Sunday, March 18, 2007

Bomber Jet Cake




This cake was made for a war vet's 70th birthday. His wife came to me and asked me to replicate a model that they had in their home. I was slightly hesitant at first - there's not a whole lot out there about airplane cakes to begin with, let alone bomber jet's. I agreed to do it anyway figuring we'd just power through it.

This was the hardest cake we have ever done, period. Rodney did an excellent job of carving the body of the plane out for me, I was really pleased with the way the shape came out. It's two layers of a french vanilla cake. This is actually the second version of the cake, we scrapped the first one at 1 am Friday morning. The color of the fondant on the first cake was almost purple and it wasn't looking very good so we started over.

So - sheet cake is double layered devil's food with vanilla bc. The plane is covered in marshmallow fondant and painted with A LOT of silver luster dust. The only things that are not edible on this piece are the wings. (foam board covered in mmf) The propellers are gumpaste, as is the nose and the Air Force emblem. (the propellers spin as well). All of the other decorations were piped on by yours truly.

I'm very proud of this cake - it took a lot of work and a lot of effort (including a crack in the fondant Friday night) but it was worth it. I definitely couldn't have managed without Rodney on this one, he did most of the technical work and did a GREAT job.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

Mini Cupcakes




These were made for Tango's "Wii Party." They requested that they be decorated in spring colors with half chocolate cake and half vanilla.

I loved making these. They were pretty easy and didn't take very long at all. Perfectly sized too! You can't go wrong with mini!

(icing was vanilla bc on both types of cupcakes)

City Baby Shower Cake



This cake was made for a baby shower. Two cakes were made, this was the main one. It's a red velvet cake with vanilla bc. It's decorated to look like the pattern and scheme of the baby's nursery.

To make the cars and the buidings I used white chocolate candy melts. I originally wanted to blow the picture that was sent to me up and trace each car. However, our printer was out of ink so I had to free-hand them. I was pretty happy with the outcome considering the picture was so small. They look exactly as they do on the print in the nursery. I colored a bunch of candy melts in different colors and then traced each car that had a piece of wax paper on top of it. Once those were done, the hard part was over.

The name was shaped out of home-made marshmallow fondant. I wanted the name to have a whimsical feel to it, so I made a batch of fondant and shaped it out 5 days ahead of time. (To give it time to dry) Apparently that was not long enough because the "J" broke on me a few times, as did the "K." I ended up having to use toothpicks through the centers and through the cake in order to keep it all together. The moon was made from marshmallow fondant as well and I used a piece of wire to hold it up. The toothpicks and the wire were the only non-edible pieces on this cake.

The only other problem I had with this cake came from one of the building pieces. It snapped in half after I set it in place. I had to "glue" it back together with some more melted chocolate and then reinforce it from behind with some royal icing.

I'm pretty sure everyone was happy with the cake, I had a lot of fun doing it!!

(the second cake was a small six inch, white cake with strawberries in the middle. it was decorated with the same colors)