It's a Deconstructed Ice Cream Cone... Cake - October 2008

I made this cake for my husband, Ronnie's, birthday.  He loves Marble Slab ice cream, namely vanilla with chocolate chips in a waffle cone... well... that's really all he gets.  :)  So, he mentioned it would be cool to have an ice cream cake for his birthday.  I thought 'I can do that', and this is what I came up with.

Below are some pictures of the inside of the cake.

I baked the chocolate cake in a Fanci Fill pan (for an explanation of what the pan is see the Ooo La La - Lingerie Shower post).  After the cake cooled completely I filled the middle spaces with ice cream.  Now I knew that not any ice cream would do, it had to be Marble Slab Vanilla ice cream.  So, I had gone to Marble Slab and picked up a quart to use in the cake [I didn't use the whole quart, we had some leftover - Happy Birthday to Ronnie! :) ].  After filling the cake with the ice cream I put a little icing on top one half (not over the ice cream though) and stacked the two halves together.  Then I put the cake in the freezer to let the ice cream set again.

While the cake was in the freezer I prepared my cake board.  Now, I wanted the cake to be like an ice cream cone taken apart and meshed with a cake, so I wanted to incorporate the waffle cone somehow.  When I had called Marble Slab about buying the ice cream I also asked about buying some cones, but I asked if they could make me a couple of them that weren't shaped yet.  It would be just a flat waffle cone circle.  They said sure and told me I could pick them up the next day because they make their cones in the morning.  Yippee.  :)  So, I took one of the flat waffle cones and placed it on the cake board.  I wish it would have been a little bigger in diameter so it would've stuck out from under the cake a little more [it was pretty much the same diameter of the cake once the icing was on :) ], but I think it still looked good.  After a while I took the cake out of the freezer and put the cake on top of the flat waffle cone.  The cone wasn't perfectly flat, it bowed some, so when I put the (heavy) cake on top of it I heard the cone crack.  Oh well, good thing that part of the cone didn't have to look nice.  :)  I crumb coated the cake with buttercream icing and put it back in the freezer to let it set.

After a bit I took the cake out and put a good top coat of buttercream icing on it.  For the top of the cake I took a spoon and used the back to swirl around on the icing to make it look a little 'wavy' and a little fancier.  Then I got some mini semi-sweet chocolate chips and patted them onto the icing on the sides of the cake.  I put the cake back in the freezer until it was time to go to the restaurant for the party a little later that evening.

So, there you have it a Vanilla & Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Cone - Cake.  :)

I thought the cake turned out really nicely.  It kind of had an elegant look to it I thought.  Oh, but after being frozen this cake was very hard to cut into.  My family quietly waited had a really good laugh watching me try to slice this cake :) [I'm sure I didn't look so elegant :) ].  After slicing the first piece to give to Ronnie, I let him finish cutting the rest - you know, so we could all get a slice of cake before the restaurant closed.  :)

Ronnie really liked the cake, and he especially liked the fact that the ice cream was from Marble Slab.  :)

Chocolate Dots - June 2008

I made this chocolate cake for my sister, Valerie's, birthday.  After tasting my other sister, Casandra's, lingerie shower cake a few months before (see the Ooo La La - Lingerie Shower post), Valerie said that she wanted the same flavor for her birthday.  So, this is a chocolate cake made in the Fanci-Fill pan, topped with chocolate buttercream icing, and filled with the chocolate raspberry mousse-like filling that the lingerie shower cake had.

After the cake was baked, filled, stacked, crumb coated, and iced I piped the dots on the sides and top of the cake.  I used a few different sized round tips so I could have some dots bigger than others.  I wanted the dots to just look randomly placed with no real pattern to them, which I think I achieved on the sides of the cake.  When I did the top of the cake though and made the dots go in towards the middle of the circle I unknowingly made it look like the negative space was a flower, I guess not so random as I thought.  :)

After the dots were piped on the cake I let them set a little and then went around to each and lightly tapped down the little peak that was left [before that it kind of looked porcupine-ish :) ].  I used the large round tip to make dots around the base of the cake with a little space in between each.  My original plan was to paint the dots silver, but I had the wrong kind of silver dust.  I tested a couple just making them shimmery silver, but you couldn't really see it, and I realized I liked the way it looked all chocolate anyway.  :)

Now, unfortunately when I was making the filling something did not go the same.  I don't know if the ratio of pudding to whipped cream was off or if I mixed it too much or what, but when we cut into the cake the filling was very soupy :( .  It still tasted good, it just wasn't as pretty when cut into, and it was messy.

Valerie really liked the cake and didn't even mind the runny filling, what a great sister!  :)

Ooo La La - Lingerie Shower - January 2008

I made this cake for my sister, Casandra's, lingerie shower.  I wanted something cute that would go along with the shower.  I thought this would be fun, but still be a little classy and elegant at the same time.  One of her wedding colors was periwinkle, so I made the lingerie to match.

I made the cake in a Wilton 8-3/4" round Fanci-Fill pan.  It is two cake pans that are shaped in a way so it leaves space for a filling inside the cake.  After baking you put filling in the spaces, put the two halves together, and it should look something like the picture to the right.  I made the filling with whipped cream, chocolate pudding, and frozen raspberries (thawed).

The cake is iced with chocolate buttercream.  I used buttercream icing for the border around the bottom of the cake also.  I made the lingerie out of fondant.  I covered a tennis ball with foil, and then rolled the ball on the counter to make the foil smooth and compact.  I repeated this with another ball.  These were used to shape the fondant on to form the cups.  I let the fondant stay on the ball until it was dry.  Once the cups were dry I cut out all the other pieces that I needed and assembled them together on the cake.

I piped the cornelli lace design on the lingerie with buttercream icing.  For the loops of lace on the top edges of the lingerie I thickened the icing a little so that when I piped it on it would stand up off the top edge of the fondant and leave space in the middle of the loops to look like lace.  To make the hooks I used gray fondant with buttercream piped on the top of them.

I really loved how this cake turned out, and it was just perfect for the shower.  :)