Harry Potter - Hedwig Owl Cake

Tia has recently discovered Harry Potter. The first movie came out before she was born. Later, her oldest brother (10 years older than her) was deep into Harry Potter and she could have cared less. In later years, the movies became too dark for her - she was still quite young - and she soon associated Harry Potter with "scary movies".

Last month, that all changed. Tia rode with a friend to a birthday party and on the way there and back they watched The Sorcerer's Stone. She came home after the party talking about nothing but that movie. We rented it (and The Chamber Of Secrets) from the library.  Her brother brought the next two movies for her to see. She wanted to be Hermione for Halloween and she immediately requested a Harry Potter birthday cake.


Early on, I came across a cute Hedwig cake I wanted to try to duplicate so I pinned it. I decided at the last minute to not include the Hogwarts book in the cake design. I didn't want to have too much cake (and leftovers) so I wound up with something similar that Tia kept ooohh-ing and aahh-ing over because "He's soooo cuuute!"

The cake is a WASC (White Almond Sour Cream) Cake that starts with a box mix. I decided to use it because it because of the many layers I would need for Hedwig. You can find the recipe on Cake Central. One batch made a 10 inch and an 8 inch square cake. 

Once the cakes were cooled, I used a large (empty and clean) crushed tomato can to cut out several rounds from the 8-inch square cake. Stack the layers using some Pillsbury white icing between the layers. Wrap the whole stack together in plastic wrap and place it in the refrigerator (I found this made the stack much more sturdy).

You can see in the photo above I have a chopstick running through the middle. After refrigerating the stack, I found I didn't need the chopstick (good thing too because even though I trimmed the stick, it was STILL too tall).

While the stack is in the refrigerator, you can ice the base of the cake and work on your fondant.

I chose to simply ice the base instead of covering it with fondant. Since the owl is white, I wanted some color to the base. I chose to swirl blue and purple together.

Once iced, set the base aside and start working on your fondant pieces.  This fondant is my usual Marshmallow Fondant.  I made the feet using 3 small yellow ropes connected at one end for each foot.

Those feet look big but about a third of them will be covered by icing and feathers.I also used yellow to make the eyes and cut them out using the wide end of a 2D Wilton decorating tip. I used the same tip to cut out all the "feathers" from the white fondant.

The ears were made from white fondant. Form two sections of fondant into triangles about 1/4" think and 1 1/2 inches across.

A small amount of fondant was colored black and rolled into tiny balls for the eyes.  I added a smidgen of red coloring to a small batch of leftover yellow fondant to make it orange for the beak.

The feathers were painted with a brush dipped first into almond flavoring and then swiped across black gel coloring. I just wanted to pick up a small bit of the black color for "painting".  I left about 12 feathers un-painted to be placed around the face.

With all the fondant pieces made, you're ready to put Hedwig together!

Place the feet at the front of your decorating surface then pull the cake stack out of the refrigerator and place it on your decorating surface over the feet. I placed the cake directly on a tier I planned to place on the cake base. If I had it to do over, I would cover the tier with fondant first and have it drape over the sides.

Carve the top of the cake to round out the head. I used scraps from the head to add bulk to the sides where the wings should go. This is totally optional and actually not shown in the photo below.

Ice all around the base of the cake stack with white icing making sure there is no cake showing.  You only need to ice about 2 inches up for now.

Start placing feathers all around the base.

Once you have made the first row of feathers, ice a little higher and start on the second row of feathers overlapping the first row. Continue this all the way up to the top of the wings. I did not cover the wing areas in this step. I came back and finished them last so they appeared to be above all the other feathers.

Before starting on the head, ice the ears into place. Then place the eyes and surround them with the unpainted feather pieces. Place the beak in place.

Continue to finish the head with the painted feather pieces starting where you left off at the top of the wings and finishing up at the top of the head.

You can use your paintbrush to paint black on the tips of the toes and the insides of the ears.

Place the finished owl on top of your 10" cake base and trim as desired. For this cake I simply piped icing around the cake base and around the owl base. I was looking for quick and easy!

All done! Place you candles and enjoy!

The Mach 5 Speed Racer Cake

Years ago, when I met my husband online, his screen name was GoSpeedRacerGo - or something like that (he had a zero or two in there instead of the "O"). When I asked him to send me a picture of himself, he sent me this:

Clearly, he didn't want me to believe he was anything more than a cartoon character. Still, I pushed and wound up with a real photograph. At least he didn't tell me he was Yoda. I might have run in the other direction without bothering to ask for that second picture.

Here we are, 13 years later. He still loves Speed Racer and (probably most especially) the Mach 5. It was time I made him a cake that paid tribute to that love.

I ran across a tutorial on instructables.com for a Mach 5 cake and KNEW it would be the next project. I'm not going to go through the entire tutorial here. You can follow the link directly to it.  I'll just touch on some of the details I went through in making the Mach 5.

The tutorial didn't have a template. I could tell from one of the tutorial pictures that the cake was approximately 7" x 14". Since I didn't have cake boards large enough (and I was cutting up regular cardboard to use instead), I sized it down to 7" x 12". This would also work for my 13"x9" cake pan.

Cut out your 7" x 12" rectangle from corrugated cardboard (or cake board) and draw on a grid of 1" blocks.

Sketch put the design similar to the image below:

Cut out the shape (I discovered I could get a better cut edge by using a craft knife instead of scissors). Don't worry about getting it perfect. This thing is going to be covered by foil and cake and icing and fondant...

The pillars for the cake board were created and attached just as shown in the tutorial.

I also used the cake batter mentioned in the tutorial - a WASC (White Almond Sour Cream) Cake that starts with a box mix. I decided to use it because it is supposed to be great for carving and this cake was going to need a LOT of carving. You can find the recipe on Cake Central.

I made 1 batch of the cake batter to fill up a 9x13" pan. As you can see, it REALLY filled up the pan.

I used floss to cut the cake into three layers then iced between the layers.  Then I chilled it and cut the basic shape out using the cardboard base template.

I wasn't sure how much icing I would need, so I bought 3 containers of white. I didn't want to bother with buttercream since the house is SO HOT this time of year...and no AC. I used about 2 1/2 containers of icing.

Notes:

• I made marshmallow fondant to cover this cake - one batch was more than enough.
• The wheels wound up needing to be a lot smaller than I thought at first. The rice krispie treats used to shape the tires was only about 1-1/2" diameter for each tire.
• I didn't wrap the fondant underneath the cardboard base like it is shown in the tutorial so I piped icing around the base to cover the foil.
• Once the cake was carved and iced, I should have let the cake sit longer before adding the fondant. Then I could have smoothed out the icing a little better. As it was, the icing was a bit lumpy (too much icing in some places) causing the fondant to be lumpy in some places.

Kingdom Hearts 2 Keyblade Cake

When it comes to cake designs, I usually get a lot of notice before a birthday. In this case, Tristan gave me a week. One...week. I thought he would want Link or Mario or some other video game character, but he had been playing a lot of Kingdom Hearts 2 lately and decided he wanted a cake in the shape of the Keyblade (Mickey is holding it in the photo below). Okay...at least it's better than his brother who wanted the actual Keyblade for his birthday ("But Mom...it's only $500!").

Looking at the Keyblade (Mickey is holding), I knew I would need fondant - and lots of it. Maybe even some chocolate. I also knew I would need to make sure I had enough of my silver and gold Pearl Dust. I then thought maybe I should just forgo baking a cake and use Twinkies instead, lining them end to end...nah.

Thank heaven there weren't too many details - although did you notice the chain at the end with the Mickey silhouette? That's the first thing I noticed since I had to figure out how to make it :)

I started by sketching out the design. I folded a piece of paper into thirds and drew it out. It was easier for me to keep the scale right with the paper folded.

It really is a simple design if you're drawing it. I have to admit all the corners and crevices intimidated me.

The cake is cut out of a 13 x 9" cake. It looks like a big cake, but it really only uses about half of the actual cake. These instructions assume you already have your cake baked. So if you don't, go ahead. I'll wait :)

I used the whole top strip of cake shown in the picture above and part of the second strip. The bottom left corner piece was used to make the handle and the bottom center piece was used to make the blade. The rest of the cake can be put aside for you to munch on as you assemble the Keyblade Cake.

For the handle, the square cake piece needs to be rounded out on one side and the center cut out (creating a large "D" shape).

From the inner cut-out section of the handle, the center is cut out to be used. The side pieces can be discarded (eaten).

The pieces (except the blade) were then lined up on my "cake board".

The "cake board" was made from a sheet of wrapping paper covered in clear contact paper and sitting on a large airbake cookie sheet. I like this idea because it can be wiped clean after use, rolled up and stored for later use. (I also highly recommend the cookie sheet for keeping the bottoms of your cookies from burning!)

The inner handle was then removed (to make icing easier) and the rest of the cake was iced with vanilla using a large size 789 Wilton icing tip. This is a huge, wide icing tip that makes icing cakes SO much easier! I can pipe the icing on in huge strips and then smooth it out.

Then the icing was smoothed down. If you plan to use the marshmallow fondant like I did, you don't have to worry about getting the icing really smooth.

I covered the whole sword with marshmallow fondant (the whole project took half a recipe). Small round cylinders made of fondant were placed vertically at the tips of the handle before they were covered with fondant. This created the protruding edges. At the top center of the handle, an extra piece of fondant was placed beneath the top layer to jut out the top handle more.

I then iced and wrapped the inner handle (the piece that was previously removed for icing) with marshmallow fondant, cut it down to size and put the piece in place. Strips of fondant were added  to cover the ugly seams and more details were added (ridges in the handle).

The "blade" part of the keyblade was one of the more challenging parts of the cake. I decided to make it "just good enough". I apologize for not having many pictures of this part of the process.

I had originally carved the blade piece just as my sketch dictated. But I later removed the rounded tips and used fondant for those pieces because the cake would just crumble and fall apart with so small a detail.

With the carved piece of cake, I molded two round cylinders from fondant and placed them at two tips of the blade.  I then lightly iced the sides and edges and wrapped it in fondant. I chose to wrap the sides in fondant and then cut out a more detailed top piece of fondant to just place on top.

With the final touch of the keyblade in place, I started painting.

I tried making a shimmery gold/yellow paint from yellow food coloring, almond extract and gold pearl dust but in the final product, the gold shimmer just doesn't come through very much. The "silver color" was a mixture of silver pearl dust, almond extract and a smidgen of black food coloring gel. Once the silver areas were done, I made a stronger black to paint the inner handle.

For the top chain hook, I rolled marshmallow fondant into a rope and created a "corkscrew" to go into the end of the cake, attached a "clasp" to the corkscrew, and then attached the base of the "clasp" to a chain link.

For the Mickey Mouse head, I rolled out marshmallow fondant to about 1/4 inch thick, lightly pressed a 2" biscuit cutter into the fondant for the main part of the head and a smaller circle (I used a bottle cap from a sprinkles jar) for the ears. Just lightly press the circles into the fondant. Don't push all the way through. Then cut out the Mickey Mouse head.

Once I cut it out, I thought something was off. Then I realized that Mickey's ears were supposed to be full circles just barely attached to his head so I molded the fondant ears to make them more full circles. It looked less like a bear head then.

The hole in the top was created using a size 12 round decorating tip.

For the chain, marshmallow fondant was rolled into ropes and formed into the rectangular chain links. I went ahead and closed the links at this time even though they weren't linked together. All the chain pieces were painted yellow gold.

Once the paint had dried, I cut a hole into the end of the cake, inserted the corkscrew chain piece, cut one end of each chain link and began connecting the pieces ending with the Mickey Mouse head.

With the chain completed, the cake was finished!

Hubby's First Cake Decorating Attempt

Will decided he would make a decorated cake for my birthday. He has baked cakes for me before but never stepped into the realm of cake decorating. This was a first. This is truly an amateur cake!

I had recently picked up crocheting again and have also started to take in interest in knitting. In fact, with this new hobby, a corner of out living room has been overtaken by balls of yarn. He decided to make my cake in the shape of a skein of yarn.

He bought a jelly roll at the grocery store bakery and a couple cans of white icing. To one can of icing, he added some blue coloring gel and mixed it in with the electric mixer.

Then he trimmed the edges of the jelly roll to round them out a bit.

With a little bit of instruction, he filled a decorating bag with icing, attached a round tip, and went to town on the cake. He filled the 2 sides with the blue "yarn" icing and left the middle blank.

He used some of the white icing in the 2nd can to fill in the middle as the yarn "label". He left it to sit and dry some so he could smooth out the seams.

Once the white icing was "cleaned up" a bit, he added some additional blue "yarn" near the edges of the white. and then did his writing on the "label". He placed chopsticks on the plate and created some yarn coming of the skein to wrap around the chopstick "knitting needles".

I think he did a great job! He might even decide to do more cake decorating in the future!