Little Cake... Big Flame - June 2008

This is a little cake I made for my brother-in-law, Josh's, birthday.  (It was at the same party as Valerie's chocolate dots cake - see previous post Chocolate Dots.)  I had a little piece of cake (just about 3"x6") leftover from one of the teacher's cakes I did a couple days earlier [see this post and this post :) ], so I decided to make him something with it.  He likes soccer a lot, so I just piped on a quick soccer ball and some grass.  I used all chocolate though for something different.  Nothing spectacular, just something fun.  :)  The real fun came later though when we lit the candles [see the pictures below :) ].

[Just a side note, since you'll see this happen again in posts to come: Josh and Valerie's birthdays are really close together so they always celebrate them at the same time.  They, Josh and Valerie, say to just do a cake for Valerie and not anything for him, he's fine with it, and we usually don't need that much cake.  But I'll usually try to do something little for him or incorporate him in somehow.  :)
Okay, that's it, back to the cake.  :) ] 

So, I thought that it would be funny to make Josh blow out all his candles on his cake. So, we proceeded to put all the candles close together in the middle of this little cake.

We lit them and all the candles together made this huge flame! 

[Josh warming his hands by the fire.  :)
I like how the camera made it look like a beam of light was coming out of the top.  :) ]



After we sang 'Happy Birthday' and went to take the candles

off the cake, we saw that they had fused together!

As we took the candles off we also noticed that one candle that was in the middle of the pack didn't get lit [how that could have happened with that huge flame I don't know :) ], so... we made him do the whole thing again!  :)  You know, technically he didn't blow out all his candles.  :)  We all had a good laugh.

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!  :)

A Spot of Tea and a Cup of Joe - June 2008

This is the tea mug cake and the coffee mug cake that I made for Cara's 3rd grade teachers at the end of the year.  (In third grade they had a homeroom teacher who taught the class certain subjects, but then the class would switch and go to another teacher's classroom who would teach them the other subjects.)  Earlier in the year we asked them to tell us some things about themselves.  Her homeroom teacher said that one of her favorite things was tea so I made the tea mug cake for her, and every student who had Cara's 'switch teacher' knew that she LOVES coffee so I made the coffee mug cake for her.

These are the pictures of the tea mug.

These are the pictures of the coffee mug.

To make these cakes I cut large circles out of the middle of the cakes that I baked and stacked them to make the height of the mugs that I wanted.  (I should have doweled the cakes to keep the layers secured together better, but at the time I didn't.)  After the cakes were stacked I crumb coated the mugs and let them set.

Then I did my top coat of icing, but for some reason it didn't coat well and ended up being very bumpy looking.  It was like the icing went on so thin that you could see all the bumps of the cake underneath and you could see shadow like spots where the darkness of the chocolate cake was coming through more.  It did not look very nice, definitely not like the look of a ceramic mug [you know, unless someone molded the mug in the dark... sitting in the back of a truck... while traveling on a bumpy road :) ].  So, I decided to get more buttercream icing and go over it with another top coat.  Still not exactly like I wanted, but it was miles better than what I had before, and it looked pretty nice.  I piped a thick line on the top of the lip of the mug and blended it into the icing on the sides.  This would give me a well to pour the 'tea/coffee' into.

I mixed a little bit of vanilla and chocolate icing together to get the light brown color that would be the tea.  For the coffee I just used plain chocolate icing.  I heated both up in the microwave for a bit to make the icing a thinner consistency so I could just pour the buttercream onto the top of the mug and get a smooth finish.

The handle and the apple I made out of fondant.  Then I piped the words onto the mugs.  On one side I wrote "We love" and then put the teacher's name.  On the other side I wrote "A+ Teacher", and in between those on the opposite side of the handle I drew a picture of an apple.

The teachers really liked their cakes!  :)