Posts Tagged ‘sculpted cake’
Red Stripe Cake
Posted on: July 6, 2008
- In: Cakes | Food
- 2 Comments
As with most of my days “off”, I spent this past Friday making another SweetElement cake! While I throughly enjoy making cakes for commission, the joy of making cakes for friends and family that leaves me total creative control from start to finish is something that just can’t be matched.
The inspiration for this cake came to me simply by thinking of things that my friend Jon loves … beer & monkeys! The cake itself was a devil’s food cake filled with cookies & cream buttercream, frosted in chocolate buttercream and decorated in fondant and royal icing. The “sand” was a combination of crushed cookies. Total height was ~12″.
Initially, I thought it would be a cute idea to theme the cake around the 4th of July since we were going over for a 4th of July BBQ (even though the party was on the 5th), so I made red white & blue monkeys as accessories. My favorite of the three was the red stripe drinking blue monkey with his hand on his little beer belly — too cute!
The red monkey sporting a “420″ um, “plant inspired” shirt is happily munching some chips and smokin’ a little something ;p
Here’s a view of the bottlecap and the three monkeys … including the white Jamaican monkey bearing the Jamaican flag. (There’s also a secret brown monkey hiding incognito in the back.)
And the finished Red Stripe cake ~ monkeys and all!
- In: Cakes | Food
- 5 Comments
Here’s one of the latest SweetElement creations I made for my cousin’s wife’s baby shower. Growing up my cousin Greg’s favorite character was Winnie the Pooh, so I thought it might be a cute idea to replicate a pooh cookie jar I had seen with him digging into his favorite treat – Hunny! In addition to the cake, I also made some cupcakes decorated with hunny bees and blue buttercream since they know they are having a baby boy!
Winnie the Pooh Cake and bee cupcakes
Close-up of the cupcakes which were all devil’s food cake with blue buttercream and handmade fondant bees.
Winnie the Pooh was made of alternating layers of devil’s food cake and yellow cake filled with cookies and cream buttercream and frosted in vanilla buttercream and fondant.
Mr. Met Groom’s Cake
Posted on: July 9, 2007
Even after the hat disaster and the general difficulty of working with fondant and large cakes in extremely humid weather … I think this latest groom’s cake came out fairly well.
The best (& worst) part of the whole order was delivery though. While I was walking to the church with this 50-60 lb cake (my shoulders paid for that for the next few days I tell you) random tourists on the streets of Chinatown asked if they could take my picture with the cake and I heard a lot of “Hey …. that’s a cool cake!” But when I actually delivered the cake to the woman who ordered it … all she was concerned with was there was no box. I usually get to deal with people that are really excited about the actual cake … so having to contend with someone that was very agitated because there was no box was a bit of a shock. As far as I know … giant decorated cakes (this was on a 18″ board) normally don’t come in boxes! Besides I never would have been able to manage carrying a 20″ x 20″ box myself for delivery. BAH! I do hope the groom enjoyed the surprise though …
Latest Cake …
Posted on: December 4, 2006
- In: Cakes | Food
- 2 Comments
I know I’ve been absent from here a *lot* lately … have been going through a rough patch and feel totally not myself. I’ll explain further in another post soon … promise.
It was nice to get to actually make another commissioned cake though – especially when I got to go to the event and hear all the comments and critiques and see people eat it! The design was a collaboration between the mommy-to-be and myself. She was debating between baby blocks and a sports themed cake … thus, the sports-themed baby block cake! As my first baby shower cake, I think it came out quite nicely.
The cake details are as follows:
Each cube was 6″ x 6″ made out of …
Yellow cake
Chocolate Ganache Filling
Chocolate Hazelnut Buttercream
Chocolate decorations
Pig Cake
Posted on: September 5, 2006
- In: Cakes | Food
- 2 Comments
“Pig Over the Coals”
Seems I’m looking for excuses these days to make fun cakes … and a pig roast we were attending this past Sunday gave me the perfect excuse to attempt Pig Cake I. It didn’t come out exactly as I had hoped, and it was more a design that Jay wanted than I did, but all in all it came out fairly cute I think. I had to keep reminding myself it was FREE, and for that reason alone I shouldn’t beat myself up about the end product so much. Of course, the perfectionist in me would not stop. The chocolate brownie cookie “briquettes” were my favorite part of the whole thing. I came up with the idea to serve the pig on a grill rack (actually a cooling rack) and put it over the cookie briquettes in a late night lightbulb moment. Most of the people at the party got it and loved it, including our hosts and all the kids at the party … some complained the cookies were too chocolaty (THEY ARE CHOCOLATE BROWNIE COOKIES PEOPLE!) and some appeared kind of appalled at such a cake (bah to all of them!). I did hand out a few cards, and it still feels kind of strange for me to do so. I have to get better at promoting myself. I bet if I was more proud of the cake I would have been chatting it up more. Although, walking around and hearing people’s comments, without having them know it was me who made the cake was pretty entertaining. I do think that the base cake sans pointed ears and with rounded legs instead of square would make a kickin’ bear rug cake though.
Things learned in this go ’round ….
I will NEVER use cream cheese frosting for external decorating on a sculpted cake ever again – it is WAY too liquidy.
I will ALWAYS put in more red food coloring into my red velvet cakes so they are actually RED and not a sad kind of red or horrid brown color when they are baked.
I will try to never rush and bake three cakes of different sizes at once in my small non-convection oven, especially when one is a dome cake (let’s not go into the horribleness of cake consistency in this oinker). Although, this can be very tempting to do when one only has one oven and limited time.
I really need to try to be easier on myself … especially when the cakes are non-commissioned FREE cakes.
Next up …
A paid order! A carrot cake with German Shepherd design for my boss’s wife that needs to get baked and decorated tonight.
And also, a few cakes for friends … which means I can make anything I want since they are free! Let’s see if fight cake still holds true to it’s name …. ;D
