Minnie Mouse Cake for Icing Smiles

We are a volunteer with the Icing Smiles organization. We just had the opportunity to make a 6th birthday cake for a sweet birthday girl. The family wasn't picky, they just wanted Minnie Mouse on the cake. We aren't exactly Angels when it comes to following copyright law, but we don't dare to mess with Disney. But since this cake was a donation with no charge to the family, we are allowed to recreate copyrighted characters. We checked with the Icing Smiles folks and their lawyers said it was okay to make these cakes.

 

The Minnie Mouse was the most time consuming part of the cake. I'm not proud to say it took me about eight hours. I don't make figures very well, so I'm slow and sometimes I have to "redo". This Minnie had three sets of ears and two bows. I used Choco-pan modeling chocolate just for the face because it's great for sculpting. I'm sorry, but it's too soft for other things that I use homemade modeling chocolate. I'm happy that she looks like Minnie and not a generic version, but I think I could do better next time. I also forgot to put on her blush.

I found a cool color palette on Pinterest and that was it! NEON AND SNOW LEOPARD. The pink was "sexy pink" from Elite. For both of the greens, I used mostly electric yellow with a touch of electric green for the day glow color and a little more green for the darker shade. Use a lot of yellow!

The 3-D hearts were made from the same concoction that makes cake pops, which in this case is a cooked chocolate cake layer, melted chocolate and a little buttercream. I chilled it, formed the hearts and then popped them in the freezer for about and hour. Once firm, I smeared a little piping gel and covered in fondant. All of the gathering and ugly part of the fondant was in the back.

I really enjoyed making this sweet cake and I hope it helped make the birthday girl's day more special!

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.

Cake Wrecks Book Giveaway!!

You may not know it, but one my favorite breaks occurs everyday around 9:30am when Cake Wrecks goes live with a new daily blog entry. I stop for a few minutes, have a sip of coffee, and a hearty laugh. Recently they hosted a contest where the people that came up with the best cake one-liner won a free autographed copy of the Cake Wrecks book. And I won!! Well, I already have my own autographed copy, so I thought "Why not pass it along to one of you?"

This brings up one my other favorite daily breaks... spending a few minutes voting for Icing Smiles in the Pepsi Refresh Project. I have blogged about them before, so just to summarize, they are a non-profit organization that brings birthday cakes to critically ill children. They have applied for a grant in the Pepsi Refresh Project. If they are in the top 10 of the popular vote they will receive $25,000 to help their mission. It's something that Chad and I are very, very passionate about.

Yeah, yeah yeah... so what about this giveaway?? OK, the prize is one copy of the Cake Wrecks book, autographed by Jen and John Yates. How do you enter? Do all of the following 3 steps for one entry::

1. Leave a comment on my blog (this post). Just a quick note to say you are voting. I will use this to match up your Pepsi vote.
2. Go to Icing Smiles Pepsi Refresh page, and vote for them.
3. Leave a comment on their Pepsi Refresh page with the wording "Cup a Dee Vote".

You can do the steps above once per day (for up to 7 entries) from now until the contest ends on Thursday August 26th at 5:00pm Eastern. I will randomly pick a winner (OK, Chad will, he's the technical guy) and announce it on on my August 27th blog post.

Have a great weekend and best of luck!

Aug 20 12:30pm UPDATE: Chad says he is seeing people voting on the Pepsi page that are not leaving comments here on my blog. I would still appreciate the comment, but he says he thinks he can work solely off the Pepsi comments page. I just want to make sure that no one loses a vote because of my convoluted rules

Vote for Icing Smiles!

We interrupt the normal flow of levity and cakery for this very important announcement:

Icing Smiles is a relatively new non-profit organization that helps get cakes to children with critical and terminal illnesses.  I found out about the great work Tracy Quisenberry was doing a couple of weeks ago and immediately contacted her to see how I could help.  As I read through the website I was overcome with emotion.  Others have been too... so much in fact that poor Tracy is now having a hard time growing her organization quickly enough to connect all us bakers with all these children fighting for one more birthday.

I have offered my baking services, and I wish the economy and my finances would allow me to offer this organization my financial support as well.  Tracy, not to let a little thing like the lack of a fat stack of cash stand in her way, has submitted her idea to the Pepsi Refresh Project.  The Pepsi Refresh project is where people like us can vote for altruistic projects that we deem worthwhile.  At the end of the month, the top 10 contenders get $25,000 to help get their ideas off the ground.  Icing Smiles desperately needs this money and this is where we can help!

Visit the Icing Smiles page on the Pepsi Refesh Project at:

http://www.refresheverything.com/icingsmiles

We can vote for them once per day, and if you have a Facebook account, you can even vote for them without signing up for a separate account.  If you haven't yet heard about Icing Smiles, please visit their website to read more about the wonderful work Tracy is doing and the stories of the children she has already helped.  As I write this they are ranked 331... lets get her down to the single digits, huh?

Chad even added a voting button to my blog's sidebar to help me and all my visitors remember to vote everyday.  Please help get the word out about this amazing organization!

Thanks,
Jenniffer

UPDATE: Just checked this morning (Aug 5) and their current ranking is 52!!  This is great news but we all have to keep voting to get (and keep) her in the top 10.  Tracy informed us that Pepsi has said it was OK to vote using multiple e-mail accounts, so break out all those old hotmail accounts and vote again!!