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.

Orchid Cake

8" round cherry cake (from a box), buttercream frosting

Techniques Used- spatula striping, rosette border, orchid flower

Focus-orchid flowers

I've been looking forward to making this cake for a while.  I saw a video on how to make these flowers, and they looked so easy, yet beautiful!  Needless to say, it took a lot of practice to get the flower to look the way I wanted.  I had to think really long and narrow.  Once I got the hang of it, a flower took 1-2 minutes. 

I also wanted to try having two different colors of frosting for the body of the cake; the top of the cake is white while the side of the cake is purple.  I thought this would be a good time to try this because I wanted there to be contrast for the edges of the flowers, but I didn't want the whole cake to end up white, looking washed out.  I smoothed the top of the cake first, and then did the side.  The top border can cover any mixing of frosting colors.  If you smoothed the side of the cake first, it would be harder to hide the mixed frosting, because the mixed frosting would show on the side instead of the top.

Lastly, I was very happy with how the rosette border turned out.  I learned that when releasing at the end, you have to still go sideways instead of upward.  I don't know if that makes any sense, but if you look at the difference between the white rosettes and the purple rosettes, I think you'll see the difference.  Both borders look fine, but the white ones end going outward (or away from the rosette), while the purple ones look more like a circle because the ends are sideways (or into the rosette).  Also, make the size of the circle big enough so you almost see a hole in the center.

This cake was decorated February 2012.

Happy Birthday! Pie

9" pumpkin pie, pie crust letters

Techniques Used-cutouts

Focus-playing with alphabet cut outs and pie crust

There isn't really anything special about the pie, except that it was really good!  I just wanted to post this because I know there are plenty of people who would rather have pie for their birthday.  Using these alphabet cut outs, which are generally used for fondant, you can make whatever message you want with your leftover pie crust.

This pie was decorated January 2012.

Flower Lattice Apple Pie

9" apple pie, pie crust flower

Techniques Used-lattice top, fondant/gum paste Lily

Focus-making fondant/gum paste Lily out of pie crust

 

 

I wanted to know if the flowers made with fondant or gum paste could also be made with pie crust.  I think the hardest part about it was making a form for the oven.  There are plastic formers out there made by Wilton and other companies, but I needed to bake the flower, and the former wouldn't be able to handle the heat.  All I did was take a strip of aluminum foil and mold and shape it to be a ring the size I wanted.  I didn't take a picture of it, but you can see it underneath the flower.

I cut out six petals; they look like stretched tear drops.  I then thinned out the edges of the petals to make them look more realistic (this also makes the edges brown slightly for a neat effect).  Here's a video of how I thinned the edges, although the video is about making an anemone.  I then made a line on each petal using a veining tool.  Next I started placing the petals.  As you can see, there are two layers of three petals, so I just divided the ring in thirds for the bottom layer, and then placed the next layer of petals in the spaces.  I didn't want the tips of the petals to just droop down, so I made aluminum foil balls to lift them.  The picture above shows some of the petals pointing upward.  Then it's just baking it and placing it on your pie. 

I wanted to show you the pie without the flower.  I really like this design, how it gives the pie some texture without adding more pie crust.  If anything, there is less pie crust, or at least that's how I do it.  I like the strips to be fairly separated, but the strips can vary by size and distance between them. 

 

 

For those of you that want to learn this technique, I found some videos and written instructions for you to follow.  This first video is the way that I do it, except my pie recipe doesn't require egg whites.  Here are written instructions with pictures as well.  I also wanted to show this video, because it's another way to do the lattice top, so you can choose which way you prefer.  I also like it that he cuts his own strips without using a ruler, and they look really nice. 

 

 

Here are some more ideas for the tops of pies.  This first site shows a few different borders as well as the lattice top.  The second site is more focused on borders, but also shows pie pops, which are pies on a stick.  I hope this has gotten your creative juices flowing, or at least gotten you to crave some pie!

 

 

This pie was decorated January 2012.

Fleur de lis Cake

8" round yellow cake, buttercream frosting

Techniques Used-Fleur de lis, rope border, rosettes, reverse shell

Focus-side garlands, using one tip

I saw this one video on how to measure out the side garlands and I wanted to try it out.  He took a plastic cup and made an imprint on the sides.  He was a little bit sloppy with his piping, but I still liked his idea and thought I would try it out.  For my imprint, I used tip 789 (as seen below).  I wasn't sure if they would be evenly spaced, so I first made an imprint on north and south, then roughly checked to see how many would fit in between.  There was enough room to have 12 imprints altogether, so I then proceeded to make an imprint on east and west, and then two between each. 

Here are some pictures of the imprints before the piping.  This made piping the rope border very easy and look really nice because I wasn't having to eyeball it while in the process. 

I also used the same method for the top of the cake.  I don't think it would've turned out as nicely if I tried to eyeball a perfect circle.

Lastly, I thought you would like to see close-ups of the different techniques.  When learning a technique, it's nice to have as many pictures and examples as possible. 

Rope garland with rosettes, reverse shell borders

Rosettes

Top view of reverse shell border

This cake was decorated September 2011.