CAKE DECORATING
Another way I let off some creative steam
Occasionally I make and decorate cakes. I do not do this professionally; just mostly for family or friends. I included this page on my website just to give someone else ideas when trying to bake their own cakes.
I use Duncan Hines butter mix. I tried making a yellow cake from scratch once for my husband's birthday and it turned out like a sponge...not a sponge cake...but an actual sponge!. We had a good laugh over that one. I only have two cake recipes that I will make from scratch. I trust them to turn out perfect almost every time. ...My carrot cake and Mom Cannon's Devils Food cake.
This was a baby shower cake.The baby and all decorations are made of wilton fondant.The cake is 4 rectangular layers and onehalf of an 8"x 3" round layer for the canopy. This takes 6 boxes of mix to make. So with all the butter, eggs, icing and fondant decorations it is fairly expensive to make. Of course you can make a smaller version but it isn't quite as impressive. It is also very time consuming. The fondant decorations need to be made ahead of time so they have time to harden. That is why I don't make them to sell.
This is another shower cake...this time for a girl. The decorations were all made of the fondant again; only this time the quilt was icing with piped designs. The canopy was 1/2 of a hexagon shaped pan.
This cake was for my sister Linda and her husband Charles' outdoor wedding.There was a lighted gazebo on top. It looked really pretty as the sun was setting. The flowers were all silk . On the sides were oval fondant plaques with small red roses hand-painted with food coloring.
This was a very large sheet cake for an October birthday party. Decorations were all fondant. The center plague was a color flow run-out. An easy way to do colorflow is to make a template or design on the computer;print it out; slip it into a plastic sleeve like a clear page protector. Pipe your outlines and fill-ins right on top of the plastic sleeve and let it set-up and airdry.Carefully lift it from the plastic and onto your cake surface when completely dried and hardened. Those page protectors are wonderful things. I use them to make my own cook books. I print the recipes out on the computer pop them into a page protector and place them in a 3 ring binder. Any drips, spills or flour dust wipes off easily with a wet paper towel.
Another Baby Shower cake. All decorations made of fondant. Babys eyelashes/brows are painted on with black food coloring. This was for a baby boy shower.
The first wedding cake I made was for my sister Carol and her husband Buddy's wedding. It was four layers iced with buttercream frosting and decorated with royal icing and fondant flowers. Carol is very "Martha Stewarty" and I tried to create the flowers to reflect that. They were bright, springy flowers such as tulips and daffodils with some purple violets thrown in to add some more color. I got a little carried away with the roses on the sides. It looked a tad too busy.It would have looked more elegant with just the flowers on the top spilling down the side a little.
This was for someone who wanted polka dots. The box shaped cakes are 2 layers each and are covered with buttercream frosting, then covered with colored fondant. I found a terrific recipe for making fondant from marshmallows and powdered sugar. It is much more economical than buying Wilton and tastes so much better. You just nuke a 16 oz bag of mini-marshmallows and 2 tablespoons of water for about 1 1/2 minutes, stir; heat them for 30 second intervals until they are melted and smooth. Remove them from the microwave and dump about 2/3 of a 2 lb. bag of powdered sugar on top of the marshmallows. Stir it in with a wooden spoon until it gets a little firm and cool enough to handle. Grease your hands and work surface with white shortening. Knead the dough, mixing in as much of the remaining sugar as you need to make it smooth but firm. Keep greasing your hands and surface as necessary. You can roll it out to use as a smooth finish for your cake or you can make decorations. You can add food coloring and knead it in and you can add different flavorings to suit your taste. It will keep in your fridge for a couple weeks. Just put it in the microwave on 50% power for 20 seconds (give or take a few) and it will soften right up. Be careful to not get it too hot; you can burn your hands. This is really great stuff!
For Carol's birthday!! Just playing around with my newly-found marshmallow fondant recipe. The cake is devil's food with buttercream icing; covered with white fondant with a hint of almond flavoring and pastel fondant flowers. (Supposed to be tulips...I need to practice a little more on those!!) I was going for the Martha Stewart look.
Ok.....this one takes some explaining. I call it...organized chaos. This one was for a Child Support Enforcement team building retreat. My sister is a CSS (Child Support Specialist).They search for non-custodial parents who are not contributing to the financial support of their children and try to make arrangemnets for them to correct that "oversight"/ In other words they hunt down dead- beat parents who don't want to own up to their responsibilities. Here we have the CCS team playing a mean game of tug-a-war with some of those parents afore mentioned. There is money hanging on the rope. It was meant to be humorous and while my portrayal of the dead-beat parents may not be politically correct, I tried to make it equally offensive to all of them. We have a red-neck in a budweiser shirt, a couple hispanics, a white executive type, a black guy and a hoochie mama; because quite frankly, people who shirk their responsibilities come from all races and all walks of life. Some really do honestly struggle to pay their share, while others will go to what ever lengths necessary to avoid it. So I intend no disrespect to anyone in particular. All that being said, the cake was iced with buttercream and the people were made of fondant.
THE OPINIONS AND VIEWS EXPRESSED ABOVE ARE SOLELY MY OWN AND DO NOT IN ANYWAY REFLECT THE OPINIONS OR VIEWS OF ANY CHILD SUPPORT ENFORCEMENT EMPLOYEE
For Mom's 79th birthday. She loves her hummingbirds!
Click here to see the Hummingbird Haven sign I painted for her; Or here to see My Decorative Painting page
Beach Cake. I used crushed vanilla wafers for the sand. The people, sand castle, shells, starfish, flipflops, lotion bottle, bag with towels, bucket and other decorations are fondant. The water is tinted gel icing. The umbrella was paper, made on my computer printed out and supported with a plastic dowel..
An Iris cake for Iris.
Iris's are really hard to make!!!
They are fondant.
IRIS plaque is a colorflow icing -runout. The pattern was again made on the computer as the one above for the October Cake.
Basket of Roses Cake
Two layer yellow cake with buttercream frosting. The flowers were elevated in the center with a small 3 inch layer of cake. All decorations were piped directly on cake using buttercrean frosting. It could have been so much more impressive if I had time to make the roses ahead of time from fondant or gum paste but only had a day to do this. The handle is a piece of basket weave that I embellished with a little ribbon. I made two slits in the cake board and inserted the ends.
Another quick idea is to make the cake; make basketweave design on sides; frost the top flat.; arrange silk flowers in a small piece of round styrofoam. Place on the center of the cake, using a piece of cardboard or aluminum foil between the styrofoam and the cake. The recipient could reuse the flowers afterward as a table centerpiece or decoration.
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