Painter's Palette Cake with Drip Tier

I have a cousin that always request the most interesting cake designs.  Because of her I get to experiment and learn challenging new techniques.  (And she doesn't get upset when I mess up and have to improvise.)

This month's new technique was the "Drip Cake".

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But before I could try out the drip technique I had to make the other do-dads for the cake.  First I made the painter's palette.  I cut out the shape from brown tinted fondant mixed with tylose powder.

I wanted the palette to have a marbled wood grained look, but I couldn't get enough colored veins into the fondant so I just brushed the different colors onto the palette using powder food color.  I used brown, black and yellow to get the effect I wanted.

Then I cut out circles of fondant tinted in red, blue, green, orange, and yellow.  To give the circles rounded edges and a domed shape, I placed plastic wrap over the fondant before cutting out the circles.

The top tier of the cake is supposed to look like a paint can, so I decided to make it a double barrel cake.  I planned on it being 6 inches round and 8 inches high, but when I started to assemble the tier it looked a little top heavy.  I didn't want the cake tipping over during transport, so I decided to make the top 4" out of a Styrofoam cake dummy.  (I used Styrofoam so often I should buy stock in it.)

I also didn't want to try and smooth a round piece of fondant over a 6" x 8" cake , so I took the easy way out and cut a long 8" x 20" piece of fondant and just wrapped it around the side of the double barrel cake.

Using this method results in seam at the back of the cake, but this process is so much easier than trying to drape and smooth fondant over a pencil shaped cake!  And who cares about a little seam at the back of the cake??  Not me.

To trim any excess fondant from the top of the cake I used a long razor blade.  For tasks like this, these long blades work so much better than X-Acto knives.

Then the real assembly started.  First I used my ACE Food Safe Extruder and made the turquoise fondant ribbon and bow for the bottom tier, and then I made the same size ribbon out of gray for the top tier.  I cut a 6-1/4 inch circle out of gray fondant and placed it on the top.  Next I cut out the pink circles and carefully measured and positioned then on the cake.  For the name I used some letter cutters, and for the handle of the paint can I used the extruder and a half-circle shaped disk.

Now for the hard part - the DRIP.  I did some research and found that I could use either white chocolate ganache tinted with oil based color, or I could use pre-colored Candy Melts and make ganache out of them.  I chose the Candy Melt route.  For a practice test I made Candy Melts ganache using a 2:1 ratio (60 grans if candy and 30 grabs of heavy whipping cream) but this made the ganache much, much too thin.  Next I tried a 5:1 ratio (60 grams of candy and 12 grams of heavy cream) but this was too thick.  I finally settled on a 3-1/2:1 ratio.  Next I had to decide on the delivery method: spoon or squeeze bottle.  I tried them both and while the spoon method had less mess, the squeeze bottle method gave more control over the exact placement of the drip.

I'm a precise kind of person so I decided on the squeeze bottle method.  I mixed up batches of  yellow, pink, orange, turquoise, and purple candy melts ganache.  I also had blue and green candy melts, but the blue and green look too similar to the turquoise so I didn't use them.  I also only had 5 squeeze bottles.

So time to start dripping...

Not too bad, but could have been better.  Here are some lessons I learned:

1. My ganache was too thick.  Next time I will go with a 3:1 ratio.  
2. You have to keep the ganache warm to keep it flowing smoothly.  I microwaved the squeeze bottle before every use, but it still got a little clumpy.  
3. You need to keep a little gap between each drip.  If you put the drips too close together they just merge into a big lump.  Drip one line and while still gently squeezing the bottle move the tip over about 1/4 inch.  Once you have a large enough gap, start squeeze out the next drip.
4. Next time I will keep the bottles in a pot of warm water instead of repeatedly microwaving the bottles.  I'm not sure if the glass door of my microwave was flawed or if it was the 50 odd microwaving sessions, but the next morning when I used the microwave to boil some water for  my tea this is what happened.   

The glass just shattered when the microwave finished the cycle.  There was a big boom and I heard all this crackling.  I didn't know what had happened.  I thought the cup had exploded but instead it was the glass in the door.

Oh well, such is life, but at least the cake came out cute.

Happy Decorating,

Carol


Supply List: 

Mona Lisa Fondant
ACE Food Safe Extruder
Tylose powder
Pastry Mat with Grid Lines
Sculpey Super Slicer Razor Blade
Cake Boss Circle Cutters
Cake Boss Letter Cutters
14" Cake Drum
Alligator Impression Mat (used on the fondant covering the cake drums)
Wilton Candy Melts
Wilton Squeeze Bottles

Easy Vampirina Cake with Spiderweb Drum

When a friend asked me to make a Vampirina Cake for her daughter's 4th birthday I said, "Vamp-a-who???"  Apparently I haven't been keeping up with the latest TV cartoon characters because I had no clue who Little Miss Vampirina was.

Anyway the cake my friend select was pretty easy to make, but the one thing that gave me pause was the request for NO FONDANT.   Wait WHAT???   Sure I've made buttercream covered cakes before, but they all had a rustic look.  I never tried making a buttercream cake with a smooth surface and sharp edges.

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But before I had to deal with icing the cake I concentrated on making Vampirina's  bat shaped pigtails.  I used black Dream fondant mixed with Tylose power to form black gumpaste, and embedded a wooden skewer into the pigtail cutouts so I could attach them to the cake.  I made the pigtails a few days ahead of time so they would be nice and stiff by the time I needed them.

Next I moved onto the cake board.  Since Vampirina has a web design on her clothing, I decided to make a web on the cake drum.  I started with a 14" cake drum that I covered in black Dream fondant.  I also use my alligator skin impression mat to give it a little texture, but in hindsight I probably should have left it un-textured (it was a little busy looking).  After covering the drum I moved onto the "web".  I used my nifty ACE Extruder to make thin strands of white fondant, and then I started to form the web.

First I placed two perpendicular strands across the drum.  I deliberately positioned the center of the web on the side of the drum because I thought it would make it more interesting looking.

After the first two lines where down, I filled in the other lines like I was cutting a pizza.

The I just started filling in the arching pieces of the web.  I cut each little piece to fit its individual space so it was a time consuming process.

I used vodka to "glue" the white strands to the black fondant below, but I had some trouble with look.  The vodka should have evaporated without leaving a trace, but for some reason the sections of the fondant dampened with vodka stayed shiny.  Don't know why this happened.

After the drum was webified I went to work on the actual cake.  I crumb coated the cake and used my acrylic disks to get those perfectly smooth sides and sharp edges.  This method works great (see an example of the process here), but I unwisely used my 8-1/4" rounds instead of the 8-1/2" rounds.  The 8-1/4" round didn't give me enough depth to completely cover the underlying cake with a thick coating of violet buttercream.  I actually had places where the cake was poking through the icing!  (It almost looked like a naked cake.)  I should have switched out the acrylic disks and re-iced the cake, but I was lazy and just sprayed the cake with some  Wilton's Violet Color Mist to hide the boo-boos.  This hack worked like a charm.  The violet colored spray hid all the cake that was peeping through the violet buttercream and no one was the wiser.

I place the cake on my webby drum, and then used some hot pink Sixlet Chocolate Candies to form the boarder around the cake.  Next I placed a thin circle of black fondant on top of the cake to form Vampirina's "hair".  At this point I noticed a BIG problem.  The combination of the violet buttercream and the violet color mist had made the cake surface too dark.  When I placed the black "eyes" on the cake I could hardly see them.  The black eye just faded into the dark purple background.  Not good, not good at all.

But the Color Mist saved the day again.  This time I used Pearl Color Mist and sprayed it on the front of the cake where the eyes needed to go.  The Pearl mist lightened the area and also made it shimmer.  That Color Mist (or an airbrush machine) is a life saver.

Next the pigtails/bat wings went on top of the cake.

And then the birthday girl's name using pink colored gumpaste and my FMM Funky Alphabet Cutters.  Originally I was going to place the cutout letters on the cake drum, but it looked too busy so I just put the name on top.    At this point the cake was technically "finished", but I thought it looked a little plain.  It looked like something was missing.

I decided to add a mouth with the tiny little fangs poking out.

It looked good, but still missing something, so I cutout a tiny bat for the top and the number "4" to place on the cake drum.

I was happy with it at that point so I decided it was "finished". 

Happy Birthday, Haylee.  Hope you like your Vampirina.

Happy Decorating,

Carol



Supply List: 

Mona Lisa Fondant
ACE Food Safe Extruder
Tylose powder
14" Cake Drum
Alligator Impression Mat (used on the fondant covering the cake drums)
Violet Food Color Gel
Wilton's Violet Color Mist
Wilton's Pearl Color Mist
FMM Funky Alphabet Cutters
Hot Pink Sixlet Chocolate Candies
Dream Fondant

Where The Wild Things Are - Cake

Are you a fan of the children's book, "Where the Wild Things Are"?  Honestly I can't say that I am.  I always thought it was a little dark and gloomy, but when my niece asked for a Wild Things Baby Shower Cake for her best friend, I couldn't say no.

But in the end it wasn't too bad because I found images of the creatures that were brighter and happier looking than the ones in the book.

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To make Max and the Wild Things, I printed the images on regular paper, cut them out, glued them onto thinly rolled gumpaste, and then trimmed the gumpaste to allow a 1/8" border around the printout.  The gumpaste backing kept the non-food safe printout away from the cake, and the gumpaste also protected the image and kept it from absorbing moisture.

Originally I printed the image on wafer paper so everything would be "edible", but the image didn't transfer well onto the wafer paper.  There was too much bleeding and the image just looked a little blurry.

To glue the printout to the gumpaste I used an Adhesive Dot Roller that is marketed for paper crafts.  The dots worked great because they go on without a mess and the sticky dots held the paper to the gumpaste without getting either one wet.

Then I just trimmed the gumpaste to fit the cutout image, leaving a 1/8" gap of gumpaste extending beyond the image.

Next I made the sailboat.  I cut out the sail from white gumpaste, and then cut out the body of the ship using gumpaste tinted red.

I used a bamboo skewer as the mast of the boat, but the skewer wouldn't stick to the gumpaste so I had to glue it with superglue.  I also let the boat dry on top of a cake dummy so it would have a curved shape.

As the final step I brushed the sail with yellow and brown petal dust, and brushed the boat with brown and black dust.

Next I made the crown.  I cut it from yellow tinted gumpaste, and wrapped it around a tapered drinking glass to dry,   Once it was dry I brushed it with gold petal dust to make it shimmer, and I added faux fir trim to the base.

Next came the stacking of the cakes.  The bottom 10" tier is covered in white ganache.  I wasn't worried about getting a smooth finished because I wanted a wild, rustic look.  The middle tier is covered in navy buttercream that I textured by dragging the back of a spoon diagonally across the still soft buttercream.  I also stuck tiny white sugar pearls in the buttercream to represent the stars in the night sky.  The top tier is a Styrofoam dummy that I covered in fondant cutouts.  It it supposed to look like the chest feathers of the Bird Wild Thing, but I think something was lost in translation.

After stacking, I started to place my gumpaste figures.  First I positioned the sail boat and dragon on the middle tier.

Next I made some trees out of brown fondant and some waves out of strips of blue fondant.  I smeared a little white buttercream on the waves to make the white caps.

Then the leaves went on the trees.  I used a daisy shaped fondant cutter, and then cut out each petal to form a leaf.  It was not as bad/time consuming as it seams... I only cut out about 50 leaves because I didn't want things to look too cluttered.

After the leaves went on I placed Max and the Wild Things on the bottom tier.  To make the "grass" border around the bottom tier I used the smallest daisy cutter and then folded the daisy in half before placing it at the base.  Then just a few tiny yellow flower to break up all that green.  I also added some light blue waves to the middle tier because the waves I had on there looked too dark.  I didn't do it on purpose but the color of the fondant waves matched the color of the buttercream exactly.  The colors were so close that instead of looking like choppy waves, it looked like the buttercream was falling off the side of the cake!!!   Adding the light blue waves fixed the problem.

So here is the final cake.  From start to finish it took about 10 hours to assemble and decorate the cake.  (I baked the cakes ahead of time, and I made the gumpaste figures the day before.)  I think I'm getting a little faster, but for me cake decorating is still a long and arduous process.

Happy Decorating,

Carol



Supply List: 

Mona Lisa Fondant
Gumpaste
14" Cake Drum
Royal Blue and Black Wilton Food Color Gel  (royal blue with a touch of black makes  navy)
Adhesive Dot Roller
Yellow and Brown petal dust
Gold petal dust
Daisy shaped fondant cutter