Girlie Sock Monkey Cake

To be honest, the week has gotten away from me and I need to squeak out a little blog really quick.  We have a customer that we have been able to make most of her kids birthday cakes.  She trusts us by giving us a theme, colors and budget and lets us go for it.  We had a tiny budget so we employed the use of time savers like a stencil and some easy little buttons.  Well, the stencil was supposed to be easy but it was a pain.  All the little lines wanted to get stuck in the stencil.  The cake has to be very cold so the little lines hardened quickly.  We had to work fast!  The sock monkey was inspired by a figure made by "Sugar High".   If I did it all over again, the pinks would match better.  The light pink diamond stencil on top of gray buttercream just got washed out.

My tip for new decorators is use tylose powder when making animals and figures.  If you put a few pinches the day before you make a figure it will absorb the extra liquid and let the fondant hold it's shape.  You can also make a 50-50 mix of gumpaste and fondant to hold it's shape.  Tylose is also used when making fondant bows to get them to dry hard.  Tylose does not work in modeling chocolate or Fondarific.  Happy Caking!

Mad Hatter Victorian Cake

 Some nights I sit in bed waiting to get sleepy and I wind up trolling Pinterest on my iPad.  It usually just gets me wound up.  I see some new cake or craft idea and my brains explodes trying to think of some way to incorporate it into a new cake design.  When I saw this mini mad hatter tutorial on Seeing Things That Aren't Really There, I knew I would have to make one for a cake.

I made this cake for my friend Amanda's birthday.  I decided on a romantic Victorian design with a hint of steampunk.  For the bottom tier, I did buttercream ruffles.  for the second tier, I used edible image sheets to recreate a layered ruffle design.

For the top, I used some molds I got from Kara Buntin along with some button molds to make a small Victorian collage around the monogram.  I added a lace mold to to give it little more of a feminine touch.

I really wanted to make the hat edible, but time ran tight and I just just used the paper template directly from the Seeing Things... blog.  It went together pretty easily and I have have my sights set on doing it again, but out of gumpaste or modeling chocolate.

I really appreciate each and every one of you that stops by here and visits the blog.  I hope you have an awesome week!