The Minion

Months ago, my husband saw a similar cake and said that he wanted a cake just like it.  So, I decided to make him one for his 40th birthday this past week.

This cake was a total surprise for him, which created a whole new challenge...trying to make the cake while he wasn't home and in the few short hours I had available to do it.

I am proud to say I pulled it off!  He had no idea!

This cake was 4 layers of 8" chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.  I used a bowl and Rice Krispie Treats to shape the head.  The legs and feet were also made from Rice Krispie Treats.

The hardest part of this cake was placing the yellow fondant over the whole thing.  If you've ever done a fondant cake before you know it's difficult to place fondant over a tall cake without getting lots of wrinkles.

Because I was pressed for time before my husband got home, I wasn't able to get it as wrinkle free as I would have liked.  I needed to clean up all the cake evidence in such a short amount of time!

I trimmed the bottom of the yellow fondant to cut off some of the wrinkles.  It was going to be covered with the blue overalls anyway.

For the eye, I just cut a small circle of white fondant and covered it with brown and black for the pupil.  I then gave it an eyelid and used part of a canning lid for the goggle.

As I was doing the hair, I thought it would be really funny to add some gray hairs since it was his 40th birthday.  I just poked a hole into the yellow fondant and then added small bits of fondant for the hair.  I added gumtex to the fondant to allow it to hold its shape.

I did the apple (bapple, if you've ever seen the Despicable Me shorts) last as a finishing touch.

He was very surprised and happy with his cake.  I'm still not sure how I pulled it off without him knowing.  I STILL have red food coloring on my hands from the apple, two days later!  Talk about almost being caught red handed!

Construction Cake

What little boy doesn't love trucks and dirt?!

This is a 9x13 double layer, chocolate cake with chocolate frosting.

The first thing I did was prepare the hat and the construction vehicle ahead of time.  They are both made out of Rice Krispie Treats.

For the lower "arm" I used a piece of cardboard covered in fondant to give it extra support.  The two top "arms" are held together with chocolate to keep them sturdy. The joint in between the two arms was held together with a tooth pick and actually moved!





The "dirt" is just crumbled up cake and all other decorations are made from fondant.

Pretty in pink!

This is the only picture I managed to get of this cake before sending it on it's merry way.  I made this for a friend's daughter.  She helped make the fondant and baked the cakes and I did the decorating.  I also made a real pretty "M" to go on the top, but you will have to use your imagination for that. 

Super Mario Bros!

Wow!  Was this cake A LOT of work!  I lost count at about 15 hours or so!

I prepared the fondant a week in advance and spent the week before his birthday working on all of the figures.  The more complex ones took about 45 minutes to an hour a piece because of all the coloring and detail involved.  I also made the star ahead of time to give it time to harden.  I added Gumtex to all the fondant figures so they would hold their shape well.

This little guy on the right is my favorite I think (besides the cute little mushrooms next to him).  

I also made a bunch of the bricks to place on the cake.  I just cut the fondant into squares and then used a knife to make the grooves in the fondant.

This guy on the left was a bit tricky.  I had to roll out a thin line of black fondant and then carefully place it on his face for the goggles.  He also has a spiky Mohawk, which was super delicate.

Mario, on the right, was definitely the most time consuming.  I first made the pipe he's coming out of and then formed his body and then head.  I had to use toothpicks to keep his head stable on his body.

The mushroom was made out of formed Rice Krispie Treats covered in frosting and fondant.  

 Luigi wasn't as tricky, but that's only because it was a side view of him.

 This guy on the right is called a Goomba.  Doesn't look that complicated, but those teeny little teeth and eyebrows are so tricky to place onto such a small character.  I also made a couple of those turtle shells to place around the bottom and some coins as seen on the game.

The plant on the left is called a Piranha Plant.  I really liked how this turned out for some reason.  

The little fella on the right is a Toad.

I also included one of the flags that is found at the end of each level.  It doesn't have the graphic that's on the flag in the game, but this was the last detail I did and by this point I was thoroughly exhausted with this cake.  I decided to just let it go....not easy for me to do!

Here's a better view from the side.  I also made a Flying Turtle.  Originally, he was made to go on the side of the cake, but I ran out of room.  I decided to put him on the top since he flies in the game anyway.  I had to use toothpicks to hold him in place.

I decided to use my airbrush on this cake for the background.  It came out darker than intended, but I like how it turned out anyway.  My son went through the different "worlds" on the game to come up with an idea for the background.  This "world" is a tropical one with sand dunes and palm trees.  I think it all worked out well in the end and he was very excited to have his friends over to share his cake.  

Crown Cake

My friend asked me to help her with her daughter's birthday cake, so of course I couldn't resist.  It was especially nice to work along a friend and talk while doing all the busy work.  Plus, up until that point I had never had the chance to do a girlie cake.  It was a nice change!

My friend had bought a pretty birthday banner with a cake on it, which is how we came up with the idea for this cake.  The buttons weren't on the cake in the banner, but we decided to incorporate them into the actual cake. 

The crown on the cake is probably my favorite part.  I rolled out a flat piece of fondant and then cut it into a crown shape.  In order to get it the right shape, I rolled it around a cup and let it dry in that position.  I also added gumtex to make the fondant stiffer.  My friend added some edible glitter and the button to complete the look. 

Karate Gi Cake

My son had recently started to do karate so we decided to choose something to reflect that.  I came across a karate gi cake online that I decided to try out.  This was my first attempt at a non-round fondant cake. 

This cake is a single layer 9x13 cake, which I carved small indents out of the side.  In order to make it a bit easier to lay down the fondant, I made two individual pieces...one for the top half of the cake and the other for the bottom half.  I figured the belt was going to cover the seam anyway, so I might as well make it easier.

The belt is three pieces....one strip going across, a strip for the ties and another for the knot.  For the edges of the gi, I cut three strips and made small indented lines with a knife.  I now have a rolling tool that makes these stripes...much easier! 

I was a little nervous about making the Yin Yang symbol, but it was much easier than I thought it would be.  I just used a cookie cutter to make a circle of each color and then I cut away what wasn't needed.  Then I just made a small indent to insert the opposite color in each half.  To make the bottom of the cake neater, I rolled out a black rope and just fit it around the cake. 

Of course, the cake itself was chocolate with chocolate frosting....what else!?

Sports Cake

This sports cake was for my youngest son's 2nd birthday. He is a HUGE sports lover so this seemed rather appropriate for him.

This one took a really long time to make, especially with all the fine detail to the bat and balls on the top of the cake. Since they were small, they were a little hard to work with.

All of them are made out of fondant, even all of the laces on the balls. The stars were made with a cookie cutter as well as the bat and football on the side of the cake. The writing on the bat is made with a food coloring pen.

The top layer had vanilla frosting and the bottom had chocolate. Whenever you are using white fondant, you will need to use a light colored frosting so that it doesn't show through the fondant.

Ice Age Cake

My oldest son chose an Ice Age cake for his 9th birthday. I used icing to give it that snowy look.

The characters, eggs and acorns were all made out of fondant. The faces on the egg were drawn on with a food coloring pen. I made the "ice" with sugar candy. It was the first time I had used this and it was a lot of fun to do. I just poured the melted sugar onto a pan, let it cool and then cracked it to form the ice.

I was so happy with the way Scrat and Sid came out and I had planned on preserving them like I had the jungle animals. Apparently, my dog had other ideas because she ended up eating them. By the time I caught her, only part of Sid's body was left. It was very sad!

Here is Scrat before he was eaten...check out his fang teeth!

The Star Wars Cake

So having 3 boys, I was bound to do a Star Wars cake along the way. This cake was chosen by my middle son for his 6th birthday. For all you non Star Wars fans, it is a depiction of Tatooine (the home planet of Anakin and Luke Skywalker).

For the top layer I used frosting. Looking back, I probably should have done fondant. With this cake, I learned the big mistake with not doing what's called a "crumb layer". Basically, what that is is a thin layer of frosting over the cake to "trap" in the crumbs. After you do this, you place the cake in the fridge to allow the frosting to harden. Then, you do another layer of frosting that comes out nice and clean without any messy crumbs showing through. I had quite a few messy crumbs showing through the blue on this cake.....lesson learned!

The buildings of Tatooine are made from fondant as well as the "rocks" and moons. The sand on this cake is brown sugar. It was a bit darker than the Graham Cracker crumbs, which is why I chose to use that.

The characters are just the plastic figures. I have been asked why I didn't make them from fondant. Basically, I was only 3 weeks out from doing the Jungle Cake. I was still exhausted from that...lol!

My first ever birthday cake...

This was my first ever birthday cake. I was standing in a store one day and this cake was on the front of a magazine. I ended up buying the magazine and making this cake for my oldest son's 2nd birthday.

It was a lot of work, but so much fun to make!

This was actually my second attempt at the cake. The ocean is made out of jello and the first time around, I made the ocean to close to0 the edge and the cake broke. I learned that lesson real quick! After that, it wasn't too bad....just lots of work with all the small details. I prepared the mermaids and swimmers ahead of time. Their suits/hair were made from icing and the mermaid tails were made from fruit roll ups. I also learned a lesson with those as well...fruit roll ups are VERY hard to work when they are warm. They end up being very hard to unroll and super sticky. The best thing to do is place them in the fridge. A million times easier!!

The seaweed is also made from fruit roll ups. As you can probably tell, the fish are just different colored Goldfish snack crackers with icing for eyes. The life preservers are mints with red icing. The treasure chests I believe are those treasure chocolate candies with icing for decoration. The boat is a Twinkie covered in frosting with a fruit roll up sail. It is "tied" in place with Twizzler "rope" and attached to some pretzel sticks. The "rocks" are chocolate covered raisins and the sand is Graham Cracker Crumbs.

As you can imagine, it ended up being pretty costly due to the many items needed to put this cake together. It was well worth it though, because I accomplished my goal of making this cake and I was happy with the end result. The only bad thing, is that nobody ate it at the party! They didn't want to damage it. My husband ended up taking some to work the following week! At least it didn't go to waste after all.

This was my first ever fondant cake. I saw a picture on a cake website and just HAD to make it for my son's first birthday. I knew nothing about fondant at the time so I did lots of research before attempting this big feat. Let's just say it was A LOT of work....and I mean a lot!

I started 2 weeks ahead of his birthday and spent pretty much every nap time and every evening learning about fondant. I taught myself how to make fondant, color fondant, roll it out, cut it into shapes and create these cute little jungle animals. I even had dreams about making cakes since that was all I seemed to be doing those 2 weeks!

I probably put in about 20 hours of work when all was said and done. It was well worth it though, because it was a huge hit at his party. Of course, nobody wanted to cut it up and eat it! I had to have my husband cut the cake while I looked away. At least it was really yummy and worth eating! I did save the animals and have since clear coated them. They now sit in my son's room on a shelf....a nice reminder of his special day!

This cake was vanilla with chocolate frosting on the bottom layer and chocolate cake with chocolate frosting on the top layer....as you might be able to tell I LOVE chocolate! Initially, I made chocolate fondant for the top layer, but it was a failure. As I layed it over the cake, it cracked around the edges. I think it was too dry with the added cocoa powder in the fondant. I will have to attempt that again someday down the road. Every decoration is made from fondant as well. In order to make the animals, I added something called Gumtex to the fondant. It helps give it a stiffer consistency so that the animals hold their shape. All of my fondant is homemade and basically consists of powdered sugar and marshmallows...marshmallow fondant (MMF). It is much cheaper to make and it tastes much better than store bought fondant. I also made my own frosting for the first time with cake...also much better!

Since then, I have pretty much done fondant for every birthday. I have also helped a few friends learn how to make fondant and have also made a couple cakes for customers. This was just the beginning of a whole new venture for me!

Over the next couple weeks (if I can find a spare moment) I will be posting a lot of the cakes I have done over the years. I will try to explain the process to give you an idea of what it takes to actually prepare these edible works of art.