Christmas Reindeer Cake

The Orange County Interfaith Shelter was holding their annual Christmas Luncheon and asked the Sweet Arts Cake Club for some cakes to be donated as table centerpieces which would be auctioned as a fundraiser.  This is the cake I made for them.  I sketched up the design back 2 months ago in October and just waited, and waited, and waited to get started on it.  Usually, I make all my decorations by hand using pictures as guides and inspiration but I was so lucky that at our cake club meeting last month, one of the ladies was selling gumpaste decorations and she had a few of these reindeer's - I was so excited since they're were so perfect and exactly what I needed for the cake!  No need to hand-cut them!  I later asked her where she had purchased them but unfortunately, she had bought a case of these a while back from a cake supply store that has since closed.  I have scoured the internet looking for at least a similar mold but have not been able to find them...please let me know if you see them.

June 2011 Update:  A friend found a reindeer on Fancy Flours and they're the closest thus far.

December 2011 Update:  I've recreated the Sleigh and made silicone molds of both the Sleigh and Reindeer - both available for purchase now.  See tab above named, "Shop Sugar Sweet"

The cakes are a 10-inch and 6-inch White Almond Cake with Chocolate Hazelnut Buttercream (Nutella).  Covered in MMF made red with Candy Melts (about 1/3 cup melted), about a 1/4 teaspoon of Americolor Super Red, 3 drops of Americolor Maroon, and about 1/4 teaspoon of Chef Master Pink (I just squirted these straight into the melted MMF so they're approximate measurements) - I didn't want the cake to be a bold red but rather more of a cranberry red with a slight pink shade to it.  For the complete recipe and instructions on how to make MMF, please see my previous 2 blog posts:
1)  Recipe: Marshmallow Fondant (MMF)
2)  Recipe: Red Marshmallow Fondant (MMF)

The sleigh was hand cut out of MMF (mixed with Tylose for instant gumpaste) and painted with pearl dust to match the pearly reindeer.

 

I used piping gel to attach the reindeer up against the cake.  9 total reindeer's and off course, I had to add the red nose with a tiny ball of MMF dusted in pearl dust for Rudolf.  For the reindeer that floated higher off the cake, I used Royal Icing to attach sticks of spaghetti to the back of the bodies then inserted those into the cake for added support (I usually make cakes for kids and avoid using toothpicks).  I did have to use toothpicks behind both of Rudolf's feet since he was free-standing and needed more support (you can see one behind his front paw that I painted red to blend in with the cake).

The board was covered in Royal Icing and I used a small trowel to texture it to look like snow that also went up the sides of the bottom tier.  Snowflakes were piped with Royal Icing then dusting of edible disco dust.  I also added small dots of the disco dust mixed with some diluted piping gel randomly around the cake for more sparkle.

I absolutely love how the cake turned out - so simple yet elegant and all for a good cause.

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

Music Themed 80th Birthday Cake (and IMBC Recipe)

For my Great Uncle (mom's uncle) who has been singing in choirs his entire life.  The 9" round cake was White Almond Sour Cream (WASC) filled with fresh strawberries and Strawberry Italian Meringue Buttercream (IMBC) - Delish! (recipe below).  The outside was covered in Vanilla/Almond IMBC, hand-piped black Color Flow and finished off with a red fondant bow and "80".

This was my 1st bow and I was so proud of how real it looked.  Thank you Edna (www.DesignMeACake.com) for the wonderful tuturial that you can find here.

IMBC is soft like whipped cream and doesn't crust at all.  I love using the upside down method to get tall, straight sides and sharp corners with:  I also do this with ganache and regular buttercream cakes too.  Put in the fridge to get firm (IMBC is just like butter - hard when cold, soft at room temperature), remove, flip the cake over then put back in the fridge until you are ready to decorate it.

During the entire decorating process, I kept sticking the cake in the fridge for a couple minutes at a time to firm up.  Added the red, fondant ribbon around the bottom, put the cake back in the fridge, piped the "Happy", put in fridge, piped "Birthday", put in fridge...repeat, repeat, repeat until all the piping was complete.

I'm not very good at piping and take a very, very long time with each and every letter and music note, carefully fixing each stroke with a wet brush or toothpick.  I did try to pipe out all the letters and music notes a few days prior in dark chocolate but I didn't temper it correctly and they had beige swirls all over them.  Then I tried to pipe them in Color Flow over wax paper but they cracked as I pealed them off so I had to pipe them directly over the cake - holding my breath with each stroke and being super careful - ay yay yay!

Finished the cake off by adding the red bow and "80" both of which were made from red mmf mixed with tylose a few days prior to allow time to dry.  Put the entire cake back in the fridge so it would be firm and stable for the long drive to my Great Uncle's 80th Birthday party.  Everyone loved the cake especially the filling and every single slice of it was gone, eaten, enjoyed!  Happy Birthday Uncle!

Here is the recipe for IMBC.  1 Recipe (approx. 8 cups) was plenty enough to fill and cover a 9" round plus, when making it, it fits perfectly in a 5Qt mixer (if you need to make more, make it in a separate batch).  I included the weight of each ingredient since I prefer to weigh each rather than to measure.

Recipe - IMBC (Whimsical Bakehouse):
1/2 Cup Water (118g)
2-1/4 Cups (500g) Granulated Sugar (500g)
1 Cup Egg Whites (approximately 6-10 eggs, 236 g)
6 Sticks Unsalted Butter (1.5 lbs or 680g), cut into 1" pieces and at room temperature
1 Tspn Pure Vanilla Extract (or any other flavor preferred - I used 1/2 Vanilla and 1/2 Almond)

In a saucepan, bring water and sugar to a boil using a clean brush and cold water to wash down any sugar crystals that form on the sides of the pan as it is heating (any crystals will ruin/collapse the IMBC).  As soon as the sugar comes to a boil, set a timer to 7 minutes and continue to let it boil.

After 5 minutes, whip on high spead the egg whites with a stand mixer until stiff.  They will be done when the timer goes off (2 mins).  With mixer still on high, slowly (very slowly) pour the hot sugar syrup down the side of the mixing bowl into the egg whites.  Continue to beat on high until the bowl is cool to the touch (about 10-15 mins).  After the mixture is cool add the butter, 1 piece at a time.  As soon as the buttercream begins to curdle and jump around, reduce the spead to low, add the extract, and continue to mix until buttercream becomes smooth, light and fluffy (approx. 10 mins).

Store at room temperature for up to 3 days, in the fridge for 1 week, in the freezer for 1 month.  Be sure to bring it back down to room temperature before beating it back up fluffy again.

Strawberry Puree for Strawberry IMBC:
1/4 Cup fresh strawberries, diced
1 Tspn granulated sugar
1 Cup IMBC
Spinkle the strawberries with sugar, mix, cover, place in fridge for 1 hour or overnight.  Blend the strawberry mixture in a blender, strain out the junks and seeds and fold the strawberry puree into 1 cup of IMBC.  Spread between the cake layers and top with fresh strawberries....Enjoy!

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.