Grace turns 4!

 Life has been a little busy with two young children and a third on the way.  So you'll have to excuse the fact that this cake was made in November, and I am just getting this posted now.  YIKES!

My husband requested, since our son Titus was only five months old, that I take it easy on Grace's fourth birthday cake.  And, since my daughter was going to be four, I had a lot less say in what her final cake would look like.  Though, she had difficulty decided as well.  Side note to self:  next year, show her 3 or 4 cake options and let her pick, rather than ask the open ended question of "What would you like your birthday cake to look like?"  This girl went back and forth as to what she wanted.  The only consistency being that her cake should be chocolate with peanut butter frosting.  Finally, with a few days remaining before her party, she decided that she wanted a cake where she herself was jumping out of it.  Hmmm....I decided to go with a similar method as I had done for my nephew Sawyer's cowboy cake.

My sister, Nichole, always sends a birthday shirt in the mail.  Fortunately, the day I decided to start the cake topper...the shirt came.  Grace was thrilled to pose for a picture in her new shirt.  We asked her to pose as if she was jumping out of a cake, and this is what we got.

  

 My husband did some photoshop work to make her look a little more like a cartoon.  This changed the coloring a bit, so you'll notice that her shirt looks a little purple here, but on the cake we went with the true color of teal.

 

Next, I create some templates using wax paper.  I wanted just the main colors.

 

 Here is some of the layering of fondant.  Then I let it dry overnight.  A few nights would be alright, if you have the time.  I also made some curly confetti and bow loops.  They really should dry a few days prior to use so they hold their shape well.

 Next, came the painting.  I hand painted using food coloring, luster dust, and vodka (evaporates quickly, leaving only color behind).  I about fell over when I saw the final product.  It turned out far better than I had imaged, which doesn't happen often for me.  Usually the picture in my head is far superior.  FYI, I was so sure that this wouldn't pan out that I had a back up plan of running to HyVee with the photograph for them to print on some rice paper.  I've not done it before, but had heard that you could do this.  

In order to get her to stick into the cake, I used some royal icing to stick two lollipop sticks to the back of her. 

 Now for the portion of the cake I was the least pleased with.  I was running out of time as I approached fondate covering time and it didn't end up as smooth as I would have like, so please ignore all of the bumps.  I used this tutorial to guide me in how to make the explosion appearance on the cake.  Worked pretty slick.

 Added my bow and confetti and let it all dry in place over night, all of the plastic wrap is holding items in place as they dry.

 In goes the big four year old.

She was pleased, and the cake was delicious!

OUCH!

Lego - Part 3

Friday!  This is the day the cake and cupcakes must be delivered.  My cupcakes, frosting, and lego bricks were all ready to go.  I simply needed to put it all together.  I used a 1M tip to swirl each cupcake with frosting.  Then I placed a chocolate lego brick on each.  I loved the way these turned out!

Last, but definitely not least.  We delivered the treats late in the morning.  This is how it all looked displayed.

Lego - Part 2

Tuesday I made many batches of frosting.  Four batches of almond flavored frosting, two batches of chocolate ganache, four batches of almond flavored pink frosting, and four batches of chocolate frosting.  Yikes!

Wednesday I baked 8 dozen cupcakes.  The bride and groom order 6 dozen, but one of the batches fell, and I was not happy with delivering them...so I made another batch.

I also cut (or attempted to hack at) the frozen cakes.  I measured and cut and used my square and level (that is right, I have a square level in my cake decorating stuff) to try and get the most perfect squares I could.  The bottom cake was a 12 x 12 yellow cake.  I layered it with the almond frosting.  I like 4 layers of cake with frosting between each layer.  I'm not a huge fan of the taste of fondant.  So when I cover a cake in fondant,  I usually add more frosting to the inside assuming that others don't eat the fondant either.  The middle cake was and 8 x 8 chocolate cake layered with chocolate ganache.  The top tier was a 4 x 4 yellow cake with almond frosting.  It is difficult to work with such a small cake, it just wants to move around on you, as there is so little weight.

Thursday I covered the cakes in fondant.  I was really nervous about this step.  I wanted to get a really crisp edges.  So I decided to buy an extra fondant smoother.  This really seemed to work.  By using both smoothers and meeting them together on the corners I was able to accomplish a much more square edge than I have before.  The difficulty, again, came with the small 4 x 4 cake.  The little thing didn't hold well to the work I had to do.  It turned out okay, but if there was a part of the cake I would do over...this would be it.

Then, the fun part - we put it all together!  We stacked the three tiers.  I added some lines to the fondant so it would appear there were separate blocks.  We also glued each knob on with royal icing.

Another late night...

 off to bed, have cupcakes to decorate in the morning.

Stay tuned for the final lego post...

  

Lego - Part 1

If you look back to the previous post, you will see that in order to get my most recent project done on time, I had created a plan.  Over the weekend, prior to the completion date, I had to complete the following:  Make chocolate lego bricks, create lego knobs, mix fondant colors for cakes, and make the cakes and freeze them.


We searched and searched for the perfect chocolate mold for the right size lego bricks.  We ended up going with this lego mold, which made the bricks still a little bigger than an actual lego, but pretty close.  Besides, who was going to complain about a little more chocolate?  It was also a bit of a challenge finding the right color chocolate.  We ended up ordering Mercken's brand, and it was most definitely hot pink.  Not exactly the color that the bride had asked me to match, so I had to mellow it out a bit with some red candy melts that I already had on hand.  I made bricks in both pink and brown.  The mold makes a 2 x 4 brick, but they seemed a little big for on top of a cupcake, so I cut each in half.  The edges that I had cut were not perfect, but I figured that would be the side I would stick into the frosting.  The key to making these was to really pound the mold with chocolate for quite a while in order to get all the air bubbles out, especially to get nice clean knobs on the lego bricks.

 So, how to make lego knobs for the cake?  I had my husband convert the size of an actual lego knob on an actual lego to our cake size legos (4" x 4").  I made a pan of rice crispy bars to the proper thickness and then cut each knob out with a 1 1/2" cookie cutter.  To get nice crisp edges it is best to wash the cookie cutter frequently.

After cut, I covered each rice crispy treat with chocolate.  It helps to have a smoother surface to apply fondant to.  Without it, the fondant takes on the shape of a rice crispy...bumpy.  After applying chocolate cut off any edges that are not smooth with a knife and they are ready to go.

Next, I covered each rice crispy treat with fondant.  Look at that!  Beautiful!  I was really worried about this, I thought I might end up with big creases, but it covered so easily.  Time consuming, but easily.  I rolled out the fondant quite thin and used a bigger size cookie cutter to cut it out.  Then I smoothed it out.  I used a little piping gel between the treat and fondant as glue. 

The final step was to pipe the word "LEGO" on each of these little guys.  I guess I didn't get a picture.  I'm sure it was getting late, and I just wanted to be done.  Again, my husband created a template (he's so good at that sort of thing) with the word "LEGO" as it appears on the actual knobs on the actual brick.  We placed the template on each knob and used a pin to mark where I would need to pipe.

Oh, I also baked 2 yellow 1/2 sheet cakes and 2 chocolate 9 x 13 cakes.  I read somewhere that it is best to freeze a cake in order to get nice crisp cuts.  I wanted as sharp of an edge on the lego bricks as possible, so I planned to freeze them.  Just in case I forget to mention it later, it was far too difficult to cut through the frozen cake.  I will not freeze a cake to cut it again.  Maybe if you are sculpting?  I'm not sure.

Stay tuned for the next steps...

Legos

Many, many months ago...I agreed to do a lego themed cake and cupcakes for a friend's wedding.  This cake was a bit more of a challenge as their was a lot to do (a 3 tier cake and 72 cupcakes) and I had an additional child to take care of.  Turns out, a break from cakes may be in the best interest of my family and my sanity :).  I decided if I was going to pull this off, I needed a good plan of attack. 

The Plan

The weekend prior to the cakes due date: 
-Make the chocolate lego bricks
-Make the lego knobs
-Mix fondant colors for covering cakes
-Make the cakes and freeze them (I will talk more about this later)

Tuesday:
-Make frosting

Wednesday:
-Bake cupcakes
-Frost Cakes

Thursday:
-Cover cakes with fondant
-Ad detail work to cakes

Friday:
-Frost cupcakes
-Deliver

When my friend came to me, she brought a stack of lego bricks in the shape of a three tier wedding cake, she wanted the cake to look like that...only bigger.  Her colors were pink and brown, so the cake was to coordinate.  As always, I started by taking many pictures of the process, but as I got involved...I picked up the camera less and less.  Stay tuned to see how well I stuck to the plan and how it all turned out.

A taste of summer

Another adoption fundraising bake/garage sale.  Our good friends Aaron and Kristy have decided to begin the process of adoption to add to their already beautiful family of three.  Last minute, I decided to do some cookies...I actually started these at about 5:00 in the evening and finished them around 12:00 am.  I wouldn't recommend it :).  I saw a tutorial for these cookies a few months ago, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity to give them a try.  You don't really need a step by step, as the tutorial is done very thoroughly, but here are some pictures for you.

I tried a new royal icing.  I looked up one that included lemon juice.  I thought it might be nice if these citrus looking cookies had a taste to go along with it.  I was unhappy with the way the icing turned out.  It didn't spread like I prefer and it never really hardened completely.  It was very airy...I'm sure there is a place for this texture of royal icing, but it is not in decorating cookies.

I also noticed that the final look of the royal icing was more matte than I would prefer.  Especially for a cookie that should look like a juicy orange.

None the less, I packaged half of these little guys up.  I was able to take half to the bake/garage sale, and half to a class reunion.  I even had leftover for a birthday party the following day!

Owl Cookies

 It has been a while since I've posted anything.  The main reason is the new love in my life!

Click on the picture to read more about our adoption story.

 We welcomed Titus to our family over two months ago.  Isn't he just the cutest thing you've ever seen? He's grown a lot in the last few months.  It has been a blur of pure joy. 

You may recall in my last post we were hosting a garage sale for some close friends of ours who were raising funds to adopt.  Not long after we brought Titus home, they too were blessed with an addition to their family.  I had to take a break from my maternity leave to provide some cookies for her baby shower for two reasons: 1)  I am so excited for them. 2)  I love owls, and her nursery is owl themed.  The below decal is on the wall in their little one's

 nursery.

 With my inspiration, I was off.  I used a 3 1/2 inch round cookie cutter.  Decorated with royal icing, I tried to implement different parts of the decal.  My favorite were the little owls.  This picture was taken before I got the cute little flowers on the owls heads.  They were even cuter after. 

Congratulations to Talley and Sarah and their precious little daughter!