Bottle Cap Cake Tutorial

A bottle cap is a really good place to start working with carved cake.  You don't have to use a pound cake, but if your cake is not firm then you need to use a buttercream that is all butter or ganache.  Those will firm up nicely and make the carving easy.   For this cake,  we baked three layers, a 14", 16" and 18".  I didn't carve much to get to this point.  I really just filled in with a lot of buttercream (as you can see below).  It's easier this way because you don't have all of the soft cut edges to deal with.

I've used a piece of cardboard that is covered on both sides with packing tape.  This will allow you to wipe it off a keep it from getting soaked with buttercream.  I just make a shape by folding a piece of paper in half and draw a J shape.  When you cut it, it should be a mirror of your J, therefore being even and identical on both sides.  Don't get the "caves" to close together.  The thin piece of cake that will separate them will be weaker the smaller you make it. You can spend hours figuring out the exact space in between each indention so they are all equally spaced or you can wing it and end up with a backside, as we see here.  Just remember where the back is so you don't accidently put it in the front. 

It's a little hard to see, but I've wrapped a piece of masking tape around my knife as a guide so I don't cut too deep. It's not going to stop you from cutting too deep, it's just there as a visual reference. Now this is the deepest you are going to cut only at the bottom layer and then taper up from there. You want the back wall to be straight-ish.

You have some room for boo boos here.  You are going to fill in with a coat of buttercream so if you cut too deep, fill it up with buttercream.  You are going to want to use a bag of buttercream and pipe some icing into these caves.  Your fingers are going to be the best tools here, but you can also cut a small piece of flexible material like stencil plastic.  Don't drive yourself too crazy filling these into be perfect.  Get a crumb coat on and chill.  Then add a second coat so that your fondant has a nice base to go onto.  Icing inside of the caves will take you longer than carving them out.  If you can, use some Elite  or Fondarific fondant for this project.  You need a long time work time to get the fondant into the caves and you need a lot of stretch.

Once you get your fondant applied, you can airbrush or dry brush as darker shade of the fondant inside of the caves to give the illusion of more shadow.  Create a template of your favorite brand of soda or beer.  Print two copies, one to cut up and one for spacing.  Use modeling chocolate and cut out your logo.  Arrange all of the cut pieces on top of a print out of the logo so the spacing is perfect.  Put Crisco on one side of a piece of wax paper and press it to the front (top) of the cut letters.  You should be able to transport the letters from the table onto the top of the bottle cap ensuring the spacing is perfect.   I like to use a wet brush a attach the pieces individually, but you could dampen your top side before you place the cut logo pieces on it.  cover the top of your cap.  Press the pieces down and slowly peal away the wax paper.  Poof!  Bottle cap!

Safari Animal Birthday Cake

We create so few birthday cakes these days that when we get to make one, we tend to go a little overboard.   The cake is really a basic design to be a backdrop for the real stars, the animals.  I added a small piece of styrofoam to lift the top tier so I could have a place to hang the vines.   It really is best for the sake of stability.

We marbled a little fondant for the waterfall  and disguised the source with fondant rocks.  As a side note, if you want some AWESOME looking candy rocks and boulders that are solid chocolate covered in a candy she'll, check out Nuts.com.  I love these people, their almond flour and their cute packaging.
 

There are a million animal tutorials out there, so I can't add much new in that department.   The most important thing to remember is to add tylose to your fondant and let it sit up a while. This step will make your animals not  be droopy or melty looking.   Another tip is to add a little "makeup" to your animals. A little touch of blush will make your animals "come to life"!  Also, if you get the basic way of making an animal, you can search Etsy for an "elephant" and take some inspiration from a greeting card, stuffed animal or most anything.  If you are selling a cake with animals, you should allow about two hours to make each animal.  I'm just saying, don't start the animals at 8pm the night before the cake is due.  Happy animal making!

New Realistic Cake Guitar Strings - Mini Tutorial

Remember the guitar cake we did a few months ago?  Sometimes the best ideas hit you when you're in the weeds.  We were SO running out of time to finish this cake and I was going to do something that would not have been so pretty.  I'll give you the short version, which is still kinda long!  Chad came up with a great idea to use bamboo skewers to hold the strings.   Read on for a mini tutorial on how we did this.

 

 We drilled the tiniest of holes in the skewer and tied fishing line in a double knot so it wouldn't slip through.  We measured all the skewers to just fit above the fondant after it was tapped into the gator board/drum below.  Next time I would do a better job of cutting these more uniformly.

Once you have all the skewers cut and your fishing line attached (leave it long on the "neck" end) start hammering them into place at the bottom of the guitar.  If you do them once at a time they'll be easier to manage.  An assistant will help hold the loose strings off the cake.

I did my best to hide the skewers, but I was on a tight timeline but I would conceal them better next time. probably using fondant or food markers.

On the neck end, each of your skewers will be a different height, so you'll need to hammer in and measure each skewer individually.  This will also be the time you measure your fishing line and cut it just a bit longer than you need.  Go ahead and drill your skewer hole and tie your fishing line in a knot on the skewer.

Here's where the magic all comes together.  Start pushing the skewer back into it's hole.  If you notice the string is going to be too long, give the skewer a turn or two to tighten the string.  As it goes into the cake, the string will tighten.  You won't be able to tune it to the correct key, but it will hold tight enough to look really good.  Using a thick modeling chocolate bar at the base of the neck will give the strings something to bite into and help keep them in place. We then put some fondant tuning pegs over the holes to hide the skewers.

We used real guitar string on the banjo, but know that we have figured this out, it will be our go to method.  I will say that when we moved the cake the strings got looser because the flex of the very long cake board but then got tight again as soon as we laid it on the display table.  I'm lucky the saggy, traveling strings didn't mess up my paint.

Hope this helps - if you have any questions, feel free to  lave us a comment.

Equestrian Bat Mitzvah Cake

We've been lucky to make some fun Bat-Mitzvah cakes lately!  They are way more fun than birthday cakes because they are MORE!  They are bigger, sparkly and more sophisticated than most birthday cakes.  Our birthday girl is a fantastic equestrian and took her favorite theme into her party.  I wish we had picture of the fantastic barn they decorated and used for the party.  It made me want to be the birthday girl!
  
It's hard to tell but each tier is an oval shaped tier. We did not taper the tiers inward but we did angle the tops of each.  The cake was buttercream with modeling chocolate cut outs.  We found the silhouettes off a background website and Chad converted them to use in the Cricut.  We printed out a couple of pages of edible images for the pennant flags.  The riding hat on top was hard only because I had to come up with something to go under it so that it wouldn't sit flat.  That was a customer request.  The pink, coral,blue and navy was very pretty in the barn and the cake looked great there.  Looking at it now, I would liked to have had more color on the cake as a whole, but I don't take liberties with the conditions of the contract. I know it's not always ideal, but I would hate to add stress to a family the day before an event.

That's when it's

great to have longtime customers that can trust you enough to change the design when needed. The blue ribbon, hat and riding crap were all made from fondant with a little tylose to firm things up.  I hope you can draw some inspiration from our little cake!

3D Acoustic Guitar Groom's Cake

     We have made three musical instruments to date.  A simple acoustic guitar, a fantastic banjo, and this cake.  The bride was limited on her budget, so to cut costs/labor we didn't make any type of armature for this cake.  The neck is entirely made out of cereal treats and then "faked out" by using black fondant to represent the underside of the neck.  I like the look of it, especially since I didn't have to do a bunch of woodworking that isn't much fun to me.  The sides of the guitar are buttercream.  The top and neck are all covered in modeling chocolate.

     For the cake board, I did use a power tool and cut 1" thick Gatorboard with a rotozip tool.  Gatorboard is a lot like foamboard, but instead of paper on the outside, it's this really hard surface.  You can't cut it with a box cutter.  I used to use it all the time when I was in visual merchandising.  Look at the letters in a department store and you will see this material.   It was not my most brilliant plan :(  It was messy, bumpy, and not a good structural idea.  I was moving the cake from the cooler to the table and hit the neck cake board on the side of the table.  It was heavier than I expected and I was just trying to hurry too much.  My accident caused the neck of the cake board to break but not come off.  At this point, the cake was carved and iced smooth so moving it to another board would have turned it into a pile of crumbs.  For a solution, we cut a 1/4" piece of plywood about the size of the cake and glued it underneath to brace the original cake board.  It gave me a lot more structural integrity. 

For the strings, well my husband is a damn genius!  We were so running out of time to finish this cake and I was going to do something that would not have been so pretty.  I'll give you the short version and we can follow it up with a little tutorial.  Since the Gatorboard cake board we could stab wooden skewers into it and they would hold in tight.  Chad drilled the tiniest of holes in the skewer and tied fishing line in a knot.  Then with both of us holding it so as to not damage my fancy paint job (heaven forbid we try this before the cake is otherwise done-silly baker).  We used a tall piece of modeling chocolate at the top of the neck to hold the string up so they didn't lay flat on the neck and it held them in the proper order without wiggling around.   We then put the line through another tiny hole in a wooden skewer and hammered it into the cake and board.  The tension was good and the line didn't move.  We then put some trim pieces over the top skewer to hide the skewers. We ran out of time to figure out camouflage for the bottom skewers.  We used real guitar string on the banjo, but know that we have figured this out, it will be our go to method.  I will say that when we moved the cake the strings got looser because the flex of the very long cake board but then got tight again as soon as we laid it on the display table.  I'm lucky the saggy, traveling strings didn't mess up my paint. 

 

Lastly, my lesson of the day is to paint with colored cocoa butter onto modeling chocolate.  Chef Rubber (http://www.shopchefrubber.com/Cocoa-Butter-Painting-Kit/) has a great kit that will last for a while.  ANYTIME I use an edible marker on modeling chocolate, once the cake comes out of the fridge and has a little condensation, all the details run like Alice Coopers mascara!  Cocoa butter painting takes a little practice, which is what I'm still doing, but once it firms up, the details won't move or get smudged by anything.  I hope you take something helpful away from this because one day you may have to figure out guitar strings on a cake!

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!

Millennium Falcon Birthday Cake

If you follow our blog, you will know that each year we get to make a fantastic cake for a sweet little birthday boy named Kaben.  His Mom gives us lots of freedom in terms of design and budget, so the cakes are fun for us to make.  This is the first year that we haven't done a tiered cake, but we spent more hours than ever before.

The biggest challenge making sculpted cakes can be figuring out the structure under the cake that will hold everything up.  It is scary and feels like you are more of a handyman that a baker.  Having a cake with pipes and plywood also cut down the amount of servings in the cake.  Our commercial refrigerator has a 22" wide door opening, so that limits our cake size and cake board.  Most sculpted cakes are built on the board with the armature screwed in and everything secured down.  When a customer needs a lot of servings and wants sculpted cake, you have to know your bakery's limitations.  You may need to add sheet cakes or smaller matching cakes to fill the order.  For this cake, I did need a lot of servings, about 100, and started the cake as large as I could while using my 22" cake board.  To get as many servings possible and avoid making an internal structure, I used a sturdy mud cake and sculpted the cake out of one BIG hunk of cake.  There were no supports, boards, wires or anything non-edible in the cake.  All the rectangles of cakes shown are 11x 14" layers.

This pic shows the cake structure underneath... Barely visible, right?

We've made a little movie to show how the progression of the cake sculpting.  Since the "real" Millennium Falcon is fairly flat and pizza like, we decided to sculpt it at an angle to get more cake servings.  We made the ships "stand" a little smaller and covered it in black Fondarific.  The idea is that it kind of disappears and isn't very noticeable.

A video posted by Jenniffer White (@cupadee) on Dec 12, 2014 at 6:14pm PST

I did get distracted and forgot to keep taking pictures once the decorating got started.  I will give you a few words of advice if you decide to tackle a cake like this:

1. Use a firm cake.  Soft boxed mix type texture will not hold up to the process, even if you keep it cold.
2. Find templates, blow them up to the correct size, cover in packing tape to laminate, and use them the very best you can.  Cut smaller than the template because when you add buttercream and then modeling chocolate it will "grow" into the template.
3. Use only modeling chocolate.  These are all panels that are fit together so you can cut sharply and maintain sharp corners.  You also have unlimited working time to go back and add lines and such.
4. Use icing tips, #0, #00, #1 and #2 to add lots of very little details like "rivet" marks.
5. Since the add on pieces are so very small and thin, your hands will melt them really fast.  You can put an ice pack under your cookie sheet with the pieces on them.  We applied these tiny pieces by picking them up and positioning them with a pin.  That way you don't melt or distort them.
6. Print out a piece of edible image paper 1/2 black and 1/2 red.  We used this to add all the little colors.  It looks MUCH sharper than painting the small details.  Those details are not all accurate.  At that point, I was "winging it" just to make it look good.
7. Dry brushing will get into the scored lines and bring out the details.  It also makes it look more authentic and less showroom new.

Lastly, if you want to make this cake, schedule 40 hours of decorating time.  That's not including baking, making templates, and research.  I've seen a similar cake done in all buttercream and it was nice, but I like sharper look and cleaner details.  If you want a simpler version (I don't mean that ugly), that might be the avenue to take.  If you get it done in 20 hours, send me a picture so I can give you a shout out!

Thanks to all of you that stop in and read my little old blog from time to time.  I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and a joyous 2015!!

Book Collection Groom's Cake

 

Can you believe we've done five book themed wedding or groom's cakes?  Who knew it was such a big thing?  The sweet little couple that wanted this cake knew exactly what they wanted, titles and colors.  All I had to do was make the cake.  The groom wanted raised letters, so no edible images. We cut these out of modeling chocolate.  We used all modeling chocolate in fact. Not only does it taste better, it cuts so nice and clean with no stretching.  Great for sharp edges!  We have a line cutter that we use to mark the "pages".  You kind of go back and forth and all over with it, but it scratches up the surface to look like lots of pages. Way easier than a knife!  You can find it online here.   It was a pretty large and HEAVY cake! I hope the couple loved it!

Camera Lens Groom's Cake

We have mentioned in previous posts about finding designs that will meet the needs of you client's vision and budget. This groom wanted a Nikon camera cake but that's a little involved. This camera lens cake was a cool compromise. It's still a cool cake but was six 9" round cakes and required only a tiny bit of carving. To be accurate I should have carved in at the bottom to about an 8" round but I didn't want to lose any structural integrity. This was a soft cake and it doesn't hold up well to a bunch of carving.

We used Fondarific in black for the sides. We rolled out the band and cut the right height. We then embossed a pattern to mimic the real thing and chilled it for a few minutes so the design didn't stretch out when applying it to the sides. Next we just added some bands with other textures on the top and bottom. This also helped give an illusion of a carved cake. Next we added a circle on top to be the "lens". We added some bands around the top lip and side of the lens. That piece was cut to go above the lens and give the appearance of a inset lens. I hope that makes sense, I know it sounds a little crazy. Just make sure all your bands line up the same in the back.

Chad printed the graphics out on edible image paper. My mistake on this cake was a common one. Anytime you apply an edible image, it needs to go onto a white or very light background or the color bleeds through the image. If you can't add a small piece of white fondant behind the graphic, then use a fresh page of edible image as a white background. I didn't and the black color came through. I know better! Bad cake decorator!

Workout Weights Groom's Cake

This workout inspired groom's cake was finally a chance to do a little something different!  The actual working out does not interest me in the least, but a cake about it? Heck yeah!

There are a few things that I still can't do well and spheres is one of them.  I try and try, but they come out "wonky" in shape and the fondant coverings are terrible.  What I have learned is that making the bottom half of the rounds out of pre-made half spheres is the way to go.   Cake does not like being upside down so gravity is not your friend.  Dallas Foam  has all kinds of sizes and I always keep a few on hand for sphere "emergencies". 

I've really noticed this year that black fondant can fade really fast.  In a day it can go from dark black to dark gray.  My first advice is to work extra black color into it before you get going.  Someone mentioned adding baking soda or baking powder and that would help, but I can't find the actual instructions, so please let me know if you have a clue what that tip is all about!  The weights are all covered with modeling chocolate.  I did not have any problem with it fading.   The medicine ball is fondant and I had to paint it with petal dust just to get it back to black. 

 

The other "new" technique that I am trying to use is painting with cocoa butter.  I've had super bad luck using edible markers on modeling chocolate.  It totally runs when it gets condensation on it.  For the weights, I marked the letter with cutters and then painted in the lines with white cocoa butter.  You have to keep it warm as you are working, but that is the only "tricky" thing. 

I used the jump rope as a "border" to hide the yucky bottoms of the top tiers.  Also on the three weights, I wanted a "lip" but when stacking them, I had to cut away the areas that would have been squished from the tier above it.  All my technical cake talk is so complicated :)  Hope you enjoy looking and learned something from my experience.  If you have any tips on spheres or fading fondant, please share with us all in the comment section. 

The Grill Master Cake w/ Coal Mini Tutorial

Happy Labor Day!  We hope everyone had some down time to relax and grill some yummy foods.  Segue into a grill cake! See what I did there? So subtle....

A sweet bride gave us some artistic freedom and the basics that she wanted:  gray, grill master on front, and meats on the grill.  The easy part is the simple gray buttercream round with two fondant ribbons on top and bottom.  If you don't have to use fondant, people will love just buttercream. Remember that with a cake like this, you don't have to put any effort is smoothing the top since you're just covering it up.  We added a gray THICK (1/2" ish) piece all around the top.  It's what the grate is sitting on.  This way, like the cigar box we did a few weeks ago, we didn't have to carve into the cake to get the inset look.  We needed a place for our coals and 1/2" was plenty.

We used these new flat Jet-Puffed Chocolate Brownie Marshmallows for the coals.  We airbrushed the marshmallows black.  It didn't take much color.  If you don't have an airbrush, buy a Preval Sprayer or buy a Wilton can of black spray.  We then mixed about one cup of powdered sugar with about a tablespoon of cocoa powder and teaspoon of black powdered food coloring.  Once mixed, these will give you  good looking "charcoal and ashes"!  We all want that!

We arranged the coals all flat and added heavy ash in the middle fading out to just a little on the outside.  We then added a little yellow, orange and red disco dust/edible glitter.  I wasn't crazy about the glitter, but time was ticking and there was no time for experimentation.  We did not have time/money in the budget for an edible grate, so we used Wooden dowels, hot glued all the pieces and painted them with silver spray paint.  A small saw would be best to get pretty, not squished ends. We used wire cutters and it made them ugly.  Next time we will know better.

Lastly we made no-bake oatmeal/ peanut butter / chocolate cookies for the hamburgers.  We used the most popular recipe on Food Network.com for ours.  We pressed in a skewer and airbrushed the black lines since we already had it out.  The could be painted on with a brush just as easily.  The hot dogs are modeling chocolate with the same technique for the lines.  We used a toothpick to make the details on the sides.   I hope this project seems easy enough for anyone to give it a try.  I promise it's not hard and is lots of fun!

If you want to see a few in-process of the marshmallow coals, hit Read More.

Happy Grilling!

Tennis Shoe Cake

We made a pair of Air Jordon shoes and their box as part of a larger groom's cake.  We have made two other shoe cakes.  A pair of Converse All-Star's and a pair of fancy high heels with a shoe box.  Lucky for us, the bride let us pick the shoe design, it just had to be accurate as the groom was a collector.   The easiest avenue for any 3D cake is to have the item in front of you, or at least a 3D model (like a car).  I find it so helpful for all those little things, like accurate measurements!  We picked these because they looked easy compared to all the rest of the Air Jordon line.  Shoes are notoriously deceiving so keep that in mind when you're planning.  It took us eight hours to make the pair.  Some people may think that is crazy long, but I have not figured out a way to "hurry" on a project like these.

Let me tell you what I learned/did wrong with this project.

1.  Black fondant FADES!  I added extra black food coloring when I started but I truly believe that the fondant faded just in the time it was exposed to lights.  I saw these girls on "Amazing Wedding Cakes" practically working in the dark to avoid their black from fading.  I thought they were crazy!  I'm sorry ladies, you are sane and black fondant is stupid.  MAYBE if I was doing this exact same project again, I would airbrush the shoes before adding the soles and edible images.  MAYBE that would have helped.  They really didn't fade until I had the details on and at the point the air brush ship has sailed.

2. Make paper templates of sections so that all sides are exactly the same.  For example the side squares with the dots and without the dots.  I should have made all the templates and pinned them on one of the shoes before I started scoring the lines.  I wouldn't have gotten "off" had I done it that way.  Every cake has a backside!

3. CK Edible lacquer is super awesome!  The shoe had shiny parts and I sprayed some lacquer in a paint cup and used a small paint brush to apply it precisely when it was supposed to go.  Lesson here, the stuff dulls the longer it sits.  What until a couple of hours before the event to apply this if possible.  It won't go away over a day or two, it's just less shiny.

4.  Edible image paper is my friend!  Chad found a little dot pattern and printed out one page.  I used my templates to cut the pieces a tiny bit larger and then used a clad tool to bend them into the seam. 

5.  The sole is so important!  I used straight fondant for the black parts, but the red and white parts were 100% modeling chocolate.  The white part was put on as one big, thick piece and I took a ball tool and carved the lines and details in.  I should have spent much more time on the sole as the real shoe had more ridges, but I was out of time.....

6.  I have lost my ticking tool.  The one that makes it look like you have a sewn line.  I used some Wilton tool, but it just looked bad so I didn't add anymore detail with it, but once it's done you have to live with it. 

Remember to plan EIGHT hours or more and charge accordingly :)  Now I have to go and order my missing tool!

Easy to Make Chinese Takeout Box Cake

I had to make these Chinese takeout box treats for a larger cake recently (coming soon!) and they were actually pretty easy to make!  Want to make your own?

I started with a couple of clean takeout boxes from my favorite Chinese restaurant.  We went there for dinner one night and I just asked them for a couple of extras.  They didn't even charge for them, so that's a bonus!

OK, we're going to use the boxes for 2 reasons - to mold the cereal treats and to make the patterns for the outside of the box, so treat it carefully!

The boxes are wax-coated, but I still gave it a good spray with pan spray so the RKTs wouldn't stick.  Then just pour in the cereal treats, let them come almost to the top (leave maybe 1/2 an inch) and then close the box so that it keeps it's shape nicely while it dries.

Once the cereal treats have set up, you'll want to coat the sides to smooth things out.  In this case I used royal icing.  While that's drying we can make our patterns.

To make your patterns, start by taking out the wire handle.  It was a little difficult to do without messing up the box, but keep at it and you'll get it.  Once the handle is out, the box unfolds nicely.  I used a piece of card stock to draw out the panels around the box, including the top flaps, but not the very bottom.  I then used those patterns to cut each side piece out of white modeling chocolate.  Once you have all your pieces, you can start assembling your box!

I used a little tylose glue on the royal icing start putting on the panels, just make sure you save the overlapping flaps until last.  Now you can start putting in the food!  Use whatever you want for food, but my extruded fondant noodles really did look the most convincing, and I had a blast making cute little noodle loops coming out of the box!  Add your desired logos using edible images and your almost done!

Almost done, why just almost?  Well, at this point you can be done. but my "food" wasn't looking saucy enough until I hit it with a little edible lacquer.  I was really surprised at how that little bit of shine really brought a lot of realism to the piece!

FULL DISCLOSURE:  As a member of the Amazon Affiliate program, I receive a small commission if you buy a product from the links on my blog.  I actually own the products I recommend and all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Another Bottle Cap Groom's Cake

I've blogged about bottlecap cakes on several different occasions.  They are a great option for clients that enjoy their brewskies (or any drink for that matter!)  The great part is that they're relatively easy to make and they're budget friendly.

The funny thing about these bottle cap cakes is that once the groom hears that I offer a chocolate cake with Guinness stout beer they are sold.  There's just something about a cake with beer in it that reaches out and grabs men by their tastebuds!  If you haven't tried the chocolate stout cake yet, you can get the recipe at King Arthur Flour's website.

This cake offered us a mildly different challenge.  Normally we just cut out the pieces we need.  This logo was more of a negative image; it took up all the space and the pieces we cut out were the pieces that got thrown away.  And the graphic is based on a 16-inch round, and our cutter will only cut a 12 x 24 inch graphic.  So we had to make a common cut and cut the logo in two separate pieces.  It really helped to have the graphic printed out full size when pulling out the "unwanted" pieces.

Thanks for stopping by and have an awesome week!

Cigar Humidor Groom's Cake

The entire time I worked on this cake I called it a cigar box cake, but it is in fact, a humidor cake.  A humidor is more than just a fancy cigar box; they have a hygrometer that helps keep the cigars at the perfect humidity for maximum freshness.

I had this cake on the books for a while and the week before it was due I saw an ad for Sharon Zambito and Wayne Steinkopf's humidor class.  I was very interested in how they did did the lid mechanism for the cake.  I have made cakes with "lids" before and each time I have used a different technique with varying complexity. Here I used a simple piece of foamcore as the back lid of the humidor.  It was much easier than making the lid hinge forward or back  I'll definitely be using this in the future.

I did use a little different technique for the cigars though.  I had some chocolate cigar molds and while they were tasty, they didn't look anything like cigars.  I made some tobacco colored fondant very very thin, and rolled each of the chocolate cigars.  Some scans of the groom's favorite cigar bands on edible images completed the look.  When they were done they looked very similar to the cigars I purchased as models.

This was a fun cake to do, but making it sure brought back a lot of memories of my dear father, Ray Sills.  Daddy loved to take a few puffs off his cigar or pipe every night after dinner.  A cigar would last him a month or two.  Like most dads, he was almost impossible to buy presents for, but I always knew I could get him a good cigar and he would be happy.  I can't stand the smell of cigarettes, but any time I smell a cigar or pipe I always smile and think of my Dad; he would have loved this cake!

Going on a Bender Cake

Photo courtesy of our friend Jim Pankey

Very recently I helped a very good friend of ours with his wedding day. I even spent a couple of days acting as bridal planner, coordinator, and decorator. It certainly gave me a new found respect for those people, but that's another post.

This post is about this crazy groom's cake! Our friend Chris has a million interests; he's a lawyer, into martial arts, electric guitars, South Park, Simpsons, Family Guy, Futurama - he's into a little bit of everything. So when we met with him we had no idea what might come out of his head when it came down to the groom's cake. I was delighted when he said "You guys know me and what I like, just work your magic." We had already been kicking around the idea of a Bender cake, so that sealed the deal.

In my mind, this seemed like such an easy cake; he seems like such a basic shape. The execution proved to be much more difficult. Here are some notes on exactly how we straightened out Bender!

We based this cake on a 6-inch base. I looked at my domed pans and I had a six and an eight inch domes. 8 inches was going to be WAY too big. We printed out some large images to us as templates and used those to determine where the visor would be located. I made a custom cardboard cake board for that section so the visor would have something to rest upon. I also carved out the mouth area and covered the whole thing in fondant.

Our only in-progress shot of the cake!

Now for the visor, man that thing was tough! I started by making a rice crispy treat puck that fit against the side to the cake, but still came straight out. Think about how a scuba mask is made. That puck rested on the extended cake board and I used royal icing to glue it to the side of the cake.

I then took modeling chocolate and made a band that was wrapped around the puck and the board it rested on. It stuck out more than the puck, but not a lot, just enough to allow for the eyes, which we used candy melts to make. As I type this, it makes it sound easy since this is what worked, but there were several attempts that didn't.

Bottlecap Groom's Cake

We made a repeat cake last week, so there isn't a ton to say about the design.  We did so a little better job on carving the sides by making the indentations a little closer together.  I also chose not to airbrush the sides because I didn't think it needed it.  It is so much easier making a cake design for the second time!

The "big" story on this cake is the flavors!  It was an "Irish Car Bomb" cake.  The chocolate cake is made with lots of Guinness stout.  The filling was chocolate ganache flavored with Jameson whiskey.  The buttercream was flavored with Baileys Irish Cream.  Yum!  It takes a lot of these alcohols, so if you sell cakes, you should know that it is an "expensive ingredient cake".

I'm sharing the recipe I used for this cake as well as for all the cakes I carve (that need to be chocolate).   The cake tastes like a brownie and cake got married and had a yummy little baby!   I can't throw away the scraps that I carve out because it's so yummy!  We found the recipe in a King Arthur Flour catalog.  They have such awesome ingredients, gadgets and even mixes.  I've tried so many of their recipes and they always seem to be great!   I hope you try the recipe and love it like we do!

Try the recipe here:
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/chocolate-stout-cake-recipe

Collaborations Can Be A Blast!

I have talked before about the importance of having cake friends.  It's nice to have someone to complain to and to bounce ideas off of, but sometimes you get to collaborate on really cool projects.

Our friends Kimberly and Andrew of Couture Cakes were asked by country music super-station US 101 to do a cake for the Heartstrings for Hope concert benefiting St. Jude.  On these types of cakes there is SO much to do, and they asked us if we would like to help out.  In return, we would be their guests at the concert.

 

They know of our (OK, Chaddy's) prowess with logos and the cutting machine, so they gave us a list of words and the US 101 logo and we started rolling out modeling chocolate.  I came up with a really cool trick while working on all these millions of letters.  I used strips of parchment paper with some vegetable shortening on it an used that to adhere the paper to the FRONT of the letters.  The spacing is kept in tact.  They were easy to apply to the cake too - just apply a little tylose glue to the back of the letters and place them against the cake.  Hold your hand over the paper and the heat from your hand will release the shortening.  Easy peasy!

We ONLY did the words & logos on this cake...

So here's the cake and it turned out amazingly, don't you think?  Andrew did an absolutely perfect job sculpting each of the artists Which included Randy Houser, Tyler Farr, Kelly Lovelace, Jared Neimann, and Sheryl Crow!  We were also treated to a backstage meet and greet - getting to meet all of those talented artists was almost as much fun as helping out our friends!