A Painted Curious George Cake

Where have I been?  Life has been busy, very busy that I haven't had time to keep up the blog or do many cakes.  This years resolution (and with it being February already), I'm going to try to post more stuff.  2012 went by in a flash and I'll post a little recap on the few 2012 cakes that were done.  I've also got the painting itch back and started, on New Year's day, to paint a mural along one wall of our dining room.  Although I had originally planned to take a couple days to complete it, it has turned out to be a unfinished project - where has the time gone already!

A couple weeks ago, I got the opportunity to take my painting itch and paint a little cake - at least this one was completed.  The theme was Curious George and with one of my favorite scenes in the movie being the one where he paints the room walls with palm trees, giraffes, and butterflies, I knew it would perfect on the cake and cupcake toppers for a little boys 2nd Birthday.

And how exciting was I to find my cake was picked and featured on Cake Central's Friday Faves (Feb 8, 2013) - giddy as can be!  Curious George is a cutie!

Here is a 360 degree view of the cake, a 6 inch Red Velvet covered in MMF and painted with AmeriColor Gel colors.  I also made 4 dozen Funfetti Cupcakes with matching MMF Toppers.

The inspiration for the cake - A scene from the movie - Curious George's painted wall.

A Mad Hatter Tea Party (and Mad Hatter Cake #3)

Oh dear, here is one cake that I didn't get around to share with you all from last May - A Mad Hatter Hat Cake with a modeling chocolate figurine of the birthday girl.

A chocolate cake filled with strawberry Italian Meringue Buttercream
and covered in Chocolate Ganache dusted in green, brown and gold dust

Last May we made the 6 hour drive to San Jose to spend Easter with my cousin and to also help with her daughter's 10th birthday party.  It was the most amazing Mad Hatter Tea Party.

the girls huddled in front of the cake while eating some treats =)

This was the 3rd Mad Hatter Hat Cake that I've made and if you would like to see them, check out my previous blog posts here:

Mad Hatter Cake #1

Mad Hatter Cake #2

We also made a bunch of decorations to top the cupcakes with...
- Stacked teacups which I later filled with chocolate ganache
- Mad Hatter Hats with her birthdate
- Clocks with her birth time
- Eat-Me tags
- Ribbon Roses
- Clubs, Clovers, Hearts and Spades
- and butterflies

The chocolate cupcakes were frosted with a swirl of purple and pink Italian Meringue Buttercream and topped with an assortment of decorations.


We also made cake pops and skewers of fruit and placed them in tall vases stuffed with colorful tissue paper.

My cousin did an awesome job with the table setting:  A couple unique tea pots and a different teacup for each setting - not one of them looked like another...it was perfect for the theme.  She also found some really colorful and bold plates, cups, napkins and little trinkets to make for a super colorful and perfect tea party.  I went overboard tying a bow onto anything that could hold a bow (I loved the red/black/white printed ribbon) - it's even up around the windows and wall decor too =)

She even setup a table for the little ones.

And the doily lace trimming around the cake stand is a paper border that my cousin had bought a while back.  It came precut and folded up inside a little packet by Martha Stewart.  I attached it to the side of the cake stand with some double sided tape.  I loved how it dressed up the stand - so simple too.


We had all hands were on deck from family and friends in putting this together and it turned out quite lovely.  An incredibly beautiful birthday for an incredibly beautiful girl.

Kai-Lan Beach Themed Cake Decorations

Decorations for a beach themed cake.  I made Kai-Lan and Yeye out of modeling chocolate and everything else is made out of MMF:  Rintoo (Tiger), Hoho (Monkey with sunglasses), Tolee (Koala bear that thinks he's a panda), a Hula Duck, Mr. Sun and his little, tickle-me Sun Fuzzies, Seashells, Starfish, and an assortment of Flowers.

Kai-Lan stands at almost 2.5 inches tall and Yeye is about 4 inches tall.

They each have 1 popsicle stick for support and to also stick into the cake with.  Their heads are made out of RKT (Rice Krispie Treats) since they were very large and needed to be light weight.  I covered the RKT directly with modeling chocolate:  Modeling chocolate is great at filling in all the groves and rivets from the cereal treats.  The tiny features such as Yeye's hair, eyeglasses, eyes and the Kai-Lan's apple printed bathing suit are made out of MMF (Marshmallow Fondant).

Each character was hand cut of of MMF and I used gel colors to paint in the white highlights in the eyes and on Hoho's (Monkey) sunglasses and the brown stripes on Rintoo (Tiger).  I have a tutorial on how to make these cutout characters here (Making Fondant Cutouts).

I loved making these - Ni Hao Kai-Lan is such a cute show and the characters are so adorable!

Xie Xie (thank you)!

Photo courtesy of Doris R.

Toy Story Cake and Cupcakes

I loved making this cake!  7 Toy Story characters:  Woody, Jessie, Mr. Potato Head, Slinky the Dog, Buttercup the Unicorn, Ham the Piggy Bank, and Rex the Dinosaur.  Plus, 2 dozen assorted cupcake toppers, 2 cubes with their ages on it, a wood grained board, a name banner, a bracelet, and Happy Birthday piped in the Walt Disney font...phew!

Woody's and Jessie's head and torso were modeled using RKT (Rice Krispy Treats) and the recipe I used can be found here under the Barney and Friends Cake as well as under the How to Make Modeling Chocolate post.  They were then covered in modeling chocolate and molded into shape by hand.  Modeling chocolate works wonderfully in filling in all the grooves and creveses from the RKT and at the same time, gives you a smooth surface and easy surface to mold and model.

 

The bodies were covered in modeling chocolate then decorated with MMF mixed with Tylose.  The stripes on Woody's shirt were painted with gel paste food color mixed with almond extract (you can use vodka).  I used bamboo skewers down the body and into the dummy to dry (and into the cake later) to help support them in place.

 

Woody's boots were hand molded (I made it up as I did them trying to find a way to make them light weight since they were going to be attached to the side of the cake...They turned out and worked perfectly).  Woody's legs slid right into the boots and I used clear piping gel to attach it to the legs and up against the cake.

I also made 24 Cupcake Toppers using a 1.5" round biscuit cutter.  These were done 3 days prior to allow plenty of time to dry hard.

Made Mr. Potato Head piece by piece with MMF mixed with Tylose...same thing with each of the other characters.

Covered the board with MMF.  I marbled MMF in different shades of tan and brown then cut it out into 3" wide panels and laid them side by side to look like a wooden floor.  Once it was all dried, I dusted it with Dogwood Brown Petal Dust to give it more depth which you can see in the final photo below in the assembled cake.  I also have another post about wood panels named, Wine Bottle in a Crate Cake.

 

The red tier is a RKT rather than a cake since they originally didn't need much cake (4 days before the due date, we added 2 dozen additional cupcakes and I just kept the top tier as a RKT).  The top tier is also covered in Red MMF made with candy melts.  See post called, Red Marshmallow Fondant.

I was not happy with how the blue MMF on the bottom tier turned out.  It was very humid and the pieces were rather heavy.  I had covered the cake and let it sit for about 4 hours before decorating it but it was still really soft and the decorations stretched the MMF and made it look saggy and wrinkly - I had never had this happen before and was really bummed out (the back of the cake looked perfect).  Luckily the cubes were placed on either side of Mr. Potato Head and helped to disguise it a little bit.  The cubes were made with RKT and covered also in modeling chocolate.

The cake was a 9" round Chocolate/Vanilla marbled Sour Cream Cake filled with Oreo Buttercream.  The top tier was a 6" round RKT.  Chocolate and Vanilla cupcakes were topped with Oreo Buttercream.


Recipe:  Oreo Buttercream is one of my favorite.  Just take Oreo Cookies, scrape off the cream center and crumble the cookie in a food processor (the more cookies you use the stronger the flavor).  Fold into your buttercream or IMBC/SMBC, spread and enjoy!

Tip:  I also crumb coat the entire cake with the Oreo Cookie Buttercream then add a final layer of plain buttercream over it (as you can see in the photo above) so that any crumbs of the cookie won't show through the MMF - you don't have to worry about any "chunks" showing through.  For tips and photo's on how to get the tall, straight sides and really flat tops, see my post named, Covering a Cake in Ganache.  I use this same technique with buttercream, IMBC, and ganache.

Leopard Printed Hello Kitty Cake

I love, love, love how the cake turned out!  I made a similar one a few months ago for my daughter who turned 3 which was all in pink (and without the leopard print).  With Meilaneeh turning 11, I wanted to make Hello Kitty a little older and found a perfect picture of her over the web wearing boots and with long lashes so I had to recreate her.  The tutorial on how I made the characters can be found here.  I dry-dusted Dogwood Brown and Buttercup Yellow Petal Dust directly onto the cake free hand to create the leopard print:  I wanted a light, dusted effect and not something that would be bright and overpower the characters that I had spent so much time making - hah-ha!

Characters:  Keroppi, Kuromi, Hello Kitty, Badz-Maru, Tuxedo Sam all made in MMF mixed with Tylose to help  it harden and dry faster.

I also made some Hello Kitty Bows that were randomly placed around the cake.  This is how they were made:

Step 1:  Make a triangle
Step 2:  Use a ball tip tool to indent it
Step 3:  Cut off the tip
Step 4:  Pinch the corners together
Step 5:  Repeat 1 more time the add a round piece in the middle.

Finished off the cake with a fondant ribbon around each tier, ribbon roses, and a fondant shaped "11".

9" and 6" round Vanilla Butter Cakes (a very heavy cake!) filled with Fresh Banana Cream Buttercream and Fresh Strawberry Buttercream.

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