Holy Cake and Ice Cream, Batman! - July 2007

I made these Robin themed cakes for my daughter, Cara's, 8th birthday.  Robin was her favorite superhero, so she had a Robin themed party.

Help!  Robin!  The building is on fire!  :)

For the building I baked a 15x15 cake and cut it into 9 sections.  Then I stacked the sections on top each other.  I iced the building with buttercream icing tinted gray.  I used yellow fondant for the windows and outlined everything to give it that cartoon/comic book look. 

The only non edible things on the cake are the metal wire that Robin's bat line is connected to (it runs through the cake and is attached to the underside of the board) and the bat line, which is just a piece of black elastic cording that I had leftover from making Robin masks for the kids at the party.

Robin is made out of fondant.  Yes, I know he looks a little LEGOish with the yellow skin and all.  I used some leftover yellow fondant from the windows to make him and then painted it with food coloring.  I think I thought painting over it with a little orange would make it look a little more peach and not so yellow, but it didn't work so well.  :)  My original plan was to have Joker on top of the building and a person that he captured and tied up, but I ran out of time (hence the yellow Robin :) ).  Just pretend Joker and the person he captured are inside the building.  :)

I made these Robin cookies to put in the kids' goodie bags.  I used a gingerbread boy cutter to get the shape.  After they baked I painted them with food coloring and/or a food coloring pen to make it look like Robin.  The cape is made out of yellow Fruit Roll-Up.  I had seen some Superman cookies like this online that someone had made back when I was looking for stuff for Caleb's Superman party (see the It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's Superman! post).  I thought they were so cute.  Unfortunately, I didn't have time to make them for Caleb's party, but when Cara wanted a Robin party I realized they could work for Robin too.

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!  :)

A Long Time Ago in a Galaxy Far, Far Away - June 2007

I made this cake for my brother-in-law, Josh's, birthday. (It was at the same party as Valerie's Wizard of Oz cake - see the I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore post).  He likes Star Wars a lot, so I thought this would be good for him.  One of the bigger surprises for him was that this cake was made all out of cheesecake, which is his favorite.

To make this cake I just followed a cheesecake recipe and lined the pans I needed with parchment paper.  I used three 6 inch round pans and 1 half of a ball pan.  Before I stacked the cakes I covered one of the empty 6 inch pans with foil and put it on the board upside down.  Then I stacked the cakes on top of the pan.  That way when I put the legs and feet on it would give the feeling of empty space below R2-D2's body, since in the movie he is suspended in the air from his legs.  I just used classic white icing (tinted when needed) to ice and decorate it.

The legs and feet I shaped out of foam core board, covered with foil, and iced along with the rest of the cake.  For the blue and red lights (Logic Display and PSI) on R2-D2's dome I cut pieces of foil into the right shapes and then just painted over them with food coloring gel.  It gave it that reflective shiny look while still having the appropriate color (just remember to remove them before you serve the cake :) ).  The brown hoses on the feet are made out of fondant.  With it being made all out of cheesecake this cake was heavy, you would have thought you were picking up a real metal droid!  :)



(The legs and feet before they were covered and iced.)

I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore - June 2007

I made this cake for my sister, Valerie's, birthday. Growing up she liked the Wizard of Oz and still does, so I thought this would be good for her.

The basic idea for the cake came from a magazine article my sister, Casandra, read and told me about.  The basic idea being a cake that is only black and white (no color) on the outside and then when you cut into it it's rainbow on the inside.

I loved the idea and couldn't wait to use it, but I decided to modified it a little.  Instead of white and black I decided to do white and brown (sepia :) ).  I used shaved chocolate for the brown accents on the outside instead of icing.  (They had suggested that you could draw swirls and stuff with black icing on the outside in the article.)  I used some bigger curls of chocolate and some little shavings to give the look of debris from the tornado while still getting the dark/light contrast.  It's hard to see under the chocolate, but the pattern in the white icing on the top of the cake is a big swirl going out from the middle.

I made the tornado out of wire, and then I hung the house and fence from it with fishing line so it would look like they were flying around in the tornado.  There was supposed to be a cow too, but I ran out of time.  :)  I made the house and fence out of fondant.  The cake was on a turntable so you could spin it and make the house and fence swing out a little and look even more like they were spinning in the tornado, but we only spun it once because it was a little more top heavy than I had anticipated and I didn't want the tornado to fall over.  :)

I didn't tell anyone that it was rainbow inside, so when we cut into it and everyone saw the rainbow colors it kind of gave that 'magical' feel like the movie had in that scene.  I used a checkerboard cake pan set to get the different sections of color.  (The original idea from the article was to have colors layered one on top another, but I had gotten this checkerboard pan for Christmas and hadn't used it yet, so what better time.  :) )  To get the different colors I just used a white cake mix and then mixed food coloring into the different parts of the batter before I baked it. 

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Parties I've Linked This Post To:

Strut Your Stuff - Somewhat Simple

Delight Me - Doodles and Doilies