters/circles have thick floral wire in them.  For the cake support there are big straws in the 11" tree trunk to hold up the top tier.  It was only two layers. The 7" tier was four layers with a cardboard cake board under the bottom two layers and one under the top two tiers.  There are also fat straws supports in the bottom two tiers to hold up the top two.  I used four skewers through all those layer to keep the tier straight and stable.  After I stacked them, I ran a sharpened master dowel through the whole cake.  I never let  a cake out the door without a center dowel.  It's a great insurance policy in itself.  When you drive up a mountain to deliver a cake, nothing is going to move if you build yours in this way.

Unfortunately there are times when all your over building can't stop a bigger problem.  As is the norm, I was carrying the cake to the customers car.  I have four steps to go down as you leave my shop.  I was watching Kaeley and her mom and lost count of how many steps I had already taken.  As I took the last step I realized there was still another step.  I went SMACK on the concrete and so did the cake.   As stupid as I felt, I was more worried about poor Kaeley because she was looking at me with a look of horror.  The first thing she said was "Are you OK?" and then "Is my cake ruined?"  Oh, I hurt but I wasn't going to let her know that.  I said "It's OK, I can fix it.  You are just going to have to stay a little while longer".  She was happy because I have a pink kitchen and edible glitter :)  I gave her and her Mom some fondant and said "help me by making a few butterflies".  That was good because it's hard to work when everyone is looking at you and thinking "How is she going to fix that?" 

I'm truly lucky that I caught the top tier so it didn't land on the ground and because the cake was super cold.  Since my buttercream is all real butter, it's get really hard in the cooler.  That is great for traveling with any cakes.  It took me about 20 minutes to fix the cake, but it felt like two hours.  I am also grateful that the customer was a fellow vendor and she has seen a lot go wrong during wedding set ups and is cool as a cucumber.  She was much more worried about me than the cake which I so appreciate.  I was too busy being embarrassed.  At the end I told Kaeley that the fixed cake has lost all it's glitter and I needed help to get it sparkly again.  She was a big help!   I think all the after boo boo glitter really helped!  (The smaller picture is the "after".  Take my word for it, there was a lot of glitter!"

Kaeley and the "After" Photo!

Taking Care of Display Cakes

This post is a baby lesson in dummy cakes and how to repair them. I really liked this cake when I made it, but about a year later it had a little accident. I was storing/displaying it on a silver cake stand on top of a refrigerator. Next to the refrigerator was a cooling rack on wheels. One day I moved the rack and the stand was apparently being held by the rack because it the cake went flying across the room! My first hint is to put little pieces of shelf liner under each each foot or the entire stand. Every time you open the fridge, the cake stands moves a little bit so avoid the problem with shelf liner!

I use to cover cake dummies with piping gel to attach the fondant securely. My cake friend Kimberly told me to use Crisco to attach the fondant. When you are done with the display cake, you can soak it in hot water and reuse the styrofoam dummy! That is tip two! Since I had used Crisco, when the cake hit the ground, the fondant completely came off the top tier. Totally gone! Naked! There was also a big hunk out of the deer tier.

The cake was in good shape before the accident, so instead of trashing it, I decided to do some fixing! I recovered the top tier and then added the ruffles. I think I have to make an entire ruffle cake soon! I was going to leave it, but then I felt like I needed more height so I added the topper. Just some gumpaste and a bit of floral wire.

For the deer tier, I measured the thickness of the fondant still on the cake and rolled some fresh fondant. I cut a nice straight line for the bottom and then pressed it up against the cake. Basically this made an impression on the fresh fondant so I knew where to cut the patch piece. It then fit right in. I just blended it with my finger and it really wasn't noticeable. I added a few ruffles to hide some imperfections as well as some gumpaste flowers, pinecones and berries for a more wintery feel. Hide those boo boos with flowers!

Next tip, when adding flowers or something to a very hard display cake, you can add a good size piece of fresh fondant and attach it with gum glue or water. This will give you something to poke in to and hold your new additions. It this isn't feasible, because you can't hide the big piece of fondant, use a drill with a small bit to pre drill holes. You may have to use a really small bit first and work up to a bigger size. That will give you a nice hole to poke flowers into.

I am glad that I loved on the cake instead of trashing it because I think I like it better now. Maybe I was just tired of it :) My last tip is for dusting old cakes. If the cake is very dusty, take it outside and use a hair dryer on cool, an airbrush, or just a clean large paint brush and dust off the big part of the dust. If you just have a little dust left, use a clean paper towel soaked with PGA or vodka and wipe it down. If this doesn't get it clean enough, use a very clean dish rag that is wet but rung out well. Wipe off all the dirt or discoloration that you can't this way. It will make the cake gooey because of the water, but it will dry out and your display will look much better!