Castle Cake

After making this cake, I decided if I ever made another castle cake, I would probably use a denser cake. I love Pillsbury cake, but it's so moist that it doesn't perform well for taller cakes.

For this castle cake, I made a standard 13"x9" cake. After cooling it completely, I cut the cake into thirds crosswise creating three 4.3" x 9" pieces. I iced one of the pieces and stacked another on top, forming the main section of the castle. I cut a 1"x4" slice off the end of the remaining section and set it aside. The rest of the remaining section was cut into thirds crosswise making three 2"x4" pieces. Each of those were cut in half to create a total of six 2"x2" pieces. These were used to make the two towers. Here is the basic order for assembly:

• Ice the sides of the main section
• stack three tower pieces together (with icing between layers) and place it on one side of the cake.
• repeat with the remaining three tower pieces and place on the other side of the cake.
• Ice completely with white icing.
• The remaining 1"x4" cake piece goes on top of the main section (in the middle). Ice it over.

The turrets, trees, drawbridge, windows, etc were all made with peanut butter cookies. I cut castle pieces out of the dough and baked as directed. The I assembled using the icing as "glue". I would recommend finding something easier to use for the turrets. Maybe a couple of ice cream sugar cones or something.
The base border of the cake is a series of "rose bushes" made with large blobs of green icing (squeezed out of a ziplock bag with a large hole cut in the corner) and candy decorating hearts
.
The doorway is outlined with silver decorating balls and above the doorway are more hearts.

The drawbridge "rope" is simply 2 chocolate covered candy sticks anchored to the "floor" with icing.

I piped some "vines" onto the towers and added more candy hearts as "flowers".

Blue decorating gel finishes it off as the water in the moat.

"I want Mountains, Trucks and Trees"

"I want Mountains, Trucks and Trees!" That is the response I got when I asked my son what he wanted on his cake for his 6th birthday. I'm lucky he said what he did. I already had a round 2-layer cake baked and iced. All I had left to do was decorate.

I had to think fast of things in the house that could possibly be turned into "Mountains, a Truck and Trees".

While I pondered the possibilities, I made the road...a truck has to have a road, doesn't it? It's made from oreo cookie crumbs. I just happened to have some in the cabinet for making pie crusts.

The truck was easy. I just washed one of my sons trucks.

The trees...well, I has some pretzel sticks left over from making my chocolate dipped pretzel sticks for the holidays. I just piped icing onto them and they became trees! Doesn't it remind you of the Lorax? Looking at them now, I think if I ever need to make a Dr. Seuss cake, I'll make the trees the same way except I'll use pink, orange and blue icing.

As for the mountains, I had some ice cream cones in the cupboard that I covered with brown icing and cookie crumbs. Then I decided to go one step further. I colored small amounts of icing red, orange and yellow and melted them down. Once melted (just until pourable) I poured the icing on one of the mountains letting it run down the sides. First with the red, then the orange and finishing up with the yellow. Ta-daaa! A volcano!

Hey, the kids recognized it as a volcano and they all wanted THAT part of the cake.

So, if you look around, you can surely find something already in your kitchen that will make a great cake and make a child very happy.

XBOX Controller Cake

Deciding on appropriate cakes for men can be difficult - especially if they’re not big into golf, football, basketball, or some other sport. However, if the man in your life loves to play video games (like my brother), it's probably safe to make him a video game controller birthday cake. This is a quick, easy cake-decorating project that can be adapted to whatever video game console resides in your home. It doesn’t take much more than a box of cake mix, some store bought icing and assorted candies and, if your brother is like mine, he’ll be happy to dispose of any extra candies for you.

Ingredients:
1 standard box of cake mix (whatever flavor you prefer), baked in a 13”x9” pan and cooled completely - If you need assistance in baking and cooling your cake, please refer to these video tutorials on “How To Bake A Cake”.
How To Bake A Cake (Part 1): Preparing Your Baking Pans
How To Bake A Cake (Part 2): Mixing & Baking Your Cake
How To Bake A Cake (Part 3): Testing, Removing and Cooling Your Cake
1 container of chocolate icing
8 Jelly beans - One white jellybean, 3 black, one yellow, one red, one green, and one blue (or purple)
2 Reese’s Miniature Cups
3 Oreo cookies
A handful of green vanilla flavored candy wafers (can be found in the candy making isle in craft stores)

Tools:
Wax paper – long enough to cover the entire 13”x9” cake
1 sandwich sized zipper sealed bags
Scissors
Spatula (for spreading icing)
Knife (for cutting jelly beans)
Large plate, cake stand, or cake board for displaying your finished cake

Draw and cut a template out of wax paper for the basic shape of the “controller”. Any video game controller will do. My brother just happened to like the XBOX (and this is before the new white XBOX 360 came out). The cake is a standard 13"x9" cake.

If you have not already done so, bake your 13”x9” cake according to package directions. Be sure to grease and flour the pan thoroughly. Baking spray alone won’t do much good for this cake. Once the cake has cooled in the pan for about 10 minutes, remove it from the pan by flipping it out onto a wire cooling rack. The easiest way to do this is to place a wire cooling rack on top of the pan and, using a hand on either side to keep the rack and the pan clamped together, flip the entire pan over. Set the rack down on the counter top and gently lift the cake pan to remove. If some of the cake sticks to the pan, just use a scraper to remove it and place it back on the rest of the cake. It won’t show once the cake is decorated. Continue cooling the cake completely. If it is not cooled, your icing will start to melt and slide off the cake.

Transfer your cake to a large cutting board. Place the template for your controller on top of the cake and carefully cut around it. Set aside the excess cake. You won't need it and you will have something to munch on while you put the cake together. You could save it for later to serve slightly crumbled in a bowl with ice cream and chocolate syrup.

Place your cake right side up on the plate you will display it on. If you prefer, you can place your cake on a cake board (cut to the shape of the cake) and move it to it’s permanent home once it is completed. However, most of us don’t have cake boards handy. The cake pictured here is resting on a large glass plate.

I chose to ice the entire cake in chocolate icing because I wasn't about to try to make that much black icing...and I didn't want to EAT that much black icing. Using your spatula, ice a thin layer of icing all over the cake. Pay particular attention to the sides where you made your cuts. This layer of icing is meant to “seal in” the cake crumbs so they don’t get all over your finished cake. Allow the icing so set and firm up a bit. Ice the entire cake as usual with a nice thick coating.

For this particular cake, use the picture (or an actual XBOX controller) as a reference for where the Oreo cookies should go. Push the Oreo’s into the cake until just the top cookie is above the surface of the cake. Lightly ice over them. For the controller joysticks, unwrap two Reese's peanut butter miniatures and place them upside-down on two of the Oreo cookies.

To create the “outlines” of the controller, fill one sandwich bag 1/3 full with some chocolate icing. Push the icing toward one of the bottom corners of the bag. Snip a small hole in the corner of the bag with your scissors. Twist the excess bag to create a decorating “piping bag”. Place the “twist” in the joint between your thumb and the rest of your hand. Close your hand over the rest of the bag. View a video tutorial for this step if you are unsure how it should be done. To decorate your cake, you will squeeze the bag. Try it a little on some wax paper to get used to it.

Now, take the piping bag and, using the picture as a reference, pipe icing onto the remaining Oreo to create a “directional pad”. Then, pipe icing to outline areas of the controller. In this case, a little bit of piping was all that was needed to draw attention to the XBOX written in the middle of the cake.

Pipe a curling “cord” on the plate coming out of the back of the “controller”.

The buttons are all made of jellybeans. One white jellybean, 3 black, one yellow, one red, one green, and one purple (I didn’t have a blue one). Two black one are used to create the “start” and “back” buttons at the bottom center of the controller. The red, yellow, green, and purple (or blue) ones make up the “A”, “B”, “X”, and “Y” buttons. For the black and white buttons on the controller, since they are slightly smaller, cut both the black and white jellybeans in half before positioning them on the cake.

Melt down some green candy wafers and spoon the melted candy into a sandwich bag. Allow the candy to thicken up a little bit so it will be easier to pipe onto the cake. Cut a hole in the corner of the bag just as you did for the icing. This should be a tiny hole. Then pipe the XBOX “logo” in the center of the cake. You can use any extra melted green candy to write a message to the guest of honor. A good place for this would be directly on the cake plate between the handles of the controller.

Congratulations! You have just completed a cake that men (and boys) would be proud to dig into!

Pumpkin Cake

I saw this cake as an ad for Kraft Food & Family online (I already subscribe to the magazine - it's free!) and I HAD to go online to find out how to do it.

My husband LOVES pumpkins. He say's they are peaceful and happy. In fact, he loves them so much, we have pumpkin pillows, a pumpkin rug, a pumpkin cookie jar, teapot, soup tureen, fruit bowl, salt & pepper shakers...we have a lot of pumpkins in this house. And they aren't jack-o-lanterns. They are unaltered pumpkins. We didn't buy all of it ourselves, some were gifts.

Right around Halloween of last year, I was flipping through my Food & Family Magazine when I saw a picture of this great pumpkin cake. My husbands 40th birthday was coming up (in 8 more months) and what could be a better cake for him than a pumpkin! I wasn't much of a cake decorator. I had managed to throw together cakes for my kids birthdays and I never heard many complaints, but I like to have a "wow" factor at birthday parties.

This cake is basically a bundt cake with an ice cream cone upside-down in the top hole. (It's a cake cone, not a sugar cone). Ice the cake then place the cone in the top and ice the cone.

Update 4/02/2014: The Kraft Food & Family Magazine is no longer offered as a free subscription but I found the cake on their website...the Great Pumpkin Cake.