Princess Castle Cake

It's official! My baby girl is 4!

She is a girl that knows what she wants and after a zillion trips to Michael's in her lifetime! She has had her eye on this cake kit for a couple years. She wanted a Princess Castle Cake last year and then had a last minute change to a Hello Kitty Cake. This year my little princess was sure she wanted a castle cake!

So this is where I have been hiding out. This is why I haven't baking up the sweets like I usually do. I had to start this cake 3 days in advance by making over 300 tiny flowers!

This Wilton Romantic Castle Cake Set comes with 32 pieces, none of which are ready to go on the cake. 2 days in advance, I covered the turrets in pink royal icing and rolled in clear sparkling sugar. I also outlined the windows and doors, adding sugar to those as well. I also baked the 2 layer 6-inch and 2 layer 10-inch cakes a day in advance.

Cake assembly day should be a piece of cake, right? Wrong! I still had to attach dowel rods to the towers that would be inserted into the cake with white chocolate. I iced both the 6-inch and 10-inch double layer cakes in white and then of course had to insert the dowel rods into the 10-inch cake to support the 6-inch top cake. I also realized I forgot to decorate the windows on the towers, so quickly decorated those just using buttercream and also added pink sugar pearls, which worked fine.

I used tip 67 to create all the leaves and bushes. Tip 3 for the stringwork and tip 17 for the pink shell border. I also made the mistake of attaching the turrets and towers before making the shell border, so I was having to work at piping it in all sort of odd directions. I ended up not using all of the pieces, some by choice, there just wasn't enough room! I also forgot to add 2 of the finished towers, and when I realized it, it was too late! Oh well, it still looked fine! If I were to make a cake like this again, I would go with a 12-inch bottom cake.

Back of castle

I did have little Disney Princess figurines to go all around the cake, but on our trip to Target to get the party plates and napkins, my little Princess decided on Hello Kitty partyware! By the time the cake was finished, the sun had set and I had no natural light to take pictures in, so I was unable to get the perfect picture like I had hoped for. Oh and the little bushes in the front of the castle, perfect to hold the candles! If not for those, I am not sure where I would have put the candles!

Front of castle

In the end it was all worth it seeing her eyes lit up and her saying "I love my Castle Cake so much, you are the best, thank you Mommy!"

Happy 4th Birthday to My Princess!

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Hello Kitty Giant Cupcake Cake

One of my New Year's Resolutions for 2012 is to make at least one cake a month. I want to do this so that I don't get out of practice and this way when an event comes, I am ready. This is my cake for January. Okay, to avoid any confusion let me share my definition of a cake.

Cake- noun- A sweet bread like baked good, made with flour, usually sugar and eggs, but not always. It is larger than a traditional or jumbo sized cupcake. The batter amount would be equal to the cake batter amount used for at least 8 cupcakes. May be made with boxed mix. This includes, but is not limited to 6" rounds and larger, 6" squares and larger, giant cupcakes.

I had a couple of options for making this cake. I have a Big Top Cupcake Silicone Giant Cupcake Pan that I have had for almost 2 years and never used since I wasn't sure how I wanted to decorate a cupcake of this size. I also have this Wilton Dimensions Giant Cupcake Pan, that I received in November from Wilton for participating in a decorating panel. Part of me felt that I should be loyal to the unused Big Top Cupcake pan since I have had it longer, but I have a few different ideas for that one that I can't do with the Wilton pan and I had already decided on how I wanted this giant cupcake decorated before deciding on which pan to use. The Wilton pan is also very slightly larger and I made a lot of flowers that I need for it to accommodate!

The bottom part of the pan took 4-1/2 cups of batter. The top part took 2 to 2-1/2 cups, I can't remember exactly. This cake is equal to about a box mix and a half, which fits into my category of being a cake. I premade the flowers with fondant. The base of the cake is covered in fondant as well, which to my surprise was just as quick to cover with the ridges as flat sided cake. I flipped the bottom part of the cake over to put on the fondant so that it covers the bottom as well, just like a cupcake liner would. The stars on the top part of the cake were made using Wilton tip 195.

I sure wish I would have been able to make something like this last year when my daughter wanted a Hello Kitty Birthday Cake.

Hello Kitty!

Goodbye Kitty!

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Christmas Present Cake & Bow Tutorial

Pink Princess #27

Okay first, I hate to disappoint you, but there is not a "Christmas Present Cake" in the Pink Princess Cupcakes book. There is however an adorable "Birthday Cupcake" that is actually a 4-inch cake with a simple fondant 2 loop bow. In case you are visiting for the first time or have missed it, I have been working my way through the Pink Princess Cupcake book by Barbara Beery since July 2011. This is #27 out of 28 designs that I have made inspired by the book. I say "inspired by" because I have changed most of them to make them a little more me or to fit a particular holiday, just like I have this one! For this cake I have changed the theme from Birthday to Christmas, made a slightly larger 6-inch cake, covered the entire cake in fondant, and I am making the big bow that I learned to make in the Wilton Fondant and Gum Paste Class!

This was my first bow made in class!

Quite often when I visit my stats, I see that a lot of people came to my blog by searching for "How to make a fondant bow" and quite often they find that I have shown the fondant bow that I have made, but never a how- to on it, so today I will show you:

"How to make a fondant and gum paste bow"

   
What you will need:

Fondant

Gum paste

a fondant mat or large surface to work on

fondant roller with spacer rings

ribbon cutter and embosser set
round fondant cutters (small, medium, & large set)

angled spatula

shortening (for hands and mat)

cornstarch

gum paste adhesive (1/4 tsp gum paste + 1 tb water, let sit 1 hour and mix)
brush for gum paste adhesive
    

All of the equipment that I used for this bow is made by Wilton and can be purchased at their website or at your local arts and crafts store. You may be able to get away with not having some of it, but this stuff sure makes it easier! I also highly recommend taking a Wilton Class with a fabulous teacher like I had, I learned so much in that class! I enjoyed the classes so much that I have seriously thought about taking them again!

Start by kneading together equal parts of fondant and gum paste. You will need a ball of each a little larger than a golf ball. If it is sticking to your hands put a little shortening on your hands. You will also need to smear shortening on your fondant mat to avoid sticking. Roll out your fondant/gum paste mixture to 1/8 inch. (From this point on I will just refer to it as gum paste.) Using ribbon cutter and 1-inch spacers, cut your fondant into 1 inch by 5 inch strips. Each square on the fondant mat is 1 inch. Loop gum paste and "glue" together with gum paste adhesive. Cut corners as shown. Also cut out 3 circles with your circle cutters, one in each size.

You will need a total of 14 loops, 1 large circle, 1 medium circle, and 1 small circle. Set loops and circles on cornstarch dusted waxed paper to dry.

To add a second color, as shown here. Roll out fondant to 1/8 inch and change ribbon cutter pieces to the wavy inserts. Cut pieces and carefully attach to loops. I just used fondant for this part.

In class we allowed the bow to dry during class and then assembled near the end of class, but with time permitting it is best to let the loops dry overnight so they don't flatten when bow is assembled.

I like to preassemble to bow before gluing together to find out how I would like it. On dusted wax paper, first lay down your large circle. Glue on 6 of your loops with the gum paste adhesive.

Glue on medium sized circle, followed by 5 more loops. Glue on smallest circle, followed by 2 or 3 of your final loops. Sometimes 2 fit best in the middle, other times a 3rd is needed. For this bow I used all 14 pieces. Once the bow is fully assembled, it will need to dry overnight or longer if possible.

The cake is a 6-inch cake, covered in red Duff Fondant. This fondant is buttercream flavored and one of my favorites to use. I continued the ribbon pattern across the cake as well, and then added polka dots, made with the circle cutters, to tie it all together. It kinda resembles a Target cake!

And what present is complete without a little surprise inside...

Green cake with a few red and green sprinkles in the frosting!

    

Next week is the final Pink Princess Cupcake- Crown Princess

View all of the other book inspired Pink Princess Cupcakes designs that I have made!

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Black, Red, & White Cake

Happy Birthday to Kaitlyn!

Here it is! My daughters 14th birthday cake!

This is also the first 3 tiered cake that I have made, I made a 2 tier back in May for my daughters 13-1/2 birthday, so this one had to be bigger!

This is my 2nd fondant cake. My 1st fondant cake was in June during a Wilton class and I had my instructor at my side in case of a problem. I still need a little more practice.

Each tier of the cake is a different flavor. The top tier is vanilla, middle is zebra, and the bottom is chocolate.

Here I am with my girl...she was quite surprised and loved her cake!

Cakes of the Past

It's Flashback Friday!

This is a weekly segment that I post to show you some of my past adventures...

With only a little over a year of decorating...I am almost out of stuff to share with you for my Flashback Friday that isn't related to a specific holiday, so this weekly posting may be coming to an end very soon!

I have not made many cakes, I am more into cupcakes, and find cakes to be a lot more work! I have already shared a few of the cakes here on my blog... 2 Hello Kitty Cakes and the Tinkerbell Cake, and this week in the Wilton Decorating Basics class we decorated a Dimensional Cupcake Cake, today I am going to share with you the cakes of the past!

German Chocolate Birthday Cake

Checkerboard Birthday Cake and Pom-Pom Cupcakes

 Lemon and Orange Checkerboard Cake (checker pattern turned out better this time!)

Valentine 2010 Cake- this was my first attempt at making roses for a cake and one of the big reasons why I am now taking decorating classes...to learn how to make a proper rose!

Hello Kitty! I'm still learning!

As a mom of a little girl...I couldn't disappoint when she asked for a Hello Kitty birthday cake last month...this would be the first birthday for her that I actually baked a cake for her instead of ordering it...remember this hobby just started for me a little over a year ago and I have basically stuck to baking cupcakes. Anyway as a prelude to her birthday I had started with the Hello Kitty cake pops pictured in my last post about a week before her birthday. A day before her birthday I made my first Wilton shaped pan cake. I was a little nervous about it, but it wasn't as hard as I thought! So my fear of shaped pans, has now pretty much been conquered! By the way, she loved it!

However, I didn't want to stick a candle in Hello Kitty's face, so the next morning on her actual birthday I baked a 6" 2 layer cake, strawberry inside, that the actual candle to blow out would be stuck in...I had just come down with the flu and really felt horrible, so not only am I not a cake baker, now my head was splitting and I had a high fever. Anyway, by the end of the day I finally got the cake decorated, and at 9pm she blew out her candle! I originally had big plans for this cake, but given the circumstances, it just didn't work out. But, I did finally bake her birthday cake all by myself instead of ordering it from a grocery store, and she of course, loved it!

These were actually only the 4th and 5th cakes I have ever decorated, not counting my 15 year ago all vegan disaster cake for my son's 1st birthday, and then I tried once again the following year and that was horrible too, after that I ordered from the grocery store year after year until making the Halloween cupcakes for my oldest daughters birthday in November 2009.

Growing up, I never learned to cook, bake, or anything of the sort, so I am making sure that my kids can bake and decorate! We are learning together! So far so good!