Little Mermaid Birthday Cake

One of my girlfriends daughters was having a "Disney's the Little Mermaid" themed birthday party, and since having recently gone through what I now refer to as "cake college" I asked her if she would mind if I did her cake for free, so I could get some practice. Oh, and of course she agreed, I mean free cake, who wouldn't agree? So here are some photo's of Ariel and Flounder. I felt pretty darn good about the whole thing, excpet for one small mistake. When I was coloring all of my buttercream, I forgot to leave myself some plain white buttercream for her eyes and teeth. Ooops, this is why I need the practice!



I used the piping gel trace method I learned in Wilton Course One to get Ariel on the cake. Then I filled her with tip 16 (star) and tip 4 (round).



Here is my "work in progress" shot.



And finally she is ready to go on the road. Everyone loved it, especially the birthday girl! She requested a vanilla and chocolate marble cake, with vanilla butter cream. Hmmmm, it was yummy!

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cuppy Cakes

Yes, they are as wonderfully delicious as they sound! My sister and I love peanut butter and chocolate, so I made these little treats for her as a present for her birthday. I won't spill her age because that wouldn't be nice, but I will say she is my older sister! :)

First I mixed a basic chocolate cake mix in my stand mixer, following the directions on the box, and after the batter was completely mixed, I added about 2 Tbs of melted peanut butter and mixed that in really well. As a side note, this gave the cupcakes a hint of peanut butter flavor hidden inside the chocolate flavor. Next time I will probably use closer to 4 - 6 Tbs of peanut butter to see if this gives it more of the peanut butter flavor I was going for.


Did I mention peanut butter cups were going into the middle of these?!?! Oh Yeah! So I unwrapped 24 miniature peanut butter cups. And for quality control purposes, I made sure to sample a few pb cups while I was unwrapping. I'm sure I don't need to remind you that this is a very important step. ;) Next I divided my batter equally into two gallon sized baggies.


I clipped the corner off of one side of the baggie and then I filled each cupcake liner about 1/3 full. Then I placed a peanut butter cup in the middle of each cupcake liner. A good trick is to place the peanut butter cup upside down, so there will not be any air pockets inside your cupcake. Finally, clip a corner off of the other baggie and fill the cups up to 2/3 full. And off to the oven they go!


OK, my girls are baked and ready for more peanut butter! After the cupcakes cooled off for about 30 minutes, I melted more peanut butter and drizzled it over each cupcake! Then I let them completely cool for about four hours, before I decorated them.



Ahhh, time to make them pretty! I made my chocolate gnache frosting in advance the day before, so it had plenty of time to set up. I swirled on the gnache with a 1M tip and placed my fondant flowers (remember these?) on top, and voila! Gorgeous little beauties all ready to be enjoyed!


Too bad they're all gone, looking at them now is making me want another one!


And I had a few gum paste daisies left over from my last Wilton class, I couldn't let them go to waste now could I? No way, so here are some pretty daisy cakes too.

Fondant Flowers

I have been feeling pretty confident in myself when it comes to fondant lately. You know, as soon as Wilton hands you a piece of paper saying you've been certified, your confidence level just sky rockets! Actually, if you saw my first fondant creation, my experiment before I took the class, you would understand where I am coming from. OK, I'll show it to you, and you can even laugh at my expense, but I don't want to hear about it, OK?

Yeah, I know. It's pretty bad, actually there's really nothing pretty about it. But, what's that saying... something about knowing where you've been, or where your going... hmmm...Oh wait, yes "You can't know where your going, without knowing where you've been." That would be exactly what this cake is saying. In the future when I am banging out 5 tiered wedding cakes, covered in embossed fondant and bursting with gum paste flowers, I will still know that this was where I once was.

Now, wasn't I talking about fondant and confidence earlier? Yeah, let's get back to that! :)
So, as I was saying, after the disaster above, I whipped through 4 weeks of Wilton's Fondant and Gum Paste Course to turn out this lil' number...

... feeling much better with the fondant. So after the last class, I decided I had this fondant thing down. Why not try my own little project. I knew I had some cupcakes coming up due in my future, and planned out some really pretty purple flowers. Here is how I made them!

First I rolled out purple tinted fondant 1/4" thick. I then used my small 5 petal flower cutter to press out 12 little flowers. I worked on each flower individually from start to finish, to ensure that my flowers wouldn't dry out too quickly. I kept all of the flowers I wasn't working on under plastic wrap.

Then I dusted my flower former with cornstarch, and placed one flower in the middle of the former.

Next I rolled the ball end of my vainer inside each petal of the flower, to give it a cupped look.

This is how each petal should look after cupping the petals.

Next, I made an indention in the middle of the flower. This is where my flower center will go. I am using 4mm edible pearls as the center of my flowers.

Then I brushed a small drop of gum paste glue in the middle of the flower. This will glue the pearl to the flower, so it will not detach and roll away.

Immediately after brushing the gum paste glue, drop the pearl into place.

And here you have one completed little fondant flower! I placed my fondant flowers inside an empty egg carton to dry. I do have flower formers from one of my Wilton courses, and I do like them... However, I find the egg carton takes up less space and is more easily transported through out the house. And once the flowers have dried, you can close the egg carton and keep them safe from harms way until your ready to decorate.

Oh and not to worry, you will see these lil' guys again soon, adorning some cuppy cakes!

Fondant & Gumpaste ~ Wilton Style

I really meant to post this after class on Tuesday night, but it has been such a busy week! I finished Wilton's Fondant & Gum paste class this week. And how extremely convenient, that the very next day was my co-workers birthday! :) Needless to say she was the lucky recipient of a very finely decorated cake! So here she is, my Fondant & Gum paste Final Cake, in all her glory!

This is a french vanilla cake, frosted and filled with strawberry butter cream, and covered in fondant. The fantasy flowers and leaves are made of gum paste, and the border balls are fondant. And for that "little something extra" special effect, I covered the cake and flowers with cake glitter. Oooohh...Aaaahh!

All of my co-workers, including the birthday girl, loved the cake. Well, they loved the actual cake and the strawberry butter cream. They were all a little weirded out by the fondant and the fact that you really don't eat it. I mean it's edible and all, it just isn't as great as butter cream. Just as a side note regarding the fondant. For the purpose of this class, I used only store bought fondant for convenience and because it was recommended by the teacher that we learn with store bought fondant due to the fact that it is extremely consistent. I do plan in the future to give it a go with marsh mellow fondant, as I have heard the taste is much, much better!

What's next? Wilton's Course 3 Fondant & Tiered Cakes, which I am so excited about, but I have to wait two months to take it! Sigh, I guess I will just be doing a lot of baking and blogging until then!

OK, one last picture of my cake, this one is at a different angle :)

Back in time.... Wilton Cake Decorating Classes

Last October I started Wilton's Cake Decorating Course One and continued straight through November with Course 2. Needless to say, that was a lot of butter cream! I started the first course with some basic cake decorating knowledge and by the time I finished course 2 I felt like a pro :) Well, maybe not good enough to compete on the Food Network Challenge, but I was feeling pretty confident. I thought I would post some pictures here of my Course 1 and 2 cakes and re-cap the experience.

Cake One - Over the Rainbow

This is a french vanilla cake, filled with raspberry fruit filling, and decorated with vanilla butter cream! In this class (this was the second night of class) we learned the secret technique of the pros to make your butter cream frosting smooth all over the cake. We then learned how to do a pattern transfer, using piping gel, and then fill in the pattern with the star tip.

Cake Two - Scary Birthday Clowns

This is a red velvet cake, filled with home made cream cheese filling, and decorated with butter cream. In this class we learned more star tip tricks. We made star tip borders around the top and bottom of our cake, and we learned how to make the scary clowns. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the clowns. We also learned how to make star flowers and drop flowers, not pictured on the cake though. I added the multi color dots on the side of the cake after I got home from class to jazz it up a bit.

Cake Three - The Big Finale, The Wilton Rose

This is a chocolate cake, filled and decorated (except the roses and leaves) with chocolate butter cream. So when I first signed up for cake decorating class, I knew the one thing I had to come away with was how to make a rose. It's not rocket science, but it's also not something that most people you meet can do! So I practiced, and practiced, and then practiced some more. I'm not kidding, my husband wanted nothing to do with the site of frosting by the time I was satisfied with my roses :) Well, it may not be identical to the roses in the book, but I was pretty darn proud of my little Wilton Flowers. Oh, and this was definitely my favorite cake from the entire course!

Cake Four - Course 2 Finale, Basket of Rock Hard Flowers

This is a devils food chocolate cake, filled with cherry fruit filling, and decorated with butter cream and royal icing flowers. This cake is the only cake produced in course 2. Course two is ALL ABOUT FLOWERS! I am not even sure I can name all of the flowers on this cake, but I'll try. Here we go : Rose, Primrose, Daisey, Mum, Pansy, Violet, Apple blossom and Daffodil. Wow, I think I did it. So, the first three nights of class we learned how to make all of these flowers using royal icing. Then on the final night of class we learned the basket weave technique. By the end of the night we had an entire basket of flowers. This cake was hard work, but I loved the way it turned out!