Pocket Knife Cake - July 2011

I made this little pocket knife cake for my dad's birthday.  He likes pocket knives, has quite a bit of them, and pretty much always has one with him.  So, as something just quick and fun I made this cake with a fondant pocket knife on it for him.

This is my husband's pocket knife, that I used as a model, next to my fondant one.

More details to come... :)

[Right now I'm just trying to get everything on the blog, then I'll go back and fill in details; you can read a little longer explanation here if you want. BUT if you have any questions in the meantime, in general or about this cake, please feel free to email me by clicking on the 'Contact Me' tab at the top of the page and using the email address found there, and I will try to get back with you as soon as possible. Or you can always ask questions or leave a comment about this cake by clicking the comments link at the end of this post.  :)]

(I created my animated name at this site.)

You Shall Not Pass... Until You Have Some Cake - July 2010

I made this Lord of the Rings Cake of Gandalf Fighting the Balrog for my dad's birthday. 

I made the Balrog light up; that's the yellow glow you see in the mouth!  :)

I know some of you have been waiting for this cake to be on here; so here is a bit.  :)  Stay tuned... there will be even more pictures and the details to come!  :)

[Right now I'm just trying to get everything on the blog, then I'll go back and fill in details; you can read a little longer explanation here if you want. BUT if you have any questions in the meantime, in general or about this cake, please feel free to email me by clicking on the 'Contact Me' tab at the top of the page and using the email address found there, and I will try to get back with you as soon as possible. Or you can always ask questions or leave a comment about this cake by clicking the comments link at the end of this post. :) ]

 
 
 
 
 
Created animated name at this site.

'Gone Fishing'... in My Kayak - July 2008

I made this cake of my dad fishing in his kayak for his birthday.  My dad has always liked fishing, that's actually some of my favorite memories growing up, fishing with my dad.  So, a few months or so before I made this cake he was fishing and he saw someone with a kayak going out to fish.  They got to talking and before you knew it my dad bought a kayak to go out fishing in.  He really enjoyed it, so I decided that would make a nice cake for him.  [The story about the sign on the cake will come later in the post. :) ]

  



   

I baked two 8-inch rounds for this cake.  I wanted the cake to look like you were seeing a cross-section of the water and you could see under the water at the fish being caught.  So, I cut a little space out of the edge of the cake, big enough to have a fish in.  [If I were doing this cake over again, I would design things a little bit differently to show what I wanted, but it worked out well this way, and my dad got what I was trying to do right away. :) ]

I crumb coated the cake and let it set.  I iced the cake with green and blue buttercream.  I piped along the edge of the water and the bottom of the cake with green buttercream using a grass tip.

This is how the kayak looked by itself.

I made the kayak out of fondant.  I wanted to make it look like his so I asked my mom what kind he had so I could find some pictures online.  For some details on it I used fondant and  for some I painted with black food coloring.  

I made my dad figurine out of fondant.  I gave him a hat like the one he always wears when he goes fishing (it's one of those outback type hats).  Some details on him are done with fondant and others are painted with food coloring.  I decided to give him a nose this time :) (see the Building Your Birthday Cake post).

I painted toothpicks brown to use for fishing poles and put a bit of fondant at the end to secure the fishing line to the pole.  I made the fish, little bobber, rocks, dragonfly, frog, and sign all out of fondant and painted details with food coloring.  The cattails are made with toothpicks I painted with green food coloring and wrapped with a little bit of brown fondant at the top.

So, now for the story behind the sign.  My dad was telling me about a conversation he had recently had with his brother.  They live in different states and were talking about getting together.  His brother was saying that they should go do something really cool.  I think skydiving came up and things of that sort.  So, somehow kayaking comes up, which my dad was doing now and his brother had done down a river with rapids before.  I guess my dad mentioned that he had been out on open saltwater before, and his brother was surprised that he would go out like that instead of just going on rivers and things like that.  So, my dad starts telling him about this Extreme Kayak Shark Fishing he'd heard about, like they should go do that for their thing.  Okay so, evidentially people go out in a kayak and fish for sharks... in a kayak... for sharks... did I mention the kayak and the sharks!!!  CRAZY!  Then (if they manage to not be eaten) when they catch the shark they just tow it in behind them or put it up across their kayak, like on their legs, and paddle back in!!!  [You know to advertise to all the other sharks where lunch is.  :) ]  His brother was like, I don't know about that, you'd have to be nuts!  (And he's right.)  Now, my dad wouldn't really seriously do it, he was just trying to shock him, but after his story my mom and I let him know that we were not-for-that, just incase.  :)  So, when I made him the cake I thought it would be funny to add a different version of a 'NO FISHING' sign.  :)

My dad really liked the cake :) , and when the party was over he and my mom took home the fondant dad and kayak.  When I was over their house sometime after that I was looking at the figure on the counter, and much to my horror I realized that I had forgotten to put my dad's tattoos on!  UGH!  Now, no one had noticed and no one would have cared (especially now)... but... it bugged - ME.  So, after that on one of my trips over their house I finally remembered to bring my green food coloring so I could complete it.  :)  And here it is...

Ah, that's much better  :)

Update to the 'Building Your Birthday Cake' Post

The post Building Your Birthday Cake is now updated to include the pictures of the Lego Cake that Charm City Cakes made that gave me the idea for my dad's cake!  [Thanks Charm City Cakes, specifically Mary Alice, for the pictures!  :) ]  Check it out!

Building Your Birthday Cake - July 2007

This is a cake I made for my dad's birthday.  He is very good at building things, so I thought I'd make him building his cake.  :)

No, he didn't really do it.  :)  He wanted to, but we still wanted to eat the cake.  :)

:)  Hey, when you're made out of sugar you've got to keep in shape!  :)

I actually got the inspiration for my dad's cake from a cake I saw on the Charm City Cakes website earlier in the year (2007).  It was LEGO chefs constructing a wedding cake, so cute!  [For those who don't know, Charm City Cakes is Duff Goldman's (Ace of Cakes) bakery.]  Below are a couple photos of their cake.  (Thank you Charm City Cakes, specifically Mary Alice, for the pictures!  :) )

(Charm City Cakes's LEGO Construction Wedding Cake)

It was such a cute cake and such a neat idea, but it didn't really fit for anyone in my family at the time.  Then I started thinking of my dad building things, and I realized that I could modify it to fit for him... So, I did.  :)

I made the cake and iced it with chocolate buttercream.  Everything else on the cake is made from fondant.  I rolled out some brown fondant for the top of the cake.  Then I got some foam letter stamps that I had and imprinted the 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY' letters into the fondant while it was still soft.  I put it on the cake and trimmed it where necessary.  (This is the first time I used fondant for anything other than decorations, so it's not perfect, but I'm learning :) .)  For the 'wooden' planks around the sides of the cake I rolled out some brown fondant and cut it in strips the height and width I needed.  The four remaining planks would have completed the outside of the cake, but I left them off to make it look like he was still in the process of constructing it.  I rolled and cut the yellow fondant and put it on part of the top and side of the cake to look like he was painting it.  I thinned a little brown food coloring to paint the wood grain lines on the brown fondant.  Then I took a toothpick and broke off the pointed end.  I dipped it in some black food coloring and dotted the 'nails' onto the planks on the side of the cake.

All the tools I shaped out of fondant.  I wish I would have had more time to do the saw, nail gun, tape measure, and router (yeah, I know it kind of looks like a sander, but it was supposed to be a router that he had used to cut out the letters).  Those tools mentioned were kind of thrown together quickly, so they don't look as good as they could have, but I was running out of time and I at least wanted them on there, so there you go.  :)  To make the sawdust I took some scraps of the brown fondant that I had leftover and chopped them into little pieces, then I just sprinkled them around the sawhorses.

My dad is made out of fondant... not my actual dad (although he is sweet :) )... just the one on the cake.  :)  I put him in one of his favorite kinds of shirts (if you look in the picture of him 'cutting' the cake you'll see that he was wearing one with navy blue sleeves the day of his party - funny), and I even gave his mini version the appropriate tattoos.  :)

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Take a Byte Out of THIS Laptop - June 2007

I made this laptop cake for my dad for Father's Day.  My dad does a lot of video editing, and he is really good at it.  He has a computer that he uses, but he also uses his laptop; so I thought that it would be neat to make a laptop cake for him.  I wanted it to be a surprise, so I covertly asked my mom what type of laptop and video software program my dad had. :) Then I looked online to find pictures of the type of laptop he had to try and make it look like his did.

Below are some pictures of my dad's laptop next to the cake laptop.

[My dad having some fun 'typing' on his cake.  :) ]

The cake was an 8x8 inch square cake sliced in half and opened like a laptop.  My original idea was just to hold the top open by propping the board it was on up with some skewers, but as I went along I quickly found that it was not going to hold.  So, I ended up constructing the box behind it and attaching that to the base so it wouldn't slide from the weight of the top cake resting on it.  It was a bit bulkier and more conspicuous than I wanted, but it kept the top in place which was the most important thing... whew!  :)

Some of the details, like the speakers, CD drive, ports, etc are just painted with food coloring straight onto the icing.  The other details, like the keyboard, power button, touchpad, etc are made out of fondant that I then painted onto with black food coloring.

The actual screen is a piece of card stock paper that I printed on from a regular printer and put on top of the cake; then I laid a clear sheet of plastic (like a transparency sheet) over the paper to give it the 'shine' and look of a screen.  So, of course those two things are not edible.  :)  (There was also clear sheet of plastic behind the card stock so the icing didn't bleed through the paper.)

I wanted it to look like he was working on a project, so, I needed to have certain elements on the screen for the 'video editing' aspect (the two bottom sections).  I found a screen shot online of a editing program that looked like his and copied and edited the elements I needed into a Word document.  Then I composed the rest of the screen and added in pictures to make it look like he was in the process of creating a slideshow with his editing program.

The title of the slideshow is 'Great Fathers'.  I put a picture of my dad, my two sisters, and me when we were little kids in the 'slideshow preview' window, and then in the 'pictures to be added to slideshow' section I put a picture of my dad, my sisters, and me that we had taken the previous Father's Day.  In that section I also put a picture of my dad's dad (my Grandpa John), my mom's dad (my Grandpa Joe), and my husband, Ronnie.

Well when my dad saw the cake he was really surprised!  He thought it was very cool, and he thought it was really neat that the video editing stuff was on the screen (it was one of his favorite parts). He also really liked seeing the pictures that were included for the 'slideshow'.  Later, though, the laptop crashed... because we ate it!  :)