Thursday, November 22, 2012

Star Wars Cake 2


I got a request for another Star Wars cake- and this is what I came up with.! I've had Star Wars cookie cutters for awhile now and decided to use them with rolled out gumpaste to decorate the sides of my cake.! I also cut out various sized white gumpaste stars to create a starry background along with silver star sprinkles I happened to have. To emphasize the lines and features of each character, I brushsed some confectioners sugar on Darth Vader, some cocoa powder on Yoda, and piped the black icing on the Storm Trooper. For a different surprise, I added several crushed up oreos in the middle of the cake over a layer of buttercream- hoping it's as delicious as it looks. To be such a simple cake, I'm super happy with how it turned out.!

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Turkey Cookies


Okay..I know these aren't cake related in any way but get over it.! I wanted to make something simple and Thanksgiving-esque..so turkey cookies were the way to go. I made sugar cookie dough (I always add a little bit of nutmeg to taste) and chilled until it was firm enough to roll out and deal with. On a floured surface, cut out turkey shapes- whatever your interpretation of that may be. I also had leave shaped pie cutters, hence the autumnal leaves surrounding my turkeys :) Bake the sugar cookies until lightly browned on the edges (6-8 mins-ish..?) and let cool.! I feel like these turkeys looked better in real life because in the picture their mottled tye-dye feathers blends into the wooden table..but I may be biased. ANYWAYS. I made a simple icing out of confectioner's sugar and just enough milk to liquify the mixture. I split that into three separate bowls and used food gel to color one bowl brown, one golden yellow, and one orange. Then pipe a ring of brown around the outside of a turkey cookie, followed by yellow, then orange, etc. until you fill up the entire cookie. It will run. It's okay. Take a toothpick and drag to create feathers and mix the colors- from the bottom middle to the outside edges all the way around. I used dark chocolate candy melts for the turkey body, and formed the eyes, beak, and wattle out of gumpaste.! HAPPY THANKSGIVING e'rrybody.!

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Cherry Blossom Cake


I didn't set out to make Barbie's slightly Asian themed dream cake- but this is what I ended up with.! My train of thought went as thus: My friend Jennifer had mentioned wanting a cherry almond cake, she works in DC so I thought of cherry blossoms...and I ended up with an explosion of pink cake. I cut out gumpaste cherry blossoms in various shades of pink a few days before I made the cake. I inserted a glittery flower center in each little blssom and  later brushed them with edible pink shimmer dust. I formed the tree branches out of brown gumpaste, and arranged all of the flowers and buds to form a cherry blossom tree.!

Star Wars Cake


I made this cake for my little cousin Matthew's 7th birthday.! He's a big fan of Star Wars, and has a book called Darth Vader and Son (by Jeffrey Brown) that has comical one page illustrations of father and son bonding. I re-created Matthew's favorite illustration from the book out of colorflow icing- Vader playing a simple game of baseball with his son, with Luke joyously slicing the baseball in half with his lightsaber.! I can't at all take credit for the idea, but do think that the re-creation with icing turned out well. I piped the figures a few days in advance to allow the icing to dry thoroughly before carefully placing the fragile pieces onto the cake. I decided to ice the cake itself with dark blue icing dotted with white stars of various sizes (brushed with pearl shimmer dust) in keeping with the Star Wars motif, and also piped "May the force be with you Matthew" with white icing.