Pirate Cake

Chocolate cake in specialty cake pan, buttercream frosting, chocolate buttercream frosting

Techniques Used- star, C border,

Focus-the ENTIRE ship!

Boards on ship

making the cake plate with tinfoil and tracing cake pan

C border

Dark Chocolate pirate flag

using a specialty pan

cake was small, but lots of time spent decorating this cake

all the layers!

Cake pan site

This cake was decorated August 2012.

Train Diaper Cake

diapers (size 1), string, cake mix box, cardboard, skewers, ribbon, tissue paper (white, green with white polka dots), spool

Focus-overall design of the cake

This is where I got the idea for this cake.  There were parts that were easier than expected, as well as harder than expected.  The wheels were pretty easy.  Each wheel is four diapers, and after wrapping them with string, I then put white ribbon over the string.  To keep them together, cut off the sharp part of the skewer to length you need.  For me, I just needed to cut off the point.  Make sure the two skewers are the same length.  Then, using either your fingers or a crochet needle, hook the ribbon through the middle of the diapers and around the two skewers; make a knot (try to make it snug) and cut off the extra.  Move the knot to the inside of the wheel.  Be sure to tape or glue the ribbon at the ends of the skewers.



The big cylinder part of the train is even easier, because it's just three rings of 6 diapers wrapped with tissue paper.  You can use blankets instead.  I don't remember if I did this, but you could put a skewer through them to hold them together while you wrap them. 



The hardest part for me was the back of the train.  It kept sliding around and since it was so heavy, it kept trying to fall off.  I also wanted it to be pretty rectangular, and it didn't work until I used a cake mix box (really any box or cardboard will do).  The other difficulty was getting everything to stay together.  I didn't want to use anything that might damage the diapers when taken apart, so I used scotch tape and prayer.  This cake is a little top heavy, so that added some difficulty as well.  I solved this by adding the bottom board (wrapped in tissue paper).  The other board is wrapped with tissue paper as well.

This diaper cake was decorated August 2012.

Baby Stroller Diaper Cake

diapers (size 1), string, ribbon, crib sheet set, yellow tissue paper, silk flowers, kids shoebox (optional)

Focus-trying to make the diapers and crib sheet look like a baby stroller!

 

 

Here's where I got the idea.  Each wheel used 3 diapers, but any size to your liking is fine.  The crib sheet set is in the yellow tissue paper, which really helped with shaping the sides.  I used a shoe box for the overhead part and then wrapped diapers over it. 

 

This diaper cake was decorated June 2012.

Blue Flower Bouquet Diaper Cake

diapers (size 1), string, 6" cake pan, ribbon, tissue paper (blue and green), gift card

 

Focus-tissue paper flowers and wrap

 

Here's where this diaper cake idea started.  This diaper cake was for a mom of five, so I wasn't sure what she would need.  I figured one can't go wrong with giving diapers and gift cards!  I didn't want to just hand her a bag of diapers, so I started looking around YouTube for a creative way to wrap them.  I don't remember how, but I stumbled across this site and liked the look of the "vase".  Obviously, I used diapers instead of toilet paper rolls.  I then used this site for the tissue paper flowers.  Again, here's the link to the diaper stacking site.  For the flowers, I added leaves by cutting small rectangles, folding them in the middle (like you would for gift bags) so that all the corners are close together, and then taping each to the back of a flower.  The gift card was taped to a skewer, but I suggest getting the skewer through the diaper cake first.

 

This diaper cake was decorated June 2012.

Purple Flower Diaper Cake

 

 

diapers (size 1), string, cake pans (6", 8", 10"), ribbon, tissue paper (white, purple, and green)

 

Focus-overall design of the cake

 

Before I start, I'm sorry it's been a while since I last posted.  I have some more cakes to post, but they are mainly diaper cakes, mostly because diapers were more appreciated during that period of time than cake.  With this cake, I wanted to again try my hand at decorating this diaper cake as if it were a wedding cake.  I used the stacking diapers technique from this site again.  I find it works well, and I really don't want to roll up a bunch of diapers.  The tissue paper flower instructions are from this site.  Obviously, my flowers aren't the same size as Emma's, but to get my size, I just folded one tissue paper in half over and over until I got the size I wanted (about 3"x5", but whatever size is fine) and then cut on the folds.  I think I only used 4 or 5 pieces of tissue paper per flower. 

 

This diaper cake was decorated August 2012.

Diaper Cake

silk flowers, ribbon, hair clips, lots of diapers (size NB, 1 or 2), string, cake pans (6", 8", 10", 14")

Focus-the whole process, but mostly playing with the design

I wanted to add this to the blog, even though it's not a dessert.  The nice thing about doing a diaper cake is you're spending most of your time on the design, not baking and frosting the cakes.  You're also not tempted to eat all the frosting : ). 

I decided to do 4 tiers because I had lots of diapers and flowers to play with.  I learned how to stack the diapers from this site.  I thought it was a great idea to use cake pans, so that you get uniform round cakes and the walls of the pans help with keeping it upright.  I chose to use size 1 diapers because most babies will be in size 1 much longer than Newborn.  It doesn't matter as much if you're doing a smaller cake.  This cake used about 135 diapers!

This cake was for a girl, so I decided to make flower hair clips for the decorations.  Not all the flowers are hair clips, but there are quite a few (yellow daisies, white and purple roses, purple carnation to name a few). 

Something I learned from this project is that less is more. I tried adding more ribbon and flowers and it looked way too busy. Also, if you're using flowers, adding some green leaves makes the cake look even better. It may be because the colors I used were pastel colors.

This diaper cake was decorated May 2012.

Pinewood Derby Cakes

All cakes-8" vanilla round cake, buttercream frosting

Cars-Rice Krispies treats, rolled buttercream frosting, buttercream frosting, food coloring, melting chocolate, Oreo cookies, skewers for supports

Techniques Used-rope border, shell border, reverse shell border, painting

Focus-the CARS!!!

My husband is cub master and last month was the pinewood derby.  He asked me to do something that would feed 60 people.  The first idea that popped into my mind was making car models, but have them stacked like they do in the Olympics-first place is tallest and in the middle, then second and third follow on the sides.  I was going to make little trophies too, but we decided that it would probably be best if we just made car models, like you would see in a car show or dealership.  We didn't want the winners to think the prize was the car and/or the cake! 

While I was working on smoothing the cakes, my husband worked on shaping the cars with Rice Krispies treats.  Then he smoothed a thin layer of buttercream frosting to smooth out the Krispies and put them in the fridge, to let the buttercream harden a little before putting on the layer of rolled buttercream. 

My husband had to go to work so I took over.  I wanted the cars to have stripes, so I rolled out some of the left-over rolled buttercream, cut it into strips, and then placed them on the cars.  I then watered down a little bit of the food color gel and started painting.  Once I finished painting, I would then take off the strips and put them in the fridge.  The only complaint I had with this method was that the color never seemed to dry, so if they touched each other, the colors would rub off on each other.  With the little bit of rolled buttercream left-over, I think I will try kneading the color into it and see if the same thing occurs. 

 

Here are close-ups of each of the different cars:

 

As I mentioned before, the focus was on the cars, but I also had some borders that I wanted to focus on.  I wanted to see if I could do the reverse shell border as fast as the decorator in this video.  I'm happy to say that it was quite a success, although I think the other cake decorator still would pipe circles around me : ).  I wanted to show a close-up view of the border because I was so proud of how it turned out.

I also focused on the rope border.  Usually, top borders sit on top of the cake, and I think this border looks so much better coming from the side and ending on the top.  I don't know if you can tell with this picture, but the effect I was looking for worked.  I didn't really have a focus for the last cake, so it was mainly trying to make the shell look uniform (see yellow car pictures above).

The numbers were made from melting chocolate.  I strongly advise that you make extra numbers just in case they break.  Also, make sure that the numbers have some thickness to them or they will be more prone to break or melt in your hand.  What I did was trace the number on top of itself 2-4 times so it was at least 1/8" thick.  You don't want your numbers to be really flat.  This would work for thick or thin fonts.  One more thing, when choosing a font, rounder fonts are better than pointy or sharp edged fonts.  The wheels were Oreo Fudge Cremes cookies.  I was planning on getting chocolate filled Oreo cookies, but they didn't have them, so I used these ones instead.  Any chocolate cookie would work though.

These cakes were decorated March 2012.