Just showing off my handy work...

My son's Birthday is today, and I waited till the last minute to come up with a cake. I did this with one can of icing, food coloring,butter knife and ziploc baggies as pastry bags. I think it turned out pretty darn spiffy. I also had to do this in a hurry, completed in 1 1/2 hours.

Just wanted to show it off before it gets eatten!

It's Blue from the kid's movie Rio, and my son LOVES birds.

reply to post by lilowl53


This is Gordon Ramsay speaking; An hour and a half, AND THAT*S what you come up with... I am impressed !

Thank you! The real Gordon Ramsey would say it looks good but taste like crap, lol! Actually it was not too bad.

reply to post by lilowl53


Nice piping work, and good job with the smoothing of the icing.

I'll bet he was thrilled with his cake! (and made more special by his mommy!)

My wife and I enjoy making cakes for our family and friends, and over the past few years, have made more than I could have ever thought we would, hehe...

If you ever want some tips or advice, please let me know. My mother does it professionally, so we learned some things from her, but mostly, it was just practice, and making more and more cakes. We made a LOT of mistakes over the years, and learned a lot from them, as well as some shortcuts, etc.

Here are some examples:

This one, we made for a local scrapbook shop for an event. My wife constantly goes there, and the owners are friends of ours. It's all edible, even most of the "treasure", except the two plastic tiaras we used to hold the "lid" up. The brown color is just standard, chocolate icing, so yes, you can decorate with chocolate! We used fondant strips for the trim of the chest. For the wood ridges, we used a tip most often used to make basket weave designs in icing.



This next one was rather simple, but done for a friend who's a big Florida Gator fan. I drew the design on with a toothpick, then iced in the colors.



Here's a Spongebob cake we did using one of the shaped pans from Wilton. Using the star tip (#18) method is a pretty good way to quickly decorate these kinds of cakes, and it gives a cool texture to it. The shells are molded chocolates made by swirling white and dark chocolate. The "water" is blue colored piping gel.



As for taste, that's one thing we are big on too, making our cakes taste as good as they look. We usually just use regular cake mixes, but prefer Duncan Hines or Pillsbury (their moist lines). We also usually do a filling in the middle of two cake layers. The most common is a white chocolate mousse. It's SUPER easy to make, basically, just whip together two boxes of Jello White Chocolate pudding mix and (I'll have to check the measurement, but I think) about 8oz of heavy whipping cream, and voila! You can do the same with just about any pudding mix for different flavors. Another idea (for fruit fillings) is getting seedless jams, and then using sliced fruit on top. In all cases, you make a "wall" of icing to hold the filling, before adding on the top layer.

reply to post by Gazrok


Those are awesome cakes! I have always been an aspiring cake decorator. My method was a bit cave manish, but I was surprised how well it did. LOL.
I've never tried fondant or tried do anything beyond the rectangle. Being on a diet makes it hard to make cakes you really can't eat.
My son LOVED the sponge bob cake you had up, sounds like I'll be trying one like that next time, lol! Thanks for sharing!

reply to post by lilowl53


You're welcome, nice to see someone with the same passion for it that my wife and I have.
The Spongebob pan can be found at most craft stores (not sure what the chains are in your area), basically wherever you buy Wilton cake supplies. Some larger WalMarts even carry it.

Feel free to either post or U2U me if you ever have any questions.

On fondant, mostly, I don't use a lot of it, as it tastes like play-doh. However, Duff's fondant (from Ace of Cakes) is actually pretty decent. It's a little more expensive, but worth it (and much easier to work with than the Wilton one. If you ever use spray coloring, Duffs is also much better than other brands as well.

Tips for smoothing icing, get a glass of hot water to constantly dip your spatula in, just be mindful not to have it too wet.

Around this time next year I will be attempting to make my own wedding cake. Here is the one I am going to be making a copy of.



Looks like a lot of fondant. I am not sure but the fern leaves might possibly be sugar. I have a year of practice to get it right, lol. And find white toppers like that.

I love Ace of cakes! I love all the cake and cupcake shows! It's etiable art!

reply to post by lilowl53


Actually, the leaves look like real leaves stuck on to the cake. You could make them with royal icing though, but if you have to transport the cake any distance, could be very fragile.

You could use fondant, but you can actually achieve the same look with smoothed buttercream. Takes a lot of patience and skill though.

If you do use fondant, ice the cake first in buttercream icing, then cover with fondant. This serves two purposes. First, it tastes better. Second, it gives something for the fondant to hold on to.

On a tall cake like this, if you do use fillings, use very thin layers of it, otherwise, you create instability. If you've never done a multi-tiered cake before, check into the plates and supports you can use. For this one, you could easily just use cardboard cake circles for each tier, and wooden dowel rods as supports. I'd use at least 5 for each tier. (one in the center, then four out from it, like the points on a compass).

I can't tell what they used for the border, from the pic. Looks like real flowers.

One of the most difficult things about using fondant is judging the right size, and getting it a uniform thickness. The other issue is the expense, it isn't cheap to use. You can make your own though, but I just don't do it enough to go to that length. Again, the Duff brand is the best I've worked with on the market. You should use some kind of rotary tool to trim the fondant (so it doesn't pull the fondant while cutting, like a knife would. Even a pizza cutter works fine.

You have to drop the fondant disk on top of the cake, then drape off the sides, tucking into the sides, then trimming off the excess. The tricky part is not getting wrinkles in it. (and if you mess up, you have to re-ice the cake, and you've wasted the fondant for the most part).

Can't stress this enough, but on that size of a cake, use a wooden base. It will be heavy, and any other base will simply not support it. Should be at least 1/2 inch thick, but 3/4 would be a better recommendation. You can cover the board in either professional colored foils, or often, you can find some heavy duty foil wrapping paper that will work.

Good luck in the creation!

Judging by the bird you were able to put on the cake, you've got real talent. Can't wait to see what other cakes you make!

Found some other examples of mine, including one that shows the smooth buttercream technique I was talking about.

This was using the Wilton Castle set, which is pretty neat. A Halloween cake we did for the same Scrapbook Shop as the chest cake.



Here's a cake using the smooth buttercream technique, instead of fondant. These days, we can get much smoother, but practice practice.....



A fun dragon cake, another shaped pan, and we've made lots of these of various colors for people.



Scooby Doo! Again, another shaped pan (we've amassed quite a collection of them).



Snoopy. We used a book pan, and I just drew Snoopy and Woodstock on with a toothpick and iced them.

reply to post by lilowl53


I stumbles across these owls, while looking for other supplies, that you may find helpful...

www.helyn.com...

reply to post by lilowl53


Wow that looks awesome! I am a pretty artsy person myself and I love to bake but I generally always go for a fancy cake look, not drawing with frosting. You have inspired me to make a similar cake for my nephews upcoming birthday!