Now I know...

This is my six year old Logan's birthday cake.  He wanted a Ninjago cake!  

I wanted to make legos stacked on each other with the four main Ninjagos around the cake. Each Ninjago had "their" weapon the they use.  Each Ninjago was made of gumpaste mixed with fondant.  I was happy how my "Lego green" board turned out.  I covered a thin wood board with fondant and made little lego nubs  out of fondant as well.  

The details to each Ninja were painted on with food coloring and a tiny paintbrush.  

  I wanted to achieve crisp "Lego" like edges, so I opted to give modeling chocolate a try.  It hardens unlike fondant, so if you get crisp edges they shouldn't soften like fondant can. I know I hated using modeling chocolate for figures, but I thought I would try it as a covering on this cake. 

And now I know that is is NOT good to cover a cake with the chocolate.  It was so annoying to work with, it just wasn't doing what I wanted it to do.  The modeling chocolate was cut into side and top pieces that were measured to cover each cake block correctly.  But behold...cracking!   

The modeling chocolate was very brittle and began flaking off at edges as well.  Luckily I have a great son who could not have cared less.   Inside the cake (forgot to take a picture, I was too excited to chop up the cake and be done with it) was bubblegum flavored cake.  I used a basic white cake recipe, and added a drum of Loranne Oil, bubblegum flavoring.  This gave the cake a "hint" of bubblegum flavoring, the real flavoring was in the frosting.  I used Duncan Hines new "Flavor packets".  I made my own frosting and added one packet to 6 cups of frosting..plenty of flavoring!  It tasted just like pink bubblegum!  Those of us tasters were saying how our mouths wanted to keep chewing the cake, as if it was gum.  It was pretty fun for a kid cake.  So now I know, that I hate modeling chocolate  yes hate.  I don't like it at all and have sworn it off.  Fondant the only one for me!

On the Beach with my horse

I have a niece how loves horses, she has been riding since she was four, and her horse is her best friend.  Her birthday came up and she asked to have a cake with her horse on it, but she also wanted to have a beach cake, since she also loves the beach.  

Knowing this girl had a sense of humor, 

I came up with this literal image of her and her horse hanging out on the beach .  

The beach tier of the cake is styrofoam, the bottom ocean is two layers of 8" cake. 

 Emmalee loves to bogey board at the beach, 

and on the yellow one is where I added the year, 2013 

This was my first time doing the ruffled fondant edge. It didn't take as long as I thought, and was pretty easy to do, although it did use a lot of fondant.   

I added edible sand as a border and on top of the beach tier as well, I was so happy to achieve a realistic "sand" look.  

 

This is her horse, chilling at the beach, eating some chips.  

She is content next to him with a book.  I made the beach chairs out of gumpaste and let them harden several days before I made the figures.  

Chillin' with friends

Happy Birthday Emmalee!

Army Cake

This cake is for an eight year old boy who loves the army, camouflage and guns.  

I thought I would go away from the usual 8" round cake and make the cake the shape of an army helmet.  

I also made a  Colt 1911A1, which is a standard army handgun. 

Thank you google images for info on that one.   

Dog tags were a fun way to tie in the birthday boy's name.  

I also wanted to tie in his age.  I really like putting either the year or the age on every cake, so in 15 years they can tell from the photos which year they had received the cake.  

On the side of the helmet I added some bullets tucked into the helmet belt.  You can't make an army cake for a boy without bullets, and of course a grenade.  All the elements of this cake were made out of fondant.  

Happy Birthday!!

School Cupcakes

My children's school was having a fundraiser this past week and needed baked goods.  I made cupcakes using the school colors (gold, navy blue and primary red) and the logo.  

These gold cupcakes have an edible image of the school logo- go Redhawks!

Then I made little girls and boys in their red school uniform polo collars.  

These were really fun to make.    

Then I made a few cupcakes with navy blue sixlets, on top.  If you are selling anything at a school function, you need it kid friendly.  I wanted some kind of candy on top of some of the cupcakes.  

Packaged and ready to go!  

Owl Birthday!

I made this cake for my two year old daughter who loves birds.  

She especially loves Owls.  

 The top is a 6", bottom tier is a 8" cake. 

On this cake I tried modeling chocolate instead of fondant.   The cake shows all use modeling chocolate, and although it hardens a lot quicker, I found it frustrating to use.  The chocolate is rock hard, then you warm it in your hands, and can mold it until your hands get too warm and the chocolate starts melting on your palms.  So making the owls was a messy process.  The pieces seem more fragile also.  I think I will use modeling chocolate when I need to have pieces  harden quickly, but if I have the time, I think fondant and gumpaste works better for figures. 

On the second owl I mixed the modeling chocolate with the fondant, 1:1 which I had read you could do as well.  I did not like it at all, don't try it- it was very dry and crumbly yet greasy.  It was a learning process and I ended up making a total of 4 owls for this one cake, I settled on my favorite two.  

The cake was surrounded with trees, and flowers made of cheerful colors, fun for a two year old birthday!