Jurassic Park Themed Cake

Here is a Jurassic Park themed cake that I made for my cousin.  It has a broken reptile egg on top, a glowing T-Rex eye camouflaged by green leaves, and vicious claws coming out of the side of the cake.  I kind of love how this one came out.

Sorry I didn't take any pictures during the assembly, but I do have closeups of the different sections.

Here is the egg.  I used a chocolate mold but filled it with fondant instead of chocolate.  After the fondant had hardened slightly, I used a craft knife to cut it apart and make it look like broken egg pieces. 

Here is the glowing eye.  I painted the eye with food gel color mixed with piping gel.  The gel gives it that wet, slimy look.

And the claws.  I wanted to have blood dripping from the claws, but I thought that would be too unsettling for the birthday boy.

So here is the finished cake again.  Gotta love that T-Rex.

Happy Decorating,

Carol

Disco Cow Girl Cakes

Apparently Disco Cow Girl party themes were big in 2023.  I made two of them within a few weeks.  The first cake has more of the cow girl theme going on...

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For the #2, hat, boot, and cow spots, I made some fondant cutters using my trusty 3D printer.  For the #2 topper I made two cutters, one slightly larger than the other.  I used Wilton's Pink with the larger cutter and White for the smaller #2 cutter.  The cow spots were made with black fondant.  For fondant toppers, I mix the fondant with some Gum-Tex / Tylos Powder / CMC Powder (all names for the same stuff).  The powder makes the fondant dry to a rock-hard consistency and allows it to stand upright without any support. 

The hat and boot...

The cake itself is an 8" chocolate on the bottom and a 6" almond cake on the top.  Don't you just love chocolate cake???  Here is the cake getting its crumb coat.

Both cakes are frosted with white American Buttercream, and then I made the border using a Pie Crust Impression Mold.  Doesn't it look like rope?

After getting the cake stacked and frosted, it was just a matter of placing all the decorations.  These are the Disco Balls I used.  They are not the best quality: gaps and missing pieces of mirror plastic, but they were good enough for cake decorations.

So here is the finished cake...

The second "Disco" cake I made had less of a Cow Girl theme.  This cake used Pink and White acrylic balls in addition to the disco balls.  I made the name using my Cricut Air Explorer.  I hot glued the cardstock paper to a 2mm 1/16" acrylic rod, and kept the cardstock away from the buttercream.  Be warned that cardstock will absorb the grease from the buttercream and get all splotchy.  So make sure they don't touch!

I also made a smash cake for this customer. I used buttercream for the cow spots because I don't like putting fondant on smash cakes.

So, two Disco Cow Girl themed cakes just a few weeks apart.  What are the odds?

Happy Decorating,

Carol

Easy Demon Slayer Cake

It is amazing how many popular things exist in this country that I have absolutely no knowledge of.  Take this cake for example: Demon Slayer.  What in the heck is Demon Slayer and how do I represent it in cake form?  Google to the rescue, and in the end it was an easy cake to make.

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I bought the two characters ( Tanjirou and Nezuko) for the cake ( no way was I going to make those out of fondant).  The cake itself is a 7" square and about 6" tall.

Once the cake was stacked and covered in ganache, I marbled some Wilton's Chocolate and white fondant, rolled it flat, and textured it with a wood-grained impression mat.  I then cut the fondant in sections to fit the sides and top, and then just stuck the sections onto the cake.

I used Satin Ice Silver fondant for the silver decorations in the corners.  I used my 3D printer to make a cutter, but you can just cut them by hand.

For the black strips on the sides of the box, I used Wilton's black fondant, and a PME/JEM Strip Cutter #4.

The Demon Slayer sign is just a paper printout that I cut out and hot glued to an acrylic rod.  The red straps on the back of the box are just long strips of red fondant that I cut out and attached to the back.

So, see how easy that was!  And best of all the birthday boy got to keep the toys as a souvenir. 

Happy Decorating,

Carol

Sports Ball Cake

This Sports Ball Cake combines the biggies - Football, Baseball, Basketball, and Soccer.  Humm I guess I should have included a volleyball-forgot about that one.

The cakes are an 8" at the bottom, and 6" in the middle, and a 4" sphere on the top.

To make the curved marks on the baseball tier, I used a bowl that was the same height as my cake.  The marks are a guide to where the red stitch marks are going to be placed.

I then piped a thin line of brown icing into the marks and along the top and bottom edge of the cake.  This will form the seam below the red stitching.  It is okay to be sloppy with the piping.  I also tried to spray some brown petal dust along the seam to give it a "dirty" look.  I put the petal dust in a spray bottle but it didn't work like I wanted.  It ended up a little splotchy. 

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Next I used a JEM #2 strip cutter to cut some Wilton Red fondant strips and then cut them about 1" long.  

I folded the 1" strip into a 90 degree angle and placed them along the seam line.  Notice the texture on the white cake below?  I always use a Viva paper towel to smooth the sides of my cake.  Normally  I use the smooth side of the paper towel, but this time I used the rough side to give the surface of the cake more texture.

For the football tier I used a Bounty paper towel to give it an even rougher texture than the baseball cake.

I made a cutter for the center section (sorry I don't know what it is called) using my 3D printer and the pattern below.  But if you don't have a 3D printer you can just use a paper template.  I used Wilton Brown, Black, and White fondant.  I again used the JEM #2 strip cutter to make the boarder around the base of the football cake.   For the white stitching I used the JEM #3 strip cutter.  You can cut the strips by hand rather than using the strip cutter, but I like the ease and precision of the strip cutter.

The basketball cake at the top was the hardest part of the entire cake.  I used two Fat Daddio 4" hemisphere pans to bake the cake.  

And then I frosted it in orange buttercream.  

I used a damp finger to smooth out the frosting, but to me it still looked a little messy.  And I used my trusty JEM #2 strip cutter to make the black lines on the basketball.

When the cake was finished I thought the sides of the baseball tier looked a little plain, so I added some "All Star" fondant lettering in red and blue.

Here is the pattern:

For the little sports balls I used a plastic mold and just pressed the fondant into the mold.  After removing the fondant, I just drew the black accent lines on the soccer and basketball with an edible black marker.  I used a marker with a wide tip to get the bold, black lines.  On the baseball I used a red marker, and the little football has white fondant accents.

So here is the finished cake.

And I made a few matching cookies too.

Happy Decorating,

Carol

Mermaid Ombre Cake

The customer wanted a "simple" mermaid / Under The Sea cake, but like always things seem to get out of hand.  I tried to control myself, but if I see a blank spot, I need to put something in the void.  I'm sure I have some kind of OCD.

For reference, the cake on the bottom is an 8" and the cake on the top is a 6".  It serves about 36 (according to the Wilton serving chart.)  

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The three ombre colors are:

1. AmeriColor Soft Pink (with a touch of Regal Purple), 
2. AmeriColor Regal Purple, and 
3. AmeriColor Royal Blue (with a touch of Regal Purple)

To get the ombre look, I just stacked the three colors on the side of the cake and smeared them together using a bench scraper.  To get the "air-brushed" look, I lightly sprayed the center section of each tier with Wilton's Violet Color Mist Food Spray .  The color mist just softens the line between the different colors and gives it a wispy look.  Originally I planed on using Cocoa Butter Spray Velvet, but when I did a test, it didn't look very good.  The cocoa velvet was too dense and opaque, and had too much texture.  I liked the color mist a lot better.  So wispy.

For the decorations, I made everything using a Cricut Cutter and regular card stock paper.  I found the free downloadable SVG patterns at The Pineapple Paper Company.   It saved a lot of time not having to design my own patterns.  But in hindsight I should have used some kind of vinyl or  greaseproof paper for the decorations.  Wherever the paper touched the icing, big grease spots formed on the card stock.  I had to back the paper with hot glue to prevent it from touching the cake.  But looking at the finished cake, the gap between the decorations and the cake gave it a nice look.

So all-in-all a pretty easy cake.  Wish there were all this stress free.

Happy Decorating,

Carol