Get Along Little Doggie! ( A Toy Story Cake)

This cake was made for a 6 year old girls birthday party! She really likes Jessie from Disney's Toy Story so this is what we came up with.

The whole cake is covered in vanilla flavored fondant. The bottom tier is made to look like blue jeans, complete with pockets and the zipper tab.

TT Tip: Do not try to stick fondant to itself with water. Because fondant is water based, it will melt and make a big mess, it is better to use butter cream, or a fondant and water "paste"

Because Jessie is a cowgirl, the second tier is covered with black cow spots. To break up the space between the 2 tiers there was a red fondant rope added.

TT Tip: Black fondant will fade if left in the sunlight or under flourecent lights, it's best to make anything black at the last min and try to leave it out of the light if possible. 

The color scheme of Jessie's character is blue, red, cow print and yellow. As this cake is for a girl,I had to add more color. The flowers that are on the cake are made from royal icing. They were left to harden and placed on with butter cream icing. When the cake was delivered, we added a Jessie figurine to the top.

BAMM, POW, ZING ( Simple Batman Cake)

Who doesn't love Super Hero's?! There are so many to choose from, making a Super Hero Cake might be a challenge. Luckily for me, I had a little fellow who knew just what he wanted. BATMAN!!!!






As he was going to be helping in the process, I wanted to make the cake simple. We went with an 8 inch round 2 layer white cake. Originally, I was going to cover the cake in fondant, but I didn't want him to feel left out so I went with butter cream.  I tinted the butter cream sky blue because we wanted to give the impression that the Batman emblem was in the sky.

The Batman sign is made of Fondant that I tinted black. The yellow background is also made of fondant and tinted golden yellow.

Twinkle Toes Tip: I trace the image I want to cut ( in this case the Batman sign) on to parchment paper, then I cit it out and lay the paper over the fondant to get a great likeness to the real thing. 


The border around the cake are small fondant balls tinted black. The balls were added to tie in teh colors of the cake on top to the bottom.

The cake was auctioned off at a cub scout meeting and made quite a few bucks. It was a lot of fun and I would do it again anytime!

There's a Party In My Tummy! ( Yo Gabba Gabba)

"So Yummy so Yummy!!"

For my son's b day I HAD to pull off a Yo Gabba Gabba cake. I did a little research online and decided a 2 tier character cake would be the best bet.



I also decided that I wanted the cake to be more then just "white" since it was for kids, i jazzed it up. I discovered an idea for "Rainbow Cake"

TTT: When you are coloring the batter, be sure to use icing color. Regular super market food coloring will run together and you will end up with something brown. 

The decorating for this cake was easy and didn't take long. the characters are pretty simple and with some planning ahead it was...well, a piece of cake. 

Muno

Muno is one of the main characters in the show, I figured he would be fun ( and easy) to re create.

Above is the "Muno" portion of the cake, covered in fondant ( as red as I could get it) and ready to go. 

Plex, is the robot character of the show and my personal favorite. I made the top layer Plex, I figured the yellow would contrast nicely with the red on the bottom. 

The finished product came out very nice and it was just the right amount of cake. I added the "light" on top of Plex's head and we were all set.

Did you think I would end without showing you how great the inside turned out?

TTT: Be sure you always have a cardboard circle between each layer of cake, It adds support and makes it much easier to cut.

Candy Apples

O. K. So these aren't really candy per se', but talk about yummy. We decided to make deluxe caramel apples to give as gifts to friends and family. These have been made before and through a few trial and error shots we were able to come up with a pretty good finishing product.

The granny smith apples were washed thoroughly and then the sticks were inserted at an angle that is meant to be straight up. The apples were then dipped into heated caramel and immediately put into the refrigerator to minimize dripping. Once completely cooled the caramel in the pan was reheated and then the apples were dipped again. The catch this time is to roll them into chopped nuts. ( I used peanuts)

Twinkle Toes Tip:
Be sure to sift the chopped nuts before you roll the apples in them. This way you wont have any nut "dust" on your apple, just nice evenly sized chunks.

Again the apples were put right back in the fridge. Although I would recommend dipping one at a time and refrigerating after each apple rather then doing them all at the same time. The nuts and added caramel are heavy and tend to pool at the bottom quickly if not refrigerated.

Next, chocolate chips are melted and the now cooled apples are dipped in the chocolate. Refrigerate again and there you go. Feel free to add decoration to the finished apples, or leave them as so. The were very tasty and you can see once they are cut into the layers look beautiful!

Frosty the Cupcake man

My son had a class party for the christmas holiday and I decided to take the opportunity to make something a little special.
Snowman cupcakes!

With chocolate chips for mouths it was easy to make these little treats looked surprised!

The hats were chocolate wafer cookies. They were a little difficult to work with and I'm trying to figure out if I can do something differently next time.
The noses ( made from orange slices) were not only edible, but the flavor went nicely with the vanilla frosting.

Twinkle Toes Tip:
 The chocolate cookies need to be inserted into the sides of the cupcakes, if you do this too soon, the whole cookie becomes soggy and gross. Make sure you cut a slit into the upper side of the cupcake before you insert the cookie as well. Good luck!