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

Flower Fault Line Cake

The Fault Line Cake (also known as Torn Buttercream) is the hottest new trend in cake decorating. Think earthquake (sorry California) where the earth cracks open and exposes what is below. The fault gap can hold anything: sprinkles, stripes, naked cake layers, or even flowers. The flower version is my favorite. 

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A friend asked for a chocolate 50th Birthday Cake so I decided to make her a chocolate Fault Line Cake filled with flowers.  I made a bunch of gum paste flower ahead of time - roses and carnations and hydrangeas in shades of white, rose, and peach.  (Don't tell my boss, but I make the flower at work during my lunch hour.)

To make the cake itself I baked four 8" cakes and one 5" cake.  I placed the 5" cake between the stacked 8" cakes which gave me a nice deep depression to hold my gum paste flowers.

I crumb coated the cake, chilled it for 30 minutes, and then arranged my flowers in the gap.  Thankfully I had just enough flowers.

To fill the open spaces between the gum paste flowers I piped stars and leaves in pink and green buttercream.  Next I slathered on a thick layer of black buttercream over the 8" sections of the cake and then smoothed the buttercream with my bench scraper.  The pushing and flattening of the buttercream causes a rough edge to form over the gap.  The rough edge and the flowers peaking out from under it makes it look like an earthquake has open a gash in the earth and flowers have begun to grow in the gap.  How cool is that?!

After chilling the cake for a short time, I  painted the edge of the fault with gold edible luster dust mixed with Everclear.  The gold color really makes the fault line pop.

At this point it was close to midnight, so I put the cake in the fridge and went to bed.  The next morning I used my Cricut to cut out the gold cake topper, removed the cake from the fridge, and placed by gold topped on the cake.  I started taking pictures and realized that I hated the cake.   I mean HATED IT.  I thought it looked ugly and morbid.  I started to panic.  I couldn't deliver a cake that looked this bad.  I asked family members for their impression of the cake (hoping I was overreacting and it wasn't that bad), but EVERYONE I asked also hated it.  One comment was, "It isn't pretty but it is interesting."  Another person said, "It looks macabre."   And the final comment was just, "Ewwww!"

It was 2 hours before delivery and I was desperate to fix the monstrosity.   I had some soft consistency white buttercream left over from a previous cake, so I stiffen it up and just started slopping it on top of the black.

I made it as smooth as I could, painted on my gold, and threw on some edible gold flecks.  I also had to cover the black cake drum with white fondant, and replace the ribbon around the edge.  It came down to the wire, but I was able to finish.

So here is the "fixed" version, and NO, I'm not going to post the hideous black version.  I don't want the poor thing to show up on Cake Wrecks.

Happy Decorating,

Carol


Supply List: 


14" Black Cake Drum
Satin Ice Gum Paste
PME Bench Scraper
Roxy & Rich Gold Edible Luster Dust
Cricut Explorer Air 2

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