Sir, Yes Sir!!!

I was asked to make a cake for an Army Themed birthday party last weekend. I was left to my own creative devices for the most part. There were a few things that I needed to keep in mind.
1. The party was for two kids
2. One was a girl, One was a boy
3. The cake needed to be "messy"

I decided to make the cake look like a battlefield, complete with army men and dirt. I added some rocks for a real outside effect as well.

I divided each battlefield with ivy. I thought it was a nice effect, plus the birthday girls name is Ivy. So I went ahead and bordered her whole side with ivy. The other side was bordered with yellow stars, it was my play on the Army's yellow outlined star. The whole bottom of the cake is bordered with grass.

The second to last touch on the cake was to add the terrain. I used graham crackers and crushed up Oreo cookies to make the dirt. There are some camoflouged rocks on the cake that are actually sour gum that I purchased from Party City, in the army birthday section. That is also where the army flags came from. The cars on the cake are good Ol' Hot Wheels and the army man are plastic.

This cake was definetly less "clean" then I tend to make my cakes, but that is how it was ordered and I think it went well with the overall theme. The cake was gone when the party was over, so that says something.

Fondant and Gumpaste

Lately, I've been working a lot with gumpaste and fondant. Individually and together, ( yes, you can mix them together)  Gum paste is extremely strong. You can roll it paper thin and not even think twice about it ripping. Fondant isn't as durable, but its easily flavored and colored.


I had worked with fondant before, there were a few things I did wrong, that lead me to believe that it was hard. For example, while rolling it out, I covered my rolling surface with powdered sugar. This is, somewhat O.K., however, it leaves powdered sugar all over the surface and if you fondant is colored you can see it. It also can cause the fondant to get very dry, it will crack and most likely fall apart. Crisco is the answer. It keeps it from sticking and is clear.

Gum paste dries super fast and must be worked with quickly. The plus is that it doesn't take long to hold it's shape and it gets nice and hard. However, if your a slow worker, you may be in trouble.

A few tips when working with these items are as follows:

• Keep your hands "crisco'd" not too much though
• Don't over work your fondant when trying to make it soft
• A little color goes a long way
• Be patient and don't give up
• Flowers arn't perfect, so your shouldn't be either
• Have everything ready ahead of time, as i said it dries out quickly

I'll be back to share some of my creations with you soon. 

Baskets and daffodils

I finally used some of the sugar flowers I've been working on. I practiced some flowers I haven't posted and decided to show them off on my new cake creation.
As you can see the cake is different from my usual smoothed out butter cream. This cake is basket weaved.




There are a number of ways to do a basket weave with the "old school" way using a flat tip with one serrated edge. To look more like an Easter basket would. I chose to use a large star tip to give it a fluffy look. This takes much more icing and probably not something you would want to serve at a kids party, however I did hear a study that sugar doesn't cause children to be hyper.
The daffodils are made from royal icing that I made myself. I made the flowers last week and allowed them to dry. There are some butter cream stems and leaves added as well. I tinted my butter cream with Wilton icing color lime green.




The filling of this white cake is raspberry. I know most people would pair that with chocolate but I thought the flavor combination of the raspberry, white cake, and sweet butter cream was wonderful.