This Winter in Cake!

Chinese New Year Carrot Cake. 2011: Year of the Rabbit

In NYC, 2011, Year of the Rabbit, has been quite a year thus far in blizzards, snowstorms, and cake, and although I have made numerous cakes, this post includes a few cake highlights from the last two months:

A birthday cake for Cassandra, celebrating her amazing cat Isis.

Simple Lemon Cake

Birthday cake for Ashley, guardian of the infamous Mongo, a.k.a Lord Underbite.

See photo below for explanation of everything you need to know about Mongo, designed by Andy:

This was ordered for someone who reportedly caught their hair on fire from the previous year's birthday cake.

Hence, the flames! Marbleized orange, yellow, and red fondant for the fire effect.  Dusted with edible gold shimmer dust. 

This cake was for my father's birthday, and is the logo of his alma mater, Manhattan College, and their mascot.

Sea Shepherd Conservation Society Fundraiser

Inspired by the logo of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, I made mini jolly roger cakes covered in black fondant for their Winter Wonderland bakesale fundraiser.  The filling was a vanilla buttercream, with two layers of chocolate cake underneath.  These 3" mini cakes were tedious, but worth the end result.  I ran out of black fondant, and decorated the remainder of the mini cakes with chocolate ganache and chocolate dipped strawberries.  Instead of using small cake molds, I actually made two large sheet cakes and cut them into even 3" squares, then split the layers in half and filled with frosting.

Thundercats & Spiderman!

I've had an idea for a while, that it would be so fun if someone opened up a shop that was both a superhero-themed vegan bakery, and a comic book shop.  Until that happens, I'll just make these cakes!

I made this cake for New Year's Eve, for no good reason other than I've been waiting for a good excuse to make a Thundercats cake for well over a year, now!  I didn't have time to make a transfer sheet, so I eyeballed the design and drew it freehand with a toothpick first, and then drew the black outlines and filled them in with color.  This was a fun cake to make, and I forced my roommates to eat the remainder of it over the course of a week.  By the end of the week, they were officially sick of cake and even more sick of frosting.  It happens.

This Spiderman cake was for my nephew Daniel's 4th birthday, and since he's such a huge fan, I couldn't think of a better cake to make for him.  I also drew the pattern onto this cake with a toothpick, eyeballing a picture I had of the superhero.  I used a #14 star tip to fill in the red, and a similar medium star tip for the border.  Using a #5 writing tip, I made the body of the spiders, and made their legs with the tiny #1 tip.  He was excited when he saw the cake lit up with candles, so I considered it a success.  

Birthday Bashes with Black Fondant

These cakes are simple chocolate cakes frosted with buttercream, encased with black fondant.  I used mainly #3 and #5 writing tips to pipe the designs on.

Piping buttercream designs or words onto fondant is much easier if you trace an outline of your design on, first.  With both of these cakes, I used toothpicks to lightly draw the design onto the fondant surface.  This is also helpful for writing phrases, so that you don't run out of room.  If necessary, you could use a paper design if you apply medium pressure to the paper as you trace it onto the fondant.

The translation "Happy Birthday" in Dutch, for a Dutch lady who loves owls!  Her cooking blog can be found at http://keukenmeid.blogspot.com/

This is the logo for the Industrial Workers of the World, and it was a birthday cake created for an organizer with the NYC chapter of the IWW. 

3 Cakes are Better than 1: Tiered Cakes

If you're like me, maybe you've wondered how one could stack two or three (or more!) cakes together without the layers toppling over or squishing the ones below.  Well, wonder no more!  If cakes are small or light enough, such as the 2-tiered cakes I've included below, you can simply stack the layers together without reinforcing with wooden dowels.  

This cake was designed to be the prize for the winner of this club's card tournament.  The trophy came from a party store as a party favor, and was secured to the top with buttercream.  The bead border was made using a #12 round tip.  This cake was small enough that I did not need to reinforce with dowels.  The bottom tier was 8" and the top was 5".

Another smaller cake that was possible to stack and transport two hours without dowels for reinforcement.  The buttons were made by cutting out fondant circles.  This cake was for Hilari's baby shower which had a "Cute as a Button" theme.

For cakes that are larger, such as the wedding cake below, you'll want to reinforce the layers by inserting support dowels which you can trim to the perfect size with a knife or wire clippers.  As a final measure of security, you can insert a dowel that runs the entire height of all tiers combined through all layers so that they do not shift during transportation.

This was for Andy and Courtney's wedding.  I assembled the layers after transporting them separately since it was a long drive on bumpy roads from Brooklyn to Long Island.  The sizes of the tiers are 8", 12", and 14" as the base.  The cake was mocha flavored with raspberry preserve filling.

Some helpful information about assembling tiered cakes, and advice on transporting them.

Fooling Folks with Fondant Foodstuffs

"Is that really a fruitbasket?"  No, why would I ever put grapes, tomatos, and bananas on top of a cake?!  I had so much fun with these cakes, it was almost like being back in fifth grade art class working with sculpey clay.  I placed some real fruit next to the cake for comparison.

To learn how to create this basketweave look, check out this tutorial.

This fruitbasket cake was requested by Hilari for a vegan "Meat-Out" party.

Aside from the basics of using fondant that I mentioned in the previous post, the best advice I can offer for creating cakes like these are to pretend that the fondant is clay.  Knead it until it is soft and pliable, create the shapes you want and set them aside to dry slightly if necessary before attaching them to cake.  I typically used either water or buttercream to adhere the fondant to the cakes.  Regarding the shape of the cake, I just cut and pieced together various cake pieces to create the right shape for each cake.

I mixed tan and brown fondant together for a marbled, wood-like effect on the side of this drum.  The Vic Firth sticks are also fondant, which I set aside to dry and harden for a bit after forming them, so that they would not bend.

This was for my nephew's 3rd birthday.  It is difficult to see, but I used a silver shimmer dust powder to give the windows and other silver accents a shiny look.  The chest logo and 3 were drawn on with an edible ink marker.

This cake was inspired by my father's 1968 Shelby Mustang that he's had since before I was born.  Everything that you can see, from the windshield wipers to the wheels, are made from fondant.

I cut this cake to size, covered it in pink fondant, and then attached those towers (ice cream cones covered in fondant!)  This was for my niece's birthday back in 2009, and she thought it was an actual toy when she first saw it, so I considered it a success!  The flags are just toothpicks with paper attached, not edible.

Fun with Fondant

Fondant is an easy way to make cakes look elegant.  You can purchase it pre-colored, or buy white fondant and color it yourself with food dye.  It has a texture similar to clay, so it is quite easy to work with and stretches to fit the shape of your cake.  

Some fondant basics can be found here.

Here are some cakes that I decorated using fondant:

Someone asked me to make this for the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, so I made it bright and colorful to go with their style.

This was the ultimate Valentine's Day cake and probably my most favorite cake that I've ever created.  Black fondant adds a nice touch as it is not a color that you typically see on cake.  The red hearts and outline are fondant that I cut into strips with a roller that resembles a pizza cutter.  The ghost was piped on by drawing an outline with a #3 tip and filling it in with a small #14 star tip.

 

I colored this fondant by swirling blue and red fondant into a larger mass of white fondant.

This was for Gina, in celebration of a pinecone she illustrates about named Piney.  The pinecone was made with slivered almonds which I stuck to buttercream frosting on top of the pink fondant.