R2D2 Cake

This is a cake that I have been wanting to post for a long time about. For Curtis's birthday this year I threw him a Star Wars party and with all the HUGE Star Wars fans out there on the web, I found so many wonderful ideas. But my favorite thing that I came up with was his R2D2 Cake, it was 7 layers of yellow cake simply baked in 9 inch round pans. For the head I made it out of Rice Krispies treats and molded them into a bowl that I had.

I bought some fondant at Joann's and used that for all the little pieces and used a marshmallow for his "eye" thingie :)

Sorry the picture is so sad, but I took this at like 2 am on Curtis's iPhone and I was ready to go to bed, thinking I would take more pictures in the morning all fancy like. Well, apparently the weight was too much for R2D2, and since I had never made a cake this big, this was all new for me. I guess I needed some cardboard layer or stick to help stable it :) hee he... well it was a learning process but I still loved it.

R2D2 in all his glory

This is what is looked like when I woke up in the morning... NOOOOOOOO

Baby Shower Cake - Jungle

Gotta love babies... especially the baby showers. I love the decorations, the food, chatting with the ladies... I love it all. This last shower that I threw I decided that I was going to step it up a notch and make my first baby shower cake. I was really surprised how easy it was to do. Seriously, this is my first cake!

I simply used box mixes, but instead of cooking them in circle pans, I cooked them in Cheesecake Pans to help that be perfectly even, plus they cool faster since you can take the side off while they cool. I used a Buttercream frosting too (for the first ti

me) and again... SUPER EASY! :)

All it was is...

Shorting 1/2 cup

Butter 1/2 cup (1 stick)

Powder Sugar 4 Cups (add one as a time)

Vanilla 1 tsp (clear vanilla if you want it to be white)

Milk 2 TBS

I doubled the frosting for this cake and it was plenty.

Mix shorting, butter (soften), vanilla till cream. Then add sugar one

cup at a time. The frosting will be a little stiff at this point, so now you will add the milk... this will make it the perfect medium stiffness. If you want to add color to the frosting... DO NOT ADD LIQUID DIE. It will ruin the stiffness... use coloring paste. They sell it a Walmart or Michaels and such.

What is great about this frosting is that you don't have to refrigerate it. So, you can start working on a cake a couple days in advance and it will still be great. In fact, I like the frosting to sit out and get a little more stiff after the cake is frosted.

Once you have the cake frosted you can then decorate it how you please. I used Candy Melts to make the leafs. I simply melted some green candy melts and drew them on wax paper with a picture of the leaf below. Once cooled, you peel them up a

nd glue them on (with more melted candy). They will stay really well.

The animals on top, I used my Cricut to cut out cute little animals. I cut them out and glued tooth picks to them, that helped me stick them on top.

The sides I decorated with the candy melts again. I simple grabbed some extra Candy Melts and glued them to the sides with melted Candy Melts.

I had a lot of fun with this cake and it tasted fantastic! I used a couple tools that helped make it easier to do things.

A cake lifter really helped me move the cakes from the pans

to the tray I was serving it on. Truly helpful. Also, a flat spatula made it possible to evenly spread the frosting through out the cake.

Candy Melt Image

Okay, so I meant to post this back in October when I made the darn thing, but yea... Mrs. M.I.A. hasn't been posting much. But here is the birthday cake that I made for Lucy's 2nd birthday.

Lucy has a favorite book called "Biscuit" about a little lab puppy that has all kind of adventures and she just loves him. So, I figured I would make her a Biscuit cake. I was able to use candy melts to make a chocolate transfer. The way I made this cake, you can apply it to any picture that you want.

First I took her book and wrapped it in wax paper and taped it in place. Then, I took some white Candy Melts (you can buy them at Walmart or Michael's) and melted them. I set several bowls aside so I could spoon out some of the melted candy melts and mix it with food coloring. USEFUL TIP - the candy melts will change texture and get clumpy if you use too much food coloring, especially if it is liquid drops. You will need to use the food coloring paste. You can get a huge selection at Michael's for fairly cheap. It is easier to just buy the color candy melts needed, then to have to mix the colors.

You can use a pipping bag to put the melted chocolate in, but I just used a Ziploc bag and cut a small corner out. I then traced a nice outline in the color needed and filled in random areas like the eyes, nose, and toe nails.with the color needed. Once everything was dried I then filled in Biscuit with the main color, which helped get everything connected and stuck together. Make sure the last layer you fill is nice and thick to help keep your image from breaking to you lift it up.

When everything is dried, carefully peel the wax paper away from your chocolate image and turn it over so you can see the nice smooth side. Now you can place it on your cake.

What is great about this process is that it really isn't hard and doesn't have to be perfect and it is just fun to see the end process. Lucy loved it!!! She got all excited about her Biscuit and got to eat her sweet puppy, which should probably be a little disturbing, but it was still cute :)

You can copy anything from images online, books, posters, anything that is flat and you can get wax paper on.

Guitar Hero Cake

Curtis's birthday rolled up this week and so it came time for Curtis to let me know what kind of cake he wanted. He suggested something that was kind of simple, but I was excited so I asked him to pick something else. I wanted him to challenge me. So, he came back with his decision.... he wanted a Guitar Hero cake.
Well... I guess I got what I wanted.

So, I did it... and I have to say, that I was very happy with how it turned out. In the end it wasn't too bad.

First I took a couple pieces of paper and drew out a guitar that I was going to use as a stencil. Once I had it drawn, I cut it out and figured out how many cakes I would need. This one took two box cakes. One for the body of the guitar and one for the neck.

Once I cut out the cake I placed the pieces in the freezer until the sides were stiff..... you can't put the frosting on the cake very easily with all the crumbs falling off. Once it was frozen enough I put the white frosting on first and the placed it in the freezer again. Then I frosted with the black frosting. Do the black frosting last... it is easy to keep the black out of the white than the white out of the black. When the body of the guitar is finished attach the neck to the body and up the neck.

Since this cake is fairly large, you wont be able to keep the cake on a pan. I went to Michael's and got a foam board and covered it with tin foil. Not only did it hold the cake, but it was fun to write messages on the board when the cake was done.

But it was sure fun. Curtis was pretty excited about it. Definently a step up from last years Mario cake.

Nintendo Cake

In our family we have the tradition of making shape cakes for people's birthdays. So when my husband's birthday was approaching I got all excited to ask him what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday. His face got all excited and then serious as he thought about what he wanted. He then blurted out, "I want a Mario cake!". I stood there waiting for more of an explanation. Then he says, "I want some kind of Nintendo Mario brothers cake.... like... Luigi... or Mario... ohoh! I know... I want one of the mushrooms from Mario. You know the ones that make you big or give you an extra life." For any of you who don't know what he is talking about... Mario Brothers is an old school video game when Nintendo first came out... my husband STILL likes to play it. :)

Well, I was excited. My first challenging shape cake. I had no idea where to start, so I basically just decided to jump in. But I have to admit that I was pretty darn happy with how it turned out. So, here is how you can make a Mario Brothers cake, but you can really use these ideas to make whatever shape cake you would like.

First I figured out what shape pan I should be using to give me the best area to work with. I decided to use two circle pans for the bubble mushroom top and a 9x13 pan for the stump (I did a double layered cake, which is why I used so much. If you are doing a single layer 2 circle pans or one 9x13 pan will be fine). While they were baking I took a piece of computer paper and started to sketch out the image of the Mario mushroom, trying to keep it to the size that would fit on the cake.

When the cake is done and cooled, take your image and see if it will fit well on it. Don't worry if the image is too big or too small, simply sketch over it and re-size it. Cut the image out when you have the new correct size and lay it on the cake. With the image on the cake, take a knife and cut around the image.

Once you have all the pieces cut out, go ahead and place them in the freezer to get them a bit frozen. Getting them frozen will make it easier to frost them with out ripping the cake up and getting crumbs in the icing. Once they are a little frozen, put a nice thin layer of frosting around them and place them back in the freezer. When that frosting is frozen a little, finish frosting them completely. Now you can finish decorating the cake.

The mushrooms come in mainly solid red and medium green, but also blue in the newer games. Remember to leave the spots on the mushroom white and color the rest of the top in with the color you chose. I made the mistake of messing that up. I accidentally colored the spots and left the top white. So, hopefully I won't make that mistake again.

So, if you have a child into video games this might be a fun idea for a birthday cake. What I also wanted to do was make really cute matching cupcakes. How cute would THAT have been!? But if you aren't wanting a Mario cake then this idea really is usable for many other shape cakes... sooooo HAPPY BAKING!