Welcome Autumn Rosette Cake

 Simple rosette cake to welcome the first day of autumn.  

With cookies too.

The hardest part of this cake was mixing the colors.  I mixed the colors based on a Pretty Autumn Color Palette blog post by Sweet SugarBelle.  The darker colors in the piping bag (the orange and brown) look like they are separating a bit, but the icing on the cake looked okay.  I'm not sure why some of the colors separate like this.  I have read that it happens when you put too much gel color in the buttercream, but I'm not positive.  Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the humidity.  The first day of fall calendar-wise does not mean the temperature won't reach 90 degrees F.

So any buttercream experts have any tips to keep this from happening???  

 

Happy Decorating,

Carol

Multicolored Highland Cow Cake

Highland Cow Cakes are the thing right now.  I'm seeing them everywhere.  Here is one I made for my sister-in-law's niece.

It started as a 9"x13" red velvet cake sheet cake.  I cut the sheet cake in half making two 9"x6.5" cakes that I stacked (with filling between the two layers) to give me a cake about  3-1/2" tall.  I then carved the cake into a rough head shape, cutting shallow depressions for the eyes and building the forehead and nose bridge a little higher.  The carving process didn't leave me with many cake scraps, so I had to make the ears by piecing smaller scraps together.   I didn't worry too much about the carving right because everything was going to be covered in fondant strings/ropes.  I just wanted the general shape.

Here is the pattern I used for the cake.

Once the cake was carved crumb coat and chilled, I then covered the cake in a thin layer of white chocolate ganache which gives a firmer base for the fondant.

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I made the horns from white fondant mixed with Tylose Powder.  The Tylose power (also called Gum-Tex and CMC) causes the fondant to harden and allows it to keep its shape without flopping over.  The more Tylose you add to the fondant the harder the fondant will become.  This is a cheaper alternative to using gum paste.  

For the cow's nose I used Wilton Chocolate fondant.   I cut the nostrils out of the chocolate brown fondant and backed the area with some black fondant.  For the lower jaw, I used the same brown fondant mixed with Tylose so it would hold its shape.

For the eye, I started with a brown oval shape then added a white circle of fondant and then a black circle of fondant.  I added some white fondant highlights to the black part of the eye, and added some thin strips of brown fondant for the eyelids.

I attached the nose and lower jaw to the cake.  I also added a thin piece of black between the nose and lower jaw to cover the white area.

The eye went on and then the pink tongue.  

Then came the time consuming part: putting on all the stands of hair.  I tinted a bunch of fondant in shades of orange, yellow, red, pink, purple, blue and green.  Then used my Ace food safe extruder to make long strands of fondant.  I covered all the strands with plastic wrap to keep the fondant from drying and getting cracked.  FYI: you could also just roll the stands of hair by hand.  I started doing this in the end because it was so time consuming to use the extruder.

I cut pieces from the long strands to match the size of the area where the hair was being placed and started positioning the hair.

When I reached the top of the head I added the horns and added more hair around them.

As a final touch I added some brown eyelashes to the eye, and a flower in the cow's mouth.  In hindsight I should have added the second eye peaking through the strands of hair.  I think that would have looked better.  Oh well....

But regardless, Hanna loved it.  Happy Birthday, Hanna!

Happy Decorating,

Carol

Crawling Spider-Man Cake - Instructions

I saw several versions of this Spider-Man cake, and I thought the crawling hand was a cool effect.  But something isn't quite right with my rendition.  Maybe his hand isn't big enough, or maybe his head needs to protrude a little more??  I'm not sure what the problem is, but 3 year old Clayton loved it nonetheless.

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I started this cake by making a bunch of fondant cutters.  I had an outline cutter for the entire figure, one cutter for the individual body parts, and one cutter for the spider web impressions on the red parts of Spider-Man.  I also had cutters for the number "3" and the alphabet in the Spider-Man font: Homoarakhan.  I used my Creality Ender 3 v2 3D printer to make the cutters.  If you want to read an intro into 3D printers for cookie cutters you can read my post HERE.  

The cutters made it easier to shape the Spider-Man figure, but honestly you could just use a paper template.  The only time the cutter was really helpful was making the spider web impression on the red fondant.  

First up I made the "3" topper because this needed a day to harden.  I pressed the web impression cutter into the red fondant, and then cut it with the "3" cookie cutter.  I added a little Tylose power (also called Gum-Tex and CMC) to the fondant which makes the fondant harden.  The more Tylose you add to the fondant the harder the fondant will become.  This is a cheaper alternative to using gum paste. 

Here is a sketch of the web that I sent to my 3D printer to make the web embosser.

Then I moved onto the crawling Spider-Man.  These are the sketches I used to make the cookie cutters.

I cut the entire shape out of black fondant to make a backing piece. 

I cut out the blue fondant sections and placed them on top of the black fondant piece.  (After assembly, I realize I cut the thigh muscles in the blue fondant too deep.  I should have made just a slight impression instead of a deep cut.) 

The red fondant portions came next.

And then I cut another head out of red fondant and stacked it on top.  This layering makes the head stick out farther than the rest of the body.  I also added the eyes at this point.

Here I've placed the second head (with the eyes) on the main body.  I've also placed the Spider-Man on a 9" foam cake dummy so it would harden with a curve that matched the 9" cake.   Notice that I also cut the fingers off the main body.  The fingers will be positioned once the Spider-Man is on the cake.

To accentuate the web markings in the red fondant, I dusted them with some black petal dust.  I used a tiny paint brush that I dipped in black petal dust and then ran the paint brush in the web lines.

At this point I left the Spider-Man to harden a bit and started on the cake itself.  It is iced in white American Buttercream, and then I dabbed on bits on black icing to give the cake a rustic look.  It almost looks like a naked cake. 

I carefully placed my hardened Spider-Man on the front of the cake.

Then I started working on the hand.  I cut out the hand....

and pushed in the web marks.

Like with the main body I used the paint brush dipped in black petal dust to accent the web lines.

Then the hand gets attached to the main body. Before positioning the hand, I added a blob of red fondant to give the hand a curved look and to keep it from collapsing against the cake drum.

Here is the hand attached to the main body with the fingers "crawling" across the cake drum.

I placed the 3 topper on the cake, and because I thought the cake drum looked too plain, I added some splotches of white icing on the black drum.

Later I decided I didn't like all the white splotches, so I scraped some of it off.

The letters for the birthday boy's name went on next.  I rolled the fondant into a wedge shape, so the top was thicker than the bottom, and then I cut out the letters.

When I scraped off the excessive white buttercream, I also added what is supposed to be a web coming out of Spider-Man's hand.  The web should be white, but I figured it wouldn't show up against the white cake, so I made it black.  So again, here is the finished cake.  Hummm...  I just don't know if I like it.

Happy Decorating,

Carol

Pokémon Sword Inspired Cake

So Hurricane Ida  grazed my neck-of-woods on Sunday, August 29, 2021, and even though we took just a glancing blow, the power was out for 5 days.  We have a portable generator, so conditions were livable.  The generator kept the refrigerators going and powered some fans that kept us cool.  Silly me thought the loss of power would cancel my upcoming cake order, but surprisingly the party took place just six days after the hurricane hit. 

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I honestly thought the cake/party would be canceled so I didn't make anything ahead of time.  But on Friday, when the power came back on, the Mom texted and said she still wanted the cake for Saturday night.  I had to scramble to make everything.  The fondant "Switch" came first.  I cut out a piece of cardboard and covered the center section with black fondant. 

Then I covered one side with red fondant and the other with blue.  (I'm not a big fan of Wilton fondant, but it works fine for things that won't be eaten.)  I also added some strips of fondant to hide the seams.  I used my handy Jem Strip Cutter #3.   For the final steps I used circle cutters to make the knobs and buttons, glued a printout of the "Sword" game to the center, and called it finished.  Easy-peasy.

The Poké Ball is actually a Hot Chocolate/Cocoa Bomb.  I made one side out of red candy melts, one side out of white, and then used a strip of black fondant to cover the join (and make it look like a Poké Ball).  More circles in white and black completed the look.  (Note: JMO, but candy melts don't work unless you add Paramount Melting Crystals to the melted candy melts. The Paramount makes the candy melts softer, more fluid, and much easier to pour into the half sphere molds.)  

This cake has one of those money pullout kits in it.  Here is the cutout waiting for the box.

And the Pokémon "Sword" is the "pull" for the money box. (I hot glued the sword to the goldish "pull" that came with the money box kit.)  The birthday boy will pull the sword from the cake, and at the end of the sword will come a banner of money.  The Mom didn't send me a picture of the actual money pull, but I heard that it was a great success.

So sorry for the lack of picture during construction.  I was scrambling to finish this cake on time because you know - I DIDN'T HAVE ANY ELECTRICITY FOR 5 DAYS. 

Happy Decorating,

Carol