Mad Hatter Hat Cake #2

My 2nd Mad Hatter Hat Cake.  The 1st one was for my niece, this one was for her best friend.  A lot of improvements made from the 1st one; One of the many benefits from making the same cake again - learning what to do better the next time around!

I baked 3, 6" round cakes (each layer was 2" tall) with 5 layers of Strawberry Buttercream filling: Chocolate - Vanilla - Strawberry Sour Cream Cakes.

Here are the 3 cakes stacked.  Through the insanity of working on 2 different cakes at the same time, I did an ganache dam then filled the layers with strawberry buttercream.  NOTE!  Don't do a dam when you will be carving the cake!  It made it very messy and very difficult to cut nice, smooth sides with.  Work on a frozen or at least a very well chilled cake - makes it easier to carve.  The hat is sitting upside down here with a 4.5" circle that will become the bottom base and used as a guide to carve the cake to.

 

Next, cover the cake with ganache and make the hat's rim.  I rolled out a 9" round circle and lay it over a 9" board that was heavily dusted with corn starch to keep it from sticking.  I then cutout a 4.5" round out of the middle for the base of the cake to sit in.  Brushed the entire rim with chocolate ganache then let it sit overnight in the fridge to firm up with some balls of foil in various spots around the rim to give it some dimension.
Tip:  Using the same size board as the rim helped keep the hat's rim perfectly round and not get twisted or stretched out of shape.

Once the ganache was set and dry, I used the same technique as on the previous cake by using a ball tool to swirl the pattern all over the hat.  Used piping gel to attach the rim to the cake board then placed the cake over that.  The cake was very tall (7") and not very stable so I hammered a dowel right down the center and into the cake board (you can see the cake bulging at the bottom).  I rolled a piece of modeling chocolate and wrapped it around the bottom (around 1/2" tall and 1/4" thick) to give it some extra support.

Making the board was tedious but well worth it.  I was trying to come up with something in the movie and fell in love with the checkered board and had always wanted to make one.  I used a diamond impression mat to cut out the squares and then patched up the pattern directly on the cake board.  Another reason to use a diamond impression mat and to also get perfectly uniform and perfect squares....worked like a charm!

The entire hat and rim was dusted with patches of Dark Chocolate Brown Petal Dust and Avocado Luster Dust.  The little trinkets were dusted with gold, pink, and white pearl dust and the modeling chocolate ribbon was dusted in pink pearl dust and painted with white gel colors.  The stick holding the date is a skewer while the other 2 sticks (black and white) were dried pieces of spaghetti painted with gel colors.  The feather was made out of fondant and dusted in various colors.

I used the Alice In Wonderland font for the name and age.  And made 2 dozen assorted "Eat Me" Petits Fours to go with the Hat Cake.

The "Eat Me" Petits Fours were cut from a Vanilla Sour Cream Cake baked in 10" square pan = 24 pieces each 2.25"L x 1.5"W x 1.75"H.  They were filled with Strawberry Buttercream then covered in MMF.  Royal Icing was used to pipe the white swirls and "Eat Me".

My other Mad Hatter Hat Cakes:

my first Mad Hatter Cake

My third Mad Hatter Cake

Mad Hatter Hat Cake

My niece tuned 9 and loves the new Alice in Wonderland movie.  Her only request for a cake was to have "Eat Me" Petits Fours in different colors.  I surprised her by including some cake truffles and a Mad Hatter Hat Cake.

Making the Petits Fours was difficult but I think that my cake may have been a little too large and soft (2"x1.5"x1") to cover with poured fondant.  I also tried using melted canned frosting and melted chocolate.  The photo above shows the cake covered with a layer of MMF and then coated in chocolate.

All 3 techniques failed at giving a very nice and perfectly smooth covering so I ended up just covering them one by one with rolled fondant instead.  I have to give Petits Fours another try with poured fondant and hopefully in the much more traditional, 1"x1" size.  JoesPastry.com has a nice blog with detailed instructions on poured fondant and petits fours.

In addition to the Petits Fours, I made some cake truffles (aka cake balls) dipped in white chocolate dyed pink then drizzled with dark chocolate.  Bakerella.com has the basic recipe but I don't like mine being too sweet so instead of using a can of frosting, I use a little bit of simple syrup and cream cheese...just something to give it a little bit of added flavor and a little moisture to help the cake stick together.

The hat was made by baking 3, 6" round cakes:  2 layers chocolate and 1 layer vanilla filled with Nutella buttercream.  I froze the cake for a few hours to make it easier to carve.

I then covered the whole thing in chocolate ganache, let it set for about an hour then used a warm ball tool (just rub the tool against a hot, moist towel for a few seconds to warm it up), and created various swirls around the cake.

For the hats rim, I rolled out the MMF, cut out a hole in the middle to match the size of the bottom of the cake, dusted the cake pedestal (or cake board) with corn starch to keep it from sticking, spread some royal icing directly in the hole in the middle for the cake board to stick to, then placed the ganache covered cake over on top of it.

Cover the hats rim with ganache, add the swirls, wait for the ganache to set then dust with moss green petal dust and gold dust all over the cake.  I then added the ribbon and rolled up balls of foil and lifted the hat's rim in various spots for it to dry with a little dimension to it.  I then put the cake in the fridge overnight to set and get it nice and cold for the drive to the party the next day.

As for the little details:  Painted the ribbon with white gel color thinned out with almond extract, piped out her name to match the Alice in Wonderland font with royal icing, and used skewer sticks to hold all the other little decorations.  For the tag, I dusted it with an assortment of colors (moss green, sunflower yellow, gold, lavender) to get it to look aged, poked a hole in the corner, let it dry overnight then thread it through one of the skewers.  All the little trinkets at the end of the skewers including the feather were made in fondant and painted with various colors and gold dust.

Allison was so excited and absolutely loved her cakes.  The Mad Hatter Hat Cake is one of my all time favorites....I would love to do this one again.

Update:  Had the wonderful opportunity to make this cake again for her best friend, see Mad Hatter Cake #2

Link to another:  Mad Hatter Cake #2 

and another:  Mad Hatter Cake #3

Dental School Grad Cake (and Pink Lemonade Cake Recipe)

Very unique and very fun to do! A friend’s husband graduated Dental School and asked if I could help make the cake. A few months ago, I had helped her 2 friend’s make her a Safari Baby Shower Cake and at the same time showed them how to do it all; baking, making the marshmallow fondant (MMF), Ganache and decorations to torting, filling, covering it…all of it! Now, she wanted to have the same opportunity to learn too. What better way than with a carved cake and of course, for her husband! There wasn’t much we could do ahead of time aside from making the MMF. On my Facebook Page, I have the MMF recipe with tips and hints on how to work with it. We used Strawberry Jello Mix to color and flavor the MMF. It gave it a light pink base and we added about ¼ teaspoon of red gel color to it. It tasted more like bubblegum and smelled super delicious.

The cake was Pink Lemonade (see recipe below), filled with chocolate mousse, and covered with semi-sweet chocolate Ganache.

Two 9x13 cakes were baked. The cakes were stacked together 1st with a piece of parchment paper in between each layer then, carved. They were then taken apart and filled with chocolate mousse. The pieces cut off the corners were used to build the roof of the pallet and the ridge along the top then, the whole cake was covered in Ganache.

We covered the cake with the MMF and then cut out each tooth, smoothed it into shape, then attached it to the cake. The teeth were a little heavy and kept sliding down but we just keep shoving them back into place until it set. I must have printed out about 4-5 different pictures of teeth to get it right.

We also covered the 16”x16” cake board with a grayish-purple MMF (a mixture of what I had left over from other cakes) then sprayed the whole board with a can of the Duff Cake Graffiti in Metallic Silver: 1 can was barely enough to cover the board with…the instructions said that it would lightly cover six 8” round cakes – yeah! The spray worked perfectly, so much better than trying to brush it manually. An airbrush would have worked perfectly too but I didn’t have one…quite yet (but it's on my wish list).

She made the tools at home and then we painted them with silver luster dust. I heard the cake was a hit and she’s going to try to make a cake on her own. I love this…teaching others what others have taught me!

Pink Lemonade Cake – adapted from MacsMom’s “Lemon Cake”

2 white cake mix boxes

2 c cake flour

2 c - minus 2tbls - sugar

1 ½ t salt

1 t baking soda

1 1/3 cup frozen pink lemonade concentrate

1 1/3 cup water

2 c sour cream

6 whole eggs

¼ c oil

½ t vanilla extract

½ t lemon extract

Rock n' Roll Guitar Cake

I love the design of this cake. My little niece asked for a chocolate cake and a pink guitar standing up and her mom asked for a small, 6" cake and she would bake the cupcakes.

Here are some pictures I used for inspiration: Rock and Roll and girly, lots of pink and black, a guitar with some swirls of hearts and butterflies.  I also found these adorable cupcake toppers that I wanted to try replicating (check out, Cakes by Steph, she also made the cake in the picture).



I designed a template over Photoshop using all the cool brushes and fonts.



 I have not had much practice with piping aside from some writing and very little decorations over a cake. The guitars for the cupcakes were made using Wilton Color Flow Mix since I read it dries harder than with royal icing. The colors were all made the night before so the black could have a chance to mature completely – the black was more of a murky gray the day I made it but turned perfectly black by the time I needed to use it.

I printed out a template and taped some parchment paper over it on a cutting board. These little guys took me 3 hours to get done…30 guitars, 3 hours, not very efficient but what a learning experience! The 1st 2 hours alone was spent trying to get the right consistency. I tried to outline the guitars 1st then fill with a softer icing but it was so messy and looked just awful as you can see in the picture.

The ones on the left were outlined first then filled; the ones on the right were just filled in without an outline…so much better! I pitched the outline method and went straight to filling these in.

  

All the black, pink and light pink was done in one night and the white details added the following day...30 guitars for 30 cupcakes! Phew!

  

The cake was chocolate filled with chocolate mousse, coated in milk chocolate Ganache and then covered in hot pink marshmallow fondant. The background was painted with pink and red gel colors mixed with almond extract. I had made the black cutout decorations 2 days earlier.

A trick I learned while at a 3C’s meeting in January was to wrap the fondant cutouts and store in the freezer until you need them: The freezer keeps them soft and pliable. I pulled them out of the freezer and used them right away…they were perfectly soft and bendable like the day they were made and not hard at all….lovely tip! The photo here is of the cutouts sitting on parchment paper inside a freezer bag.  All the details was hand-cut (stars, 7, guitar, leaves), no Cricut here but it would have been so easy to have had a Cricut to make these. Silver dragees were added in the middle of the stars and to make out the name.

 

The guitar standing on the top was hand-cut out of marshmallow fondant mixed with Tylose (to help it dry harder). I don’t like using toothpicks in cakes and instead, use dry spaghetti as you can see here.

Kayla loved her cake and her big sister has already put in her request for her cake, baseball’s and bats - ideas are spinning in my head.



08/24/10 Update - The big sister changed her mind and wanted the Alice In Wonderland Eat Me Petits Fours...I surprised her with a Mad Hatter Hat Cake. 

1st Communion Cake with Rosary and Chalice

I really love how this cake turned out. I came up with 3 sketches for my husband’s coworker who had an 8 year old daughter that wanted me to make her 1st Communion Cake….I was so honored and with only a week’s notice and a trip to DC in the middle of it, I couldn’t resist. Luckily, she picked my 1st and favorite design so I was super excited about making it. The cake was a 9” round white almond sour cream cake filled with white chocolate mousse, covered in white chocolate Ganache then marshmallow fondant.

I made the chalice using a little plastic cup as a mold and the stem was made into 2 separate pieces. Once it was all dry, I dusted the chalice in pearl luster dust to give it some shine. I also filled the chalice with 3 Communion Bread’s made from gumpaste.

The pink and white blossoms were made wit a 5 petal cutter in 3 different sizes. I used a diamond candy mold to hold each blossom as they dried….worked perfectly. Once dried, I dusted each with luster dust in both pearl and pink.

My favorite part was the Rosary that wrapped around the entire cake. I piped each bead with royal icing then painted them with pearl luster dust. I had not done any type of swag design before and worried about the spacing of each section being even so I drew up a template to help me get everything perfectly and evenly placed around the cake (I do admittedly confessthat I am a bit OCD-ish).

The cake sat over a square baseboard covered in a very light pink fondant and adorned with a pink ribbon. I also added some blossoms to the board to dress it up a bit. I was extremely happy with how beautiful the cake turned out and hoped she enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed making it…couldn’t help but think back to my 1st Holy Communion and at how special that day was.

I did remember to take some step by step pictures of the cake being covered in Ganache which I’ll post later. I love working with Ganache so much better than buttercream under fondant…It also tastes divinely delicious!