Friday, February 9, 2024

Butterfly Cake

This was a really simple cake to throw together, but it still looks good enough for a dear friend's birthday. Happy Birthday, Melissa!

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This is a 7 inch round cake that stands about 5-1/2 inches tall. The cake is sitting on a 12 inch cake drum. The 12 inch drum is much too big and I should have use a 10inch, but I was all out. I need to order some from Amazon ASAP.

The cake is frosted in American Buttercream that I tinted purple using Regal Purple food gel. I like the Regal Purple better than the Wilton Violet or Purple gels. The Violet and Purple look dull and a little too blue for me, so I tend to stick with the Regal Purple.

The butterflies are paper cutouts. The pack comes with both pink and purple, and have a range of sizes. These butterflies are handy to have around.

The white balls are a combination of sugar pearls (the two smallest sizes), white candy covered chocolate Sixlets, and plastic balls (the three largest sizes).

The Happy Birthday topper was made using a Cricut Air Explore. The font for the Happy Birthday is called Hunters, and the font for the name is called Channel. I download my fonts from dafont.com

I wish all the cakes were this easy.

Happy Decorating,

Carol

Tuesday, February 6, 2024

Duck Hunting Cake for 1st Birthday

I made this cake for my niece-in-law's son's first birthday - Happy Birthday, Luca! Luca's dad is an avid duck hunter, so of course the party had a duck hunting theme.

The bottom tier is a 9" round cake and stands about 5" tall. The top tier is a 6" round cake and stands about 5-1/3" tall. They are both frosted in American Buttercream.

The background color of the cake is a soft green. I was trying to match the color of the invitations so I tested three gel colors that I had on hand: Juniper Green, Moss Green, and Avocado. In the end I picked the Juniper Green as the best color match.

After frosting and stacking the cakes, I moved onto the decorations. I found some images of flying ducks and a dog silhouette, and I made some cutters using my 3D printer. The dog cutter is about 3-3/4" tall, and the ducks range in size from 1-1/4" to 2-3/4" wide.

I also made some grass cutters, but they didn't work very well. The thin blades of fondant grass kept getting stuck in the cutter. After the disaster with the grass cutters, I planned on using frosting and a grass tip to make the grass, but sadly I ran out of frosting. I was lazy and didn't want to make another batch of frosting, so I ended up using a long razor blade to cut out each blade of grass from the fondant. It was a little time consuming to say the least, but in the end I got it done.

The dog and duck silhouettes were all cut from Wilton's Black fondant, and the grass was just random colors of green and brown fondant. Below is everything cut out and ready to go on the stacked cake.

When I frosted the cake I originally wanted the top tier to be mostly white with a swatch of light green at the base and the bottom tier to be lighter green and a swatch of darker green at the base. But something went wrong in my icing calculations and I didn't make enough, and then I colored too much with the light green color and didn't leave enough white. Below is what I had left after frosting the two cakes. I like to minimize the frosting I have left over (because it gets thrown away), but this was just too close for comfort. I should have given in and make more frosting.

So, because I didn't have enough white frosting, the top tier ended up being mostly green. No big deal, I guess. After the cake was frosted, I started putting on the silhouettes. Below is my first arrangement, but I didn't like the look of the big ducks, so I repositioned the dog on the other side of the cake and used more of the smaller ducks above the dog. I left the larger ducks on the cake, but they ended up being on the back of the cake. And at this point you can still see the darker green at the base - I should have made it taller, because later it got covered up by the fondant grass. - Oh well....

For the two mallard ducks sitting on the cake I used this YouTube video. They were super easy to make and took all of 10 minutes. I love it when things are quick and easy.

Here is the front of the cake again. It shows the dog staring longingly at the smaller ducks flying away. And don't you just love those little Mallard ducks!

So Happy Birthday, little Luca Man.

Happy Decorating,

Carol

Saturday, February 3, 2024

Bob The Minion Cake with Tim the Teddy Bear

Minions are such cute creatures, especially in cake form. This is Bob with his trusty teddy bear Tim. The requestor of this cake was specific in that she wanted "Bob", which meant the minion had to have one green eye and one brown eye and NO hair. The top of the cake looked a little plain with no hair, so I added Tim the Teddy Bear at the last minute. I also wanted to add the pet rat, Poochy, but that little guy is just plain ugly.

I started the cake by making the goggles. The cake itself is 9" round and about 6" tall, so I sized the goggle to 6" wide to fit the dimensions of the cake. I made a cutter using my 3D printer, but you could just cut it out by hand. If you want to read more about using 3D printers to make cookie cutters, click HERE.

I just cut the silver things on the side of the goggles by hand, and I used tiny circle cutters to cut out the circles that edged the goggles. I draped the goggles on a 9" cake dummy so the goggles would dry with a curved shape.

I used silver shimmer fondant to make the goggles, but I didn't think they looked metallic enough so I dusted them with some silver luster dust. The luster dust really made them sparkle. After I dusted the goggles with the silver dust, I added white circles of fondant to make the eyes, then I added the iris in green and brown, the black circle for the pupil, and finally a tiny white dot to add interest to the eye. Note: I added the eye section after dusting the goggles because I didn't want any of that fine-grained dust to float onto the whites of the eyes.

After the goggles were made, I started working on the cake. The buttercream is colored with Wilton's Golden Yellow gel, and the strip around the bottom was made with Wilton's Blue fondant. I used the JEM Strip Cutter No. 3 to cut out the blue strips.

Next I positioned the eyes and "glued" them on using some melted white chocolate.

Next I added a piece of blue fondant to represent the front of Bob's overall and his front pocket. Notice that I ran a stitching tool along the edge of the fondant to give it a sewn fabric look. I added blue straps for the overalls, a black fondant button, and a black fondant strap for the goggles.

Here is the back...

I was told not to put hair on the minion, but after finishing the cake I thought the top looked a little plain, so I added Bob's stuffed teddy bear, Tim. He is made with Wilton's Brown fondant, and I just stuck the fondant with a random kitchen tool to make the fondant look like fur. I made some button eyes, but I thought these eyes looked a little creepy so I made new button eyes that were darker in color.

Here is the "fixed" version.

So a fun, and not too stressful cake to make. I hope Harry likes it!