Kaben's Birthday Hoedown

Recently I did Kaben's 4th birthday cake.  I have mentioned Kaben here on the blog a few times before, since I have done all of his birthday cakes.  He is such an amazing little boy, and he always gives us such great ideas for his party cake.  This year's party theme involved a petting zoo, cowboy hats, cactus balloon sculptures - certainly enough for me to create a cake around.  It all worked so well at The Car Barn!

Our cake starts out with the bottom cake tier as a wooden crate covered with modeling chocolate "wooden" panels.  We also made his name using wood planks also made from modeling chocolate.  We used a Wilton #3 tip to make mail holes in the planks.

The next tier was covered in blue fondant and made to look like denim blue jeans complete with little pockets and stitching.  We also made a horseshoe inspired 4 made from gumpaste for rigidity.

The next tier was a bandanna in John Deere yellow and green. I gathered the fondant a little and finished the tier with a little fondant knot.

The next tier was inspired by the petting zoo.  Just a green fondant "hill" with a rickety country fence.  There were a few animals made from modeling chocolate poking their cute little head through.

Cars is still Kaben's favorite cartoon, so we incorporated one of the tractor "cows" into the cake as a topper. I used some pictures from the Internet to sculpt a tractor from modeling chocolate.  Now Kaben also wanted his tractor to "moo" just like on the cartoon.  He was too high on the cake for Kaben to reach, so we used a recordable sound module and incorporated it into a tractor tire on the cake board.  Now my frequent readers here will know that this is totally Chad's area of expertise.  He took the module into the office and about 2 minutes later he came back with with the sounds on it.  I thought he had pulled up some sound database on the Internet to record it from.  It wasn't until the next day that he told me he just mooed into it.  I couldn't believe it, but it sounded great!  I guess if this cake thing doesn't work out, he has a career as a cow impersonator!  LOL!!

Thanks for stopping by and reading my little old blog.  I know this was long, so here's a closeup of that tractor sculpture as a special bonus for sticking around!

Montana Cowgirl Cake + Mini Tutorial

A few weeks ago I was lying in bed trying to get sleepy while looking through Pinterest when I saw the cutest Cowgirl Cake by Ana Beatriz Carrard.  I repinned it immediately tn my "Cake Inspiration" board, even though I don't do very many birthday cakes these days.  Wouldn't you know, the VERY next day, I got a call from a former client looking for a cowgirl cake.  I sent her a link to Ana's cake.

Of course, she loved it, so we took several elements from it and created our own cake.  The bandana tier went together much easier than I thought.  I covered the tier with fondant like I normally would and just left a little excess fondant for the folds.  The knot I made separate and just tacked it on to the front.  I made the belt buckle out of modeling chocolate and cut the the birthday girls' name using the Cricut. I searched the web over for a how-to on a fondant cowboy hat, but never found a good one.  In the end it as pretty easy.  I rolled out a gumpaste circle and then just gave it another roll with my rolling pin to "oval" it a little.  For the hat, I sorta made a wide taco shaped piece and molded it from there.  The rhinestone "hatband" ad the crystal heart were pieces left from past projects.  Yes, I have a flotsam bin... don't judge!! ;-)

The horse head is what I really dreaded making.  I'm just not someone that can draw a horse, or even horsey features on a horse-shaped cut out.  But Chaddy and I did something pretty awesome to get the look on those horses.  If you want to find out how, click the link below to finish reading and see the full tutorial!