Chinese Take Out Box made out of Cake

My niece is crazy for Chinese food (Lo Mein in particular), and her favorite restaurant is named China Moon.  So for her birthday I made her cake that looks like a Chinese take-out box filled with Lo Mein Noodles!

On the back of the box it has what I think/hope is the word Noodle written in Chinese.

On the sides I have Enjoy and Thank You.

And the top is just noodles, noodles, and more noodles.  Plus a few fondant veggies.

Construction started with a take-out box shaped cake.  I angled the sides of a 6" square cake to give it the sloped look, and I placed the cake upside down on a cardboard sheet.  (I  thought it would be easier to attach the fondant with the cake in this position.)  Next I printed a paper templet of a take-out box to exactly match the dimensions of my cake.  I worked on each side individually.  I cut the fondant to match the templet and then placed the fondant on the cake.  I was hoping my fondant "flaps" would dry and hold this position when I flipped the cake over, but no such luck.

The two, smaller side panels of fondant went on easy.  I also put some parchment paper under the flaps to keep them from sticking to the cardboard,

But the other two panels, being larger, gave me some trouble.  I couldn't lift them and put them on the cake without them getting all stretched out of shape.

So I cut a piece of cardboard, and wrapped the fondant it around it so I could transfer the fondant to the cake.  I put parchment paper between the overlapping pieces of fondant to keep them from sticking to each other.

Then with everything all neatly folded up, I positioned it on the cake and then unfolded the flaps into their correct position.  One edge looks a little wonky, but I made that edge a little larger than necessary so I could trim it even with the cardboard base of the cake.

So here are all the panels in place.  In hindsight I should have dusted the edges with a little brown powder food color - just to give the edges more definition - but I forgot.  Oops...

I decided I didn't like the flaps sticking out straight, so I propped them up hoping they would dry, and stay in that position.  They didn't!!

When I flipped the cake right-side-up, the flaps immediately started to droop.  But no worries, I just cut some pieces of out of cardboard cake rounds and stuck them under the flaps to hold them upright.  You can't see it, but the cardboard support is under the covered board on top of the cake.

Then I just started making the noodles.  I used my trusty Ace Extruder and just squeezed out tons of noodles.  Making the noodles was actually the easiest part of this cake construction.

For the chopsticks I just rolled gumpaste around bamboo skewers.

Sorry I forgot to take pictures of the other stuff, but for the veggies I just cut the shapes from orange and green colored fondant.  Nothing fancy there.  For the fortune cookies I cut out gum paste circles, pinched one side together, stuffed the ends with a little cling wrap to keep them open, and then draped the circle over the edge of a cup to give them that fortune cookie shape.  Easy peasy.

So Happy Birthday, Laura.  I hope you like your noodles!


Happy Decorating,

Carol

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Supply List: 

Mona Lisa Fondant
Wilton Tylose Powder
Black 10" Cake Drum
Fondarific Black Fondant
Fondarific Red Fondant
Razor Slicer
ACE Food Safe Extruder

Gold Dripped, Pink & White Striped Candy Buffet Cake with Minnie Cookies

This cake has just about everything stuck on it.  I call it a Gold Dripped, Pink & White Striped Candy Buffet Cake with Minnie Mouse Ear Cookies.  There is almost too much going on in this cake, but it is what the customer (aka best friend of my niece) wanted.

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This cake had a few "firsts" for me.  The first first was the striping technique.  I had seen it done on lots of videos, but this was the first excuse I had to give it a try.  But before the "real" cake I did a few testers using two different striping tools.  First I tried the PME Tall Edge Scraper, but I didn't like it because the bottom of the scraper (which was a tooth) kept getting caught on the cardboard cake round and acrylic disk I had under the cake. (I use the acrylic disk to the sides of my cake straight and the edges super sharp. Here is a link to my tutorial.) To keep the bottom "tooth" of the scraper from interfering with the disk, I had to put a 3/4" thick layer of icing around the cake.  That is A LOT of icing.

Next I tried the Wilton Icing Smoother Comb.  This one worked better because the edge closest to the base of the cake was a "gap" and not a "tooth" therefore I didn't have to worry about the tooth of the comb hitting the my cake board or the acrylic disk.  But I didn't like the Wilton Scraper/Comb because the distance between the teeth of the comb was so narrow.  The tight pattern of stripes on the Wilton tool took a lot more time to fill with the contrasting colored buttercream than the much wider pattern on the PME tool.  I was also concerned that the tight pattern wouldn't look good on a tall cake.

So in the end I went with the PME tool for my "real" cake.  To get around the problem with the base "tooth", I trimmed the cardboard cake round a little smaller and I didn't use the bottom acrylic disk.  I also learned that you dodn't need as much icing on the cake if you hold the tool at a 45 degree angle to the cake instead of perpendicular (90 degree angle) while you are scraping.  Below is the cake after passing the comb scraper over it a few times.  On the top of the cake is a 8-1/2" acrylic disk that I use to get my cakes perfectly straight with super sharp edges.  It was a stroke of luck that the "tooth" of the comb fit under it perfectly.  At the base of the cake I used a 12-1/2" acrylic disk.  Normally you would use the same size disk on the top and bottom, but because of that pesky bottom "tooth" on the PME tool I had to do something different.  I used the 12-1/2" disk just so I could transfer the cake to the freezer without disturbing the soft buttercream.

After the cake was chilled and the buttercream rock hard, I pipped the pink buttercream into the gaps.  I also smeared the pink over the white just to make sure I filled in all the crevices.  And you need to work fast when you fill with the contrasting color because you don't want the white buttercream to soften and start moving around while you are adding the pink.

Then using a bench scraper you just start scraping off the surface layer of buttercream to reveal the perfect pattern underneath. But just take off little bits of buttercream at a time.  The acrylic disk at the top of the cake also kept me from taking off too much buttercream and exposing the cake and/or the crumb coat.

And here is the cake after the final scrape.  With the combs/scrapers it is easy to get the perfect striped look.  At this point it goes back into the refrigerator to chill.

And once chilled I remove the acrylic disk at the top to reveal the flat top and sharp edges.

I would have been happy with the cake like this, but they wanted a gold drip, so drip I did.  I also made some Mouse shaped cookies and painted them with gold too.

I tried a few different styles of mouse ear cookies, but ended up using the black lettering on the gold background.  It seemed to pop more.

And then I just started stacking candy on top of the cake.  I had 4 kinds of suckers, dipped Oreos, and Rice Krispies Treats.  I had white chocolate bars, gum balls, and white chocolate Twix bars.  I had rainbow colored Sixlets, white chocolate covered pretzels,  and even a cupcake.  If you are a candy lover, this style of cake is for you.

So not one of my favorite cakes (too busy looking), but it was a great learning experience.

Happy Decorating,

Carol



Supply List: 

PME Tall Edge Scraper
Wilton Icing Smoother Comb
8-1/2" acrylic disks
12" White Cake Drum
Rainbow Colored Sixlets
White Chocolate Twix Bars
Rice Krispies Treats
Gum Balls
Mouse Ear Cookie Cutters
Silicone Bow Mold

Safari Baby Shower Cake

I hosted a Safari themed baby shower for my niece, and of course I made the cake.

The cake itself was easy to make - not much to it, but the figures were a PITB.  I'm not very good at making figures so I used some Youtube videos for instructions.

For the lion I used a combination of two videos.  I liked the head from Happy Little Baker's tutorial but the body from Zoe's Fancy Cakes.

For the giraffe I again used a combination of two videos.  Again the head came from  Happy Little Baker and the body came from Lets Clay with EWA.

The monkey (which is my favorite) was all Zoe's, and the coconut tree was from Francesca's SugarArt.

The zebra instruction came from Just Cake It, although I again used the face from Happy Little Baker.  In Just Cake It's video she painted the stripes onto the zebra's body, but I didn't have any luck with that method.  The painted stripes came out a little messy looking and the color ended up looking more more purple than black.  I didn't like my painted zerbra at all (he was also too big), so I tossed him and made a second zebra this time just using very thin pieces of black fondant to make the stripes.

And after all that work creating my safari animals this is how they ended up.  I always struggle with what to do with the figures and flowers after taking them off the cake.  Poor little guys; they look so sad.

I also made a bunch of other treats for the party.  I tried Chocolate Dipped Oreos for the first time, and I also make some brownie Cakesicles.

And cookies, I made lots of cookies.  The monkey and the bear were my favorites.  The zebra came out a little mean looking, and the elephant just looked strange. The tiger looked more like a house cat, and the lion looked like he just had a perm.  Cookies are hard to make - much harder than cakes.

Happy Decorating,

Carol

PJ Mask Cake

There must be something like a million bigillion cartoon shows for kids.  A family member asked me to make a PJ Mask Cake for her son's 3rd birthday and I just thought PJ WHAT??  Here is yet another cartoon show I know nothing about.

But a quick google search turned up silhouettes strutting around a cityscape bathed in a yellow glow of a rising moon.  I didn't know kid's cartoons could be so poetic, but then I realized the silhouettes had names like Catboy...

Gekko...

And Owlette!

LOL, so much for poetry.

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Anyway... the first step in this cake construction was to make the night time cityscape and the 3 character silhouettes.  I used Fondarific Black Fondant mixed with a little Wilton Tylose Powder.  The tylose power makes the fondant sturdier and able to stand up straight without any additional support.  It is a cheap-man's gumpaste.  I cut out the cityscape using a long razor slicer, and then I added some windows using yellow tinted fondant (Buttercup Yellow).  Next I made the big yellow moon that would hang behind the city.  Once both the moon and the cityscape were dry, I glued them together with some yellow candy melts and then glued bamboo skewers to the back with more candy melts.

Next I cut out the "Masks" from tinted fondant.  I found an image of the characters and printed the masks so they would fit the side of my cake (4" tall).  Here are all the templets I used.

I cut the printed mask images into the individual components and then used the paper cutouts as a guide to cut out the fondant.  For Catboy I used Wilton Royal Blue and Sky Blue food gels.

For Gekko I used Leaf Green and Electric Green gel food colors.  For Owlette I used Red Fondarific Fondant. (I hate, hate, hate tinting fondant a deep red so I just buy the ready made stuff.)  I also textured Gekko and Owlette with some cheese cloth.

For the "ribbon" around the base of the cake I used my trusty ACE Food Safe Extruder.  I love this thing.  It is one of my favorite (and most used) cake decorating tools.

For the lettering I used a font called Heros and Legends from the DAFonts.com website.   I typed Duke's name into the site's font viewer, printed the results, and then used the paper templet to cut out the fondant.  Funny almost accident here...  I cut out my paper "2" but then realized Duke was actually turning 3.  Glad I didn't deliver the cake with a 2 on it - that would have been embarrassing.

So here is the finished cake.  Happy 3rd Birthday, Duke.

Happy Decorating,

Carol



Supply List: 

Mona Lisa Fondant
Wilton Tylose Powder
14" Cake Drum
Royal Blue Gel Color
Sky Blue Gel Color
Electric Green Gel Food Color
Fondarific Black Fondant
Fondarific Red Fondant
Wilton's Yellow Candy Melts
Wilton's Buttercup Yellow Gel Color
Leaf Green Gel Colors
Cake Boss Decorating Tools
Razor Slicer
ACE Food Safe Extruder

Beach Theme Cakesicles

I saw the cutest new thing the other day -

Cakesicles!  

Well it was new to me.  I had never seen it before, and true to form - I HAD TO TRY IT.   A friend at work was having a beach themed wedding, so I justified my new purchases by telling myself it was part of her wedding gift.

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So what do you think?  I thought they were kind of cute, and actually I didn't buy much stuff to make them.  I bought a mini silicone seashell mold and two sizes of popsicle molds (one mini size and one small size).  I wasn't sure which size mold would work the best so I bought one of each to try them out. 

Here are the two molds being filled with my Slutty Brownies.  The red mold holds about 9 tablespoons of batter and the white one holds about 3 tablespoons.  Here are the brownies being layered together: brownie mix on the bottom, chopped up Twix Bars in the middle, and chocolate chip cookie dough on the top. 

And here they are just out of the oven.  I guess I overfilled the cavities because the brownies puffed up above the edge of the cavity.  But no worries, while the brownies were still hot I just squished everything back into the cavity.  Nothing better than dense, moist brownies with extra chocolate and caramel.

Here they are removed from the mini white one.  They were the perfect shape, and the brownie had no trouble staying on the stick even when I lifted it up.

However, the cakesicles from the red mold fell off the stick when I removed them from the mold.  I guess they were just too heavy for the size of the stick.  But I just took hunks of the brownie mixture and stuffed it into the white mold and made more of the mini cakesicles.

To complete the Beachy Cakesicles I dipped them in Wilton's blue Candy Melts, sprinkled some pulverized graham crackers on one side, and then decorated with sea shells made from white fondant.  But I have to say the Wilton Candy Melts didn't work very well.  Even though I thinned the melted candy with some vegetable oil it was still too thick.  I thought about starting over with a different type of chocolate, but then I decided the bumpy texture was okay because it was supposed to be water swirling around a sandy beach.

So in the end I was happy with my first attempt at cakesicles.  Now I just have to work on getting my chocolate coating all smooth and silky and luscious looking.

Happy Decorating,

Carol



Supply List: 

Mona Lisa Fondant
Wilton Blue Candy Melts
Graham Crackers
Mini white popsicle silicon mold
Full size red popsicle mold
Silicone seashell mold