Making birthday magic!!

September is birthday month around our house.  We have 5 birthdays, and 2 anniversaries.  The cake eating is non-stop.  October is affectionately referred to as "get your butt to the gym month"  I only made a couple of the cakes this time.  Work responsibilities and time shortages prevented me from doing all of them.  

First up was our granddaughter's candy land, wonderland cake.  I rose to this occasion like Phoenix rising.  

Three cakes were made with box mixes, and I added an extender recipe.  This makes the cake a little larger, and firmer in my opinion.  I also used spring form pans.  I googled advice on that, and some said don't do it, others said go for it.  So I decided to give it a try.  I had just bought the Wilton spring form heart and really wanted to use it,  Total success.  No mess.  That's what ideal cake making is all about.  These are the baked cakes with their crumb coat on.  

Using Wilton gels, I then tinted the icing is pastel colours to do with the awesome pearlized gumballs I purchased from The Bulk Barn.  I love that store.  Candy land heaven!!! This is what that looked like.  

I had to use dowels to keep my cake together, and this speaks to the fact that I didn't cut and level the cakes very well, (or not at all as is the case here)  Lesson learned.  Future cakes will be levelled properly.

Next was the best part.  Adhering all the additional candy bought to make this little girl's dream a reality.  So easy, yet so time consuming.  I cut the gum drops in half to make them have a flush side to "glue" with the buttercream.   The sour ribbons were a great addition to hide a multitude of sins in the cake making industry (in reality, just my kitchen)

Topped  off with candy floss suckers!!!  How precious right?  Candy floss on little lollipop sticks, so cute.  Life lesson, do you know what happens to candy floss when left out in the open air????  Well here is a lesson, a big life lesson, probably just for those that don't ever eat floss, possibly because it has a strange gritty texture that makes your teeth want to fall out of your head.  This is an example of what candy floss becomes.

Not very appetising to say the least.  A little horrifying to be honest.  That was within 25 minutes.  Just a big ball of yuck.  Lesson learned.  After a side trip to buy some great lollipops all was right in the world again.

Finished cake!!! Transported and delivered without further issues!!!  On happy little girl with her dream cake.  That's what its all about folks, smiles, and family.

Next up was our big girls birthday.  Our oldest daughter turned 29 and she has a thing for Kit Kat bars.  Always has, from the time she had her first one.  I just feel like everyone's birthday should be a special, just for them experience.  So this is the cake I created just for her.  I have to say, she loved it and so did all the guests are her birthday bonfire.

Super simple, easy to achieve by anyone that attempts this cake.  Bake cake, Ice cake.  I actually just used pre-made icing for this.  Edge with the chocolate bars and fasten with a ribbon.  Section off the top with lady fingers, and fill the spots with chocolates of your choice.  I was done the decorating portion in about 30 minutes.  It was a bit of a nightmare to cut and serve, but hey, all is good in great cake making.

Making birthday magic!!

September is birthday month around our house.  We have 5 birthdays, and 2 anniversaries.  The cake eating is non-stop.  October is affectionately referred to as "get your butt to the gym month"  I only made a couple of the cakes this time.  Work responsibilities and time shortages prevented me from doing all of them.  

First up was our granddaughter's candy land, wonderland cake.  I rose to this occasion like Phoenix rising.  

Three cakes were made with box mixes, and I added an extender recipe.  This makes the cake a little larger, and firmer in my opinion.  I also used spring form pans.  I googled advice on that, and some said don't do it, others said go for it.  So I decided to give it a try.  I had just bought the Wilton spring form heart and really wanted to use it,  Total success.  No mess.  That's what ideal cake making is all about.  These are the baked cakes with their crumb coat on.  

Using Wilton gels, I then tinted the icing is pastel colours to do with the awesome pearlized gumballs I purchased from The Bulk Barn.  I love that store.  Candy land heaven!!! This is what that looked like.  

I had to use dowels to keep my cake together, and this speaks to the fact that I didn't cut and level the cakes very well, (or not at all as is the case here)  Lesson learned.  Future cakes will be levelled properly.

Next was the best part.  Adhering all the additional candy bought to make this little girl's dream a reality.  So easy, yet so time consuming.  I cut the gum drops in half to make them have a flush side to "glue" with the buttercream.   The sour ribbons were a great addition to hide a multitude of sins in the cake making industry (in reality, just my kitchen)

Topped  off with candy floss suckers!!!  How precious right?  Candy floss on little lollipop sticks, so cute.  Life lesson, do you know what happens to candy floss when left out in the open air????  Well here is a lesson, a big life lesson, probably just for those that don't ever eat floss, possibly because it has a strange gritty texture that makes your teeth want to fall out of your head.  This is an example of what candy floss becomes.

Not very appetising to say the least.  A little horrifying to be honest.  That was within 25 minutes.  Just a big ball of yuck.  Lesson learned.  After a side trip to buy some great lollipops all was right in the world again.

Finished cake!!! Transported and delivered without further issues!!!  On happy little girl with her dream cake.  That's what its all about folks, smiles, and family.

Next up was our big girls birthday.  Our oldest daughter turned 29 and she has a thing for Kit Kat bars.  Always has, from the time she had her first one.  I just feel like everyone's birthday should be a special, just for them experience.  So this is the cake I created just for her.  I have to say, she loved it and so did all the guests are her birthday bonfire.

Super simple, easy to achieve by anyone that attempts this cake.  Bake cake, Ice cake.  I actually just used pre-made icing for this.  Edge with the chocolate bars and fasten with a ribbon.  Section off the top with lady fingers, and fill the spots with chocolates of your choice.  I was done the decorating portion in about 30 minutes.  It was a bit of a nightmare to cut and serve, but hey, all is good in great cake making.

A Roaring Good Time

I have often thought to myself that once my children were grown and gone, life would blend into a quiet existence, boring, with little to do.  The second phase of adult life brings better things, like grandchildren!!  Our youngest grand, turned 5 on the weekend and he had requested a dinosaur cake.  I am thrilled that our daughter allows me to make their cakes, it gives me something to do, and hopefully the Little's will remember that.  So this was going to be my first attempt at a dinosaur.

We started with some rice krispy treats fashioned into a dino head.  I didn't take a picture of what I used for a mold, but I picked up a rubber dinosaur hand puppet at the dollar store washed it out, sprayed the inside with Pam and stuffed it with the rice krispy mixture.  When it was set I just cut it off and came out with this.  I had some trouble keeping the mouth open, but I solved that as you will see later in this post.

I made 3 boxes of cake mix, 2 chocolate and 1 white.  That gave us 3 layers to the cake.  I made those a week in advance and froze them, I find it easier to work with a frozen cake to crumb coat.  They aren't as delicate, and they don't fall apart as readily.

I had a plan somewhat, but I thought we should see how this developed.  At the last minute I decided that I would cover the head with fondant.  Originally I planned to use butter cream, but someone suggested the fondant, and I have had limited and not good experience using this stuff, but I gave it another try and am really glad that I did.

After applying a layer of butter cream, I began working my fondant onto the head.  I stuck it back in the freezer for a bit to get it really hard so it was easier to work with.  I used the bottom end of an icing tip to create a circle pattern all over it to represent a scale like texture.  Behind is my three layer crumb coated cake.  

As you can see I was using a small object to keep his house open during this stage.  I am not sure how you get the rice krispy's condensed enough to stay in position at all times.  Certainly something to work on in future projects.

A second layer of brown butter cream created a dirt look to my cake.  I trimmed the bottom in candy stones from the Bulk Barn, and after it sit long enough to form a light crust I used a piece of parchment paper to smooth out the finished product.

I rolled out another piece of fondant and attached it to the inside of  the mouth to create the tongue, and used brown edible dust to shade in along the snout and around the eyes with a new paint brush  to give it more of an authentic look.  I made some tooth shapes out of fondant also and attached them with a dab of butter cream inside the mouth as well.

Finally it was time to assemble it and finish the grass around the head.

I love the grass icing tip, easy to use, and you really can't do it wrong.  I stuck a Kinder Egg in the mouth to prop it open.  I made some eyes from fondant and used a dab of black colouring for the centres.  And here we have the Dinosaur cake that our grandson just adored.  Totally edible, and a huge hit at his party.