Chloie turned 6 this year on the first day of school. Poor girl, she just doesn't understand yet. She wanted a strawberry cake that looked like a wedding cake.
Our final birthday exhibit is from a friend at work. Her mother turned 60, and she wanted a cake with flowers and this little heart-felt message.
This time I got brave and added the annex and annex bridge. Most of the cake is regular cake. 7 standard layers of 3 chocolate, 3 yellow, and 1 strawberry iced in cherry flavored buttercream. Most of the bridge is strawberry, and the annex (the little building in front) is a strawberry cordial for their anniversary.
I took a page from Duff and made gum paste panels for the walls and spines of the temple. I also got smart and made the towers from foam. See? Less wasted cake! And I even got the doors on the eastern walls. Now that's detail.
Here they are before the cake-in-the-face-smashing event. How sweet!
And of course, the obligatory aftermath pictures...
I should mention that the little round cake behind the temple is a gluten free chocolate cake for Amy's FIL and was made for him as a special request. Because of an allergy he can't usually partake, but this is one of very few receptions where he can actually enjoy the cake.
The tikis were baked in steel cans so I didn't waste cake, and they were filled with strawberry cordial innards. even the icing on the outside was white chocolate, but I tinted it for the tiki masks.
This little cutie was for my niece's 5th birthday. Her requests for the cake were:
The only way I could work in polka dots were on a purple dragon. On my 'in-laws' blog, they have a picture of Abbey posing with her dragon. Too cute
Here is the birthday girl with her cake. I threatened to keep the cake if she didn't pose for a picture with it... apparently cake is very persuasive. I'm told she sniffed the cake the entire way home, and then rationed thin slices to the members of her family.
Oooo, pretty slice. Tim was concerned that the full-size cake would be too much for the two of them, then I reminded him that we were traveling with friends of ours from church and their 4 hungry boys. When we left Sunday afternoon, there was the equivalent of this much left.
This was for his father's March birthday. I know, it is late, but you can't exactly mail a cake like this through the US Postal Service.
His first comment was that we got the colors right. For once, being obsessed with details paid off. For this we made yellow cupcakes with coconut milk for just a hint of flavor, white chocolate icing, and a circle of fondant painted to resemble the billiard balls (he's a big fan and plays often).
This was your standard recipe for pineapple upside-down cake, one 9x13 and one 1/2 sheet size. I used 4 5"-pillars and two 3/4" tubes for support of the upper layer, and green florist variety water picks for the flowers. I couldn't see spending a lot of money for the white ones when I could cut the spikes off of the green ones and work just fine for cheaper.
I baked one box each of red velvet mini cupcakes, white mini cupcakes, and blue-tinted white mini cupcakes. I followed the directions for the marshmallows and frosting the minis, but I omitted the fruit so that I wouldn't have to refrigerate it. I made the inside out of my favorite green Styrofoam, covered it to make it food safe, and stabbed away. There were 85 kebabs in all in this explosion!
Lessons learned here: 1. Definitely don't do this more in advance than the night before. This was served at lunch (11:30 or so) and by the time I brought the remaining 10 kebabs home, the mini cupcakes were getting a little hard. 2. Weight the base. The first couple yards down my driveway and out of our development were a little harrowing as I saw it teetering. I ended up moving it up behind the driver's seat so that I could hold it while I drove. 3. Don't stick the skewers in so far, Erin! We had a difficult time getting some of them out. On the bright side, the holes are "pre-drilled" so it won't be so hard next time.
The quilt in the background was a wedding gift made for them by my friend's sister-in-law in their chosen wedding colors.
I started the week prior making flowers out of gum paste. The irises and violets started out as the same shade of light blue, then I painted the irises for the variance in color as I've seen the real thing. I didn't have, and couldn't find anywhere, the flower nails needed to make the irises, so I improvised and made a strip of wood with 12 nails of alternating heights topped with cotton balls. Once the petal sections were formed, rolled, and veined, I draped the sections over the cotton balls to dry.
I tinted the gum paste a darker shade of blue for the blue bells and did those after the other flowers were done. There were 80 violets, 12 irises, and 80 bluebells on the cake.
I got to do some new things on this cake... 1. ribbon on the tiers, 2. gum paste flowers, 3. flavored icing besides chocolate and white chocolate, 4. a little flower arranging.
Lessons I learned on this cake: 1. Even if you think you have enough ribbon for the cake, get an extra roll just to be safe. 2. If you live on a bumpy road, don't stack the tiers but take them separately and stack them on location (my cakes shifted a little on the trip there). 3. Leave a little earlier on rainy days so you have time to be careful driving. 4. Allow for extra time to make gum paste flowers (they never go as quickly as you'd think they would). 5. Raspberry flavoring oil will tint your icing pink no matter how much sugar you add to avoid it. 6. Lemon butter cream is surprisingly good.
This was a 1/4 sheet yellow cake with regular butter cream icing on it. I rolled out a thin sheet of fondant and painted the wood grain and court lines. The balls (if you can say that without blushing) were made from tinted fondant and the lines added with a food-safe marker.
The ride to Hancock was a little harrowing. The unfortunate breaking incident described in the Graduation cake delivered the same morning did a number on the construction of the temple cake. It leaned a little, and the driveway to the church wasn't much of a help either.
From the ends it looks a little better. I had to have help to carry it into the building. It had 10 pounds of fondant on it and 7 layers of cake - 2 strawberry, 2 chocolate, 2 yellow, and 1 white. Once on the table, I added the spires and fixed and nudged as best as I could.
The cake stood 28 inches high (compared to 288 feet high on the actual temple), 24 inches long (240 feet), and 13 inches wide (136 feet). Essentially 1 inch of cake equalled 10 feet of temple. Here is a picture of Sister JaNae Barnes on the left and that's me on the right so you can see for scale. This cake was massive.
The spires were carved from green floral Styrofoam from the top level of the cake to 2 inches below the tip of the gold spires. From there a tooth pick (4 smaller spires) or a bamboo skewer (end spires) supported the rest. The spires were then covered in gum paste and shaped for the tower and spire details. Then the upper-most portions were painted with a yellow wash and coated with gold pearl dust like I did when I originally formed the Angel Moroni.
And I would be remiss if I didn't provide the obligatory cake carnage pictures of the aftermath.
There were sisters who hovered and waited as layers were cut and served so they could get their favorite flavor further down in the cake.
We decided to incorporate all of his likes into the cake for his graduation. Oh, he and his brother are both are both BIG fans of German chocolate cake with coconut-pecan icing. The cake did have a pair of dumbbells in front of the guitar, but an unfortunate breaking incident caused the computer tower to crush them. There was nothing I could do to save them.
Here is a close-up of the computer screen, keyboard, and mouse. Daniel and his friends took turns having their picture taken "typing" on the keyboard. At first they didn't believe it was cake.
This is a shot of the two cakes together.
(from the front)
I ended up having to line the walls (cake) with a piece of cardboard toward the inside of the cake for stability. I must have used at least a dozen bamboo skewers! I was worried that the walls would fall over during transit, so I used some shortened skewers inside the "court yard" to support the walls.
The humidity also wreaked havoc on the fondant covering the turrets, and some of the flags leaned a little more than I liked. I ended up sticking them in strategic locations elsewhere. The sword arm of the groom kept sliding off... apparently Loctite doesn't set up well with gum paste. My fingers are now a permanent shade of blue and purple from all of the adjustments.
So, lessons learned: 1. Bring the hot glue gun. 2. Make the walls out of foam. 3. Bring an extra set of gloves to prevent finger dying. Got it. Ready for round two?
