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!

Black Vine Wedding cake

There seems to be a lot of weddings this year with a black and white color scheme. I'm a fan, especially when it's done right! For this 3-tier wedding cake I used my house buttercream with some white color added to it. Most people know this, but just in case you don't make your black icing at least a day before. It will deepen overtime and you don't have to use as much color. This is especially important when you are mixing colors like red or orange that have to match ribbon or an invitation. Make it ahead and make plenty. The only tricky thing with a cake like this is making sure you "caulk" the seams in between the layers so that it looks very clean. When you pipe in black, you'd better mean it. It is hard to undo. This design was given to me by the bride. I tried to reproduce it the best I can, but piping is a little like hand writing, everyone has their own style.

Bright Heart Cake

Well, we have had a lot of white cakes lately so I thought we'd mix it up a little. This is the only heart shaped cake I have done to date. It's even hard to tell that it's a heart after I told you! I like the bright colors, but wow it's a lot going on. I'm more of a simplistic design type of person, but when the customer give you specifics then that's what you do! This cake had a lot of silver dragees on it. Wouldn't it be nice if you could put those on ahead of time? The cooler makes them dissolve, even if it's just overnight. ARGH! I really don't like last minute work because so much can happen and you have no time to fix it, but I guess that's the way the cake crumbles. For the border, I just cut a circle in half and used an food safe marker for the design. The piping is thick, #5 I think, but the white helped to break up the color some. This was a sweet sixteen cake and the event was in a big fancy barn. They had giant posters of the birthday girl hanging from the rafters, a dance floor, lights, DJ, the whole works. They had a giant crane directly over the cake table when we got there and I wouldn't put the cake there because I'm protective of my little babies. I waited patiently until the crane was moved. It's bad enough that they cut them, but I couldn't bear it to be squished by a crane!