Changes

I'm making changes to the template and layout of the blog, adding larger images and filling in instructions on some of the cakes that are missing them so if you run into a strangely formatted post, know I'm working to fix it :) Thanks, and happy decorating!

Ferret Shaped Cake

Among other out-of-the-ordinary-for-a-girl-her-age things, Tia loves ferrets. I can't stress that enough. She LOVES ferrets and all things ferret related. It started with a trip to the pet store one day when she decided she wanted a rabbit (we were just going to look at them, not buy one) and I pointed out the ferrets. There were two in the cage - as cute as could be and romping and playing around. Tia instantly fell in love. But, since daddy is allergic, she knows she can't have one until she grows up. That was two years ago.

Now Tia has a small collection of ferret things - toys, stuffed animals, a puppet, drawings, calendars, magazines, and even a pet store catalog that usually has an entire 3-4 pages dedicated to ferret items (cages, toys, beds, food, etc). Her favorite is "Coco", her well loved and worn Webkins ferret. In fact, Tia is our resident expert on the care and feeding of ferrets. I was quite prepared when she requested a ferret shaped cake for her 8th birthday (she's already 8?).

I had an idea about how to go about making her cake but I wanted more concrete plans. A search online didn't help much and I wound up patterning her cake after one I found on Cake Central, though that one had airbrushing on it - something I was not going to get into.

If you're unfamiliar with my cakes, I just have to mention that I try to make things as easy as possible. I like made-from-scratch cakes as much as the next person, but I spend a lot of time on decorating the cakes so when it comes to a cake project, I simply use boxed cake mix and canned icing - something anyone can just pick up at the store. You could certainly make your cake and icing from scratch and go from there but the results you see in the pictures, unless otherwise noted, are from boxed cake mix and canned icing (usually Pillsbury brand).

I realized I could just carve out the cake and ice it with a Grass and Hair decorating tip (Wilton Tip 233).

To start, I baked an entire box of cake mix in a 10 inch round cake pan. I added 1/4 cup additional flour to the mix because a) the altitude in Colorado and b) to make a denser cake (easier to carve without falling apart). I baked it for the amount of time a 13 x 9 cake calls for. It certainly rose enough...

I used the additional height to my advantage. It would mean less carving and piecing together to make the rounded body of the ferret.

I carved out the body and tail in one piece, then the head and the legs and pieced them all together. The pieces don't have to be carved perfectly. The icing has a way of rounding everything out. The leg pieces are also there to just add "bulk" to those areas and define parts.

To ice the body, I didn't want to use just plain brown. A ferret's fur, like many animals, is a mixture of several shades. I knew I didn't want to do the airbrushing. I also only wanted a hint of color change - and something that was quick and easy to do (sometimes I can be a very lazy decorator).

I decided to mix a small amount of vanilla icing into the brown chocolate icing.

I didn't want to mix it too much because I wanted there to be a hint of color change. I just marbled the two icings together.

Then I filled my decorating bag (with Tip #233) with the icing. This may seem like a lot of trouble, but it did make a big difference (I think) in the outcome of the cake.

It helps to practice a little with the Grass & Hair tip before you actually start decorating. I found that if I place the tip close to the cake surface, add pressure to the bag to start the icing flow and pull out slowly while still applying pressure (releasing the pressure once you have the "fur" the length you want), the "fur" tends to look better.

I removed the additional cake "parts" (the head and legs) and started icing the ferret cake at the tip of the tail working my way up the body. As I iced, I directed the "fur" toward the tail and toward the base instead of straight up off the cake so the ferret would look like it had fur instead of spiky hair. As I got to the place where a leg should go, I iced the area on the body and then lightly pressed the cake part into the side. Then I iced over the leg. Once I got to the neck area, I used some icing to "glue" the head to the neck.

Tia wanted a sable ferret with a mask. I only have one Grass & Hair decorating tip (who knew having 2 of them would ever come in handy) so I completed all of the brown icing fur before moving on to the white on the face. For the ears, I used a bag with no tip - just the very end snipped off - and piped them on. Basically, the ears are 2 "C" shapes. Ferrets have small ears so there didn't seem to be a need to do much else with them. I didn't have anything else on hand, so I used chocolate chips for the eyes (placed into the icing with the flat side out) and a cinnamon candy for the nose. I would have preferred mini M&Ms for the eyes or even shiny black decorating gel but this is what I had. I also was NOT going to whip up pink icing just for the little nose, though I think it would have looked better. Still, the birthday girl who stood by me the whole time the cake was being made, was happy.

Lego Mini-figure Cake

Tristan knew exactly what he wanted as his birthday cake this year. He has been so engrossed in Legos for the last three years and recently began creating Lego "videos" (stop motion photography) so it came as no surprise when he blurted out his wishes at the dinner table one night. "I want a Lego Mini figure cake! But I want the original face. No eyebrows."

"How odd," I thought, "for him to be specific about the eyebrows." But, that's Tristan. And a mini-figure cake he got! He even put together one for me with the eyes (no eyebrows), pants and shirt he wanted out of his Lego pieces. Lucky for me, he wanted a very basic "original looking" Lego man.

Tristan told me about this cake well in advance. I thought about it well in advance...then forgot about it for a couple of weeks. It's a mini-figure...how hard could it be?

I scanned for cakes having anything to do with Lego. I found a black and white drawing of a mini-figure that I downloaded and enlarge to a 8x10 size. I would use it as a template to cut out the cake pieces so at least our Lego guy would be proportional.

A couple days before his birthday, I baked a 13x9 cake and cut out the pieces using my "template". I didn't mind that the template was only 8x10. The Lego minifigure isn't flat so I planned to use some cake "scraps" to give him bulk where he needed it - mainly his head and his toes. Besides, that's PLENTY of cake to eat. The less cake we had left over, the better.

I found out the morning before his birthday as I was putting it together and trying to ice it that I had not quite planned out the creation of this cake enough.

Will emailed asking how the cake was coming along. "The cake looks like crap," was all I said about it. Icing was glopping everywhere and would NOT make a nice edge. And since I had to cut the cake so much, there were crumbs EVERYWHERE! I had only gotten the legs iced when I KNEW this was not going to work. I had to resort to the marshmallow fondant and I had to do it in a hurry! I had bought 2 bags of marshmallows just in case this happened and luckily, Tia (the marshmallow disposal system) hadn't found them. I didn't mind doing the marshmallow fondant (and actually had a sneaking suspicion it would look a lot better with fondant) but I really hoped I could get it done quickly with icing.

I had just enough time to make the fondant and put it in the fridge to rest before I had to leave to get the kids from school.

That afternoon I set to work covering the cake with fondant. The arms were wrapped separately and set next to the rest of the cake. The hands were made from rectangles of fondant that were shaped around a bottle then secured with a toothpick to the arms. It wasn't long before the kids knew what a ghost mini-figure would look like (no color).

That evening, I started painting the cake. Tristan had asked for basic colors (blue, red and of course, Lego man yellow). I wasn't too worried at this point about how he would look. The cake was coming along beautifully. The only thing that worried me was the face. It had to look perfect. I decided to make it using scraps of fondant colored black.

The areas where the mini-figure's waist and neck were looked pretty rough (the seams where the pants and shirt met and the head and shirt met) so I created a belt (and buckle) for the waist and a scarf for the neck area.

I was pretty pleased with the final product - especially considering the mess I started out with. Tristan was thrilled with the results, and that's what really mattered the most.

Tiki Man Cake

Last minute cake ideas usually do NOT turn out well. However, this one most certainly did. My son, now 17, decided he wanted to have several friends over for a bonfire for his birthday. No problem! We had the fire pit, could order pizzas, have a cooler full of drinks...but what about the cake? Well, the bonfire led to the Tiki idea. Tiki torches, oil lamps, etc (no grass skirts, though).

This guy was made from a 13x9"cake (I prefer using my Air Bake pan). Once the cake was baked, he took under an hour to decorate. I've posted some photos of the decorating process below.

1. Once your cake has baked and cooled, round it out by trimming the upper edges forming the cake into a half log shape. Place it on your serving board. (I usually just use my cake carrier for this since that's it's final resting spot)
2. Ice the cake completely with chocolate icing. You don't have to worry too much about getting icing on your surface. It will be covered up later. Keep your strokes going vertical - to somewhat resemble tree bark.
3. Use a toothpick, knife, chopstick or whatever you have handy to trace the design of your tiki man's face. Don't worry about adding details at this point. You just want to be sure you have the basic design centered on the cake surface.
4. Now comes the fun part - coloring it in! Try to stay in the lines. Fill in all your base colors first, then do your outlining. The icing colors were made with a couple cans of vanilla icing and neon food coloring.
5. The teeth were made with marshmallow fondant. I rolled out a sheet, cut out 2 strips and indented them to look like teeth.
6. Continue coloring in the areas and add details (like the zig-zagging and the headband feathers).

The final touch was the nose - made of tootsie rolls. The tootsie rolls (about 6 minis) were warmed in the microwave and molded into 3 balls (2 small and one large). The large ball was rolled into a cone shape and the smaller balls were attached to either side.

The entire base of the cake was surrounded with graham cracker crumbs to resemble sand.
And there you have it! A quick, easy (and Yummy) last minute Tiki Man birthday cake!