Bows Are My Super Power - JoJo Siwa Inspired Cake

This is a JoJo Siwa inspired cake that I made for my 1st cousin's daughter.  Kinley is JoJo crazy so she asked for BOWS on her cake - lots and lots of BOWS.  Apparently Bows are a Super Power.

Even the back of the cake got a little bow loving.

I thought this cake was going to be easy, but it never seems works out that way for me.  I had a horrible time getting the bottom tier smooth.  Every time I passed my bench scraper over the buttercream it pulled away from the cake.  Grrrrr, I think I spent 2 hours trying to get that sucker smooth.  I had no trouble smoothing the top tier, but the bottom one had me in tears.

But after I got the cake stacked, the decorating went pretty fast.  The rainbow heart was the only piece I had to think about.  I started with a gum paste base cut with a 4" heart shaped cookie cutter, and then I tinted some fondant in shades of purple, blue, green, orange, yellow, and pink.  Note: I used a gum paste base, because I thought just plain white fondant would pull out of shape as I worked with it.

I covered half of the heart with pink fondant, and then started layering the other colors in a curved shape.

After all my colors were in place, I flipped the heart over and used the cookie cutter to cut off the excess.

And here is the final heart.

Once I placed the heart on the cake, I outlined the edge of the heart with white fondant.

Another item on the cake was the number 5.  I used a paper template to cut out the number and a JoJo heart swirl from my pink fondant, and then put that on top of some gum paste.  I cut the gum paste to fit the number and heart swirl, and then let it dry flat.

The many bows on the cake are made from satin ribbon.  I thought about making the bows from fondant to keep with the "all edible" thing, but the fondant bows just didn't give me the sparkle, shimmer, and floppiness I wanted.  So I just made some quickie ribbon bows.

So Happy Birthday, Kinley, and enjoy the JoJo concert next week.

Happy Decorating,

Carol

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Supply List: 

Top Tier Color: Wilton Teal mixed with a little Sky Blue (they sky blue keeps the teal from looking too green)
Bottom Tier Color: Wilton Pink mixed with Ivory (the ivory softens the pink and keeps it from looking too bright)
White 14" Cake Drum
Sixlet Spring Shimmer Chocolate Flavored Candies
Wilton Tylose Powder
Satin Ice Gum Paste
Wilton 4" Heart Cookie Cutter
FMM Funky Alphabet Cutters
Razor Slicer
ACE Food Safe Extruder

Aloha Baby Shower Cake

The is an Aloha Baby Shower Cake that I made for a friend of my niece.  I was a little disappointed in the overall look of the cake and especially in the pink ombre effect.  The blending just didn't look right. 

I don't know where I went wrong.  I stacked my different shades of pink.

And then scraped and blended everything with my bench scraper.  I kept adding color and taking it away, but it just didn't look right.  I guess I should have airbrushed the cake to get the look I was after.

But I did like the baby sandals that I made.  They came out kind of cute.

I just found a pattern and used it to cut out the gum paste.  Super easy to make.

So not my best cake, but not my worst.

Happy Decorating,

Carol

Picket Fence Flower Cake

My Mom is an avid gardener and flowers are her special love, so for her 85th birthday I made her a cake covered in flowers.  FYI: My Mom's name is Daphne.

If you don't count the many hours that went into making the gum paste flower, then this cake was a snap to put together.  I slapped a rough layer of buttercream onto a 10", 8" and 6" cake and then stacked the three tiers.  I didn't worry about straight edges or flat tops because I knew everything would be hidden with fence pickets and flowers.  Win-Win.

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To make the pickets for the fence I mixed some tylose power with white fondant, rolled the fondant to 1/8", used a wood grain impression mat to emboss the pattern onto the fondant, cut the fondant into 1/2" wide strips, and then used the top of a star cookie cutter to make the angled cut on the top of the picket.  How easy is that?

I made a LOT of pickets.  I also dusted them with some brown powder food color to bring out the texture of the wood grain.

The first step in construction of the picket fence was to place three horizontal rails around each cake. 

After the rails were in position I started placing the individual pickets.

It was soooo easy... until I ran out of pickets and had to stop and make more.  I thought I had calculated the number of pickets I needed, but I was never very good at math.  After all the pickets were in position, I started placing the flowers.  I had tons of gum paste flowers, but like the pickets I miss-calculated and had to use a few silk flowers to fill in the blank spaces.

In addition to the cake, I also baked and made a lot of sweets for a Candy/Sweet Buffet.  I had pralines, sugar cookies, and chocolate dipped Oreo cookies, strawberries, shortbread cookies, and pretzels.  I also had cake pops, candy, and lollipops.  I had little paper bags that people could fill and take their treats home.  By the end of the party, the Candy/Sweet Bar was wiped clean.

The party was a huge hit.  Happy 85th Birthday, Mom.

Happy Decorating,

Carol

Supply List: 

Mona Lisa Fondant
Wilton Tylose Powder
Wood Grain Impression Mat
Wilton Ribbon/Strip Cutter
Brown Powder Food Color
Wilton's Buttercup Yellow Gel Color

One In A Melon - Watermelon Birthday Cake Tutorial

One In A Melon Cakes are a popular theme in 2019.  Here is my attempt - with a Smash Cake too.

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I started with the Smash Cake - I wanted to knock out the easy cake first.  The smash is a 5", three layer cake.  I like to use 5" for smash cakes because I think they look nice on the scalloped 8" cake boards.  Once the 5" cake was stacked, I crumb coated the top 2/3 in watermelon pink (Wilton Rose mixed with Terra Cotta and a touch of Ivory), and I crumb coated the bottom with Wilton Leaf Green.

Next I just piped on some fat, chunky rosettes with a 1M Open Star tip.

For the watermelon seeds I used a five petal flower cutter and black Fondarific fondant.  I sliced off each petal giving it a pointy tip.  Doesn't it look exactly like a watermelon seed?

I scattered a few seeds on the smash cake and called it done.

For the base of the main cake I used my acrylic cakes rounds which help me get the sides of the cake straight and the top flat.  I piped the bottom fifth of the cake with the green, and the rest with the watermelon pink.

At first I was also going to pipe in a section for the white but I didn't want the white to smear into the pink and green while I smoothed the cake.

After the cake was smoothed, I marked a line about an inch from the bottom.

And then scraped out an area for the white icing.

I piped some white icing into the gap.

And then gave it a quick, final smoothing with a bench scraper.  There is a little smearing of the white into the pink and green, but it is not too bad.

Now onto the little sliced watermelon decorations.  It would have been easy to just cut out circles of pink, white, and green and stack them on top of each other, but I didn't want the watermelon slices to have a stacked look; I wanted all the colors to be flush and level with each other.

I used a set of nesting circle cutters, and cut out a pink circle from my fondant.  Then using that same circle cutter, I cut out a circle from the white fondant.  I dropped the pink circle into the hole in the white fondant.  There was a little gap between the white opening and the pink circle, but I just gently worked them together till the gap was gone.  Then I used the next larger circle cutter and cut a circle in the white.

Then I did the same thing with the green.  I used the cutter that I used to cut out the white circle and put a hole in the green.  I removed the green circle and replaced it with the white and pink circle.  Again I gently eased the green into the white to remove the gap.

Then I used the next larger circle cutter and cut out the green.

I cut the circle into quarters using my Super Slicer.

And then place tiny pieces of oval shaped black fondant for the seeds.  Don't they look cute.

I stacked my cakes, using Extra Wide Fat Bobo Straws for support.  The straws work just as well as wooden dowels, and the straws are so much easier to cut.  I placed some seeds on the bottom tier, and the watermelon quarters on the top tier.  Sorry about the messy look of my top tier.  I don't know why I couldn't get it smooth.

For the topper, I mixed some tylose power with the left over fondant and smashed the colors together.  FYI: The tylose power turns the soft pliable fondant rock hard, and will allow the finished topper to stand up on its own.

I cut out the number 1 and added some seeds to it.  I know I should have had less green at the bottom but the fondant had gotten so stiff I couldn't take it apart and do it over.

I made a base for the topper out of some extra green and glued the two pieces together with some green candy melts.  Candy melts make great edible glue!

I made a little watermelon, some yellow flowers, and some green and brown vines to cover the base.  Again -- too much green at the bottom of the number 1 but too late to do anything about it.

So here is the finished cake, and with all the watermelon slices on the top tier you can't even tell how sloppy the smoothing job was.  LOL.  And I don't know why I didn't cover the cake drum with white fondant.  For some reason I thought the silver would look okay.  I used the extra watermelon slices on the cake drum, so I guess the silver doesn't look too, too bad.

Happy Decorating,

Carol


Supply List: 


14" Black Cake Drum
Scalloped 8" Cake Boards
Fat Daddio 5" Cake Pans
Wilton Rose Food Gel
Terra Cotta Food Gel
Ivory Food Gel
Wilton Leaf Green Food Gel
1M Open Star
Black Fondarific Fondant
Five Petal Flower Cutter
Acrylic Cakes Rounds
PME Bench Scraper
Wilton Line Marker
Nesting Circle Cutters
Super Slicer
Extra Wide Fat Bobo Straws
Tylose Power
Ann Clark Number 1 Cookie Cutter
Wilton Green Candy Melts