I have this thing about making my kids' birthday cakes. I don't want to order one from a bakery, because not only is that expensive, but I feel like it's more of a gift to make one myself. Even if it does look a little bit hoopty!
I've been wanting to post the pictures of the construction of the two birthday cakes my mom and I worked on. I had asked Mom to help me out with Aaron's cake, because I knew it would be hard on me, being only a few days after delivery, and I knew she had enough cake decorating experience to be a good helper. She was very excited to help, and I was excited to have her over and let someone else experience the cake making process with me. I've always gone at it solo.
The dump truck cake was quite amusing. I had baked three 13x9 cakes prior to Mom coming over--two chocolate and one yellow (Aaron wanted both!). We put one full cake on a cake board cut to size. We raised that bottom layer's cake board up a little using folded pieces of cardboard (redneck engineering at its finest!) on top of a larger cake board wrapped in foil. The second layer was another 13x9 cake cut to look like the dumper and cab of the truck. We used slices of the 3rd cake to make the sides of the dumper and added some extra pieces here and there to get the detail right. Mom had bought chocolate covered donuts for the wheels, but they were a little small for the scale. We made due! Aaron's favorite part (and the reason he wanted a dump truck cake to begin with) was the crushed Oreos with gummy worms. We let him put those in the morning of his party...he got straight out of bed and wanted to do it before he even ate breakfast! His cake was a big hit and most of it was actually eaten!
Claire's cake was another adventure. After the fun time Mom had with us making Aaron's cake, she was excited to help with Claire's. I tried a technique I had been wanting to try since I read about it a few years ago. I blew up a coloring page of Dora and traced it on wax paper with a pencil. Then I piped the design onto the wax paper with black icing (my icing should have been wetter as it dried too quickly but it still worked). Then I flipped the wax paper onto the flat cake (11x15 strawberry cake, iced in green as the base coat), and ideally all of the black would have stuck to the cake but since it had dried while I was still piping the design it didn't quite all stick, but it did make an impression in the icing that we were able to follow. Then we started star-tipping details. One of our favorite parts was using black Twizzlers for Dora's hair! It looked a bit like dredlocks but we really liked the effect! All the little girls at Claire's party just adored Dora!!
3 comments:
i always love your cakes--the Dora is awesome, and you have some mad cake-writing skills! you can also use clear piping gel to transfer from the wax paper. it works well for me!
hey! you may have been read something about a frozen buttercream transfer -- you could've done the whole dora (reversed) on the wax paper - filled it in and everything. once you finish, you put it in the freezer. when it's hard, you put it down onto the cake, and the oils in the buttercream allow you to peel the paper away from the transfer. :)
cute cakes!!!!!
those are so cool! i've never tried but i think it would be fun to decorate cakes! cookies is as far as i've gotten.
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