Hummingbird Disaster

My Grandmother's birthday was this weekend, sadly, the hummingbird started out fairly doomed.
The colouring ended up far more like a parrot, the beak wouldn't stay on, the gum paste cracked every chance it got, and the whole bird had an unnatural sheen to it - because of the many repairs of the cracking.
So in a way - once I got it to the location, and had it ready to put on the cake - when I found that it had broken in half - I wasn't terribly sad.






So the cake was finished without the bird - a good thing.
Although, I'm rather displeased with the end result, I suppose I should be proud at my skill level, and with the amount of experience I have.



And since people have been asking how much time I spend on this stuff - overall, this cake took me - including the 10 hours of work on the hummingbird - probably 20 hours from the making of the cakes and frostings, the flowers, and then the overall decoration. Some of that mindless tv watching time as I created flowers.

Mixer on Overdrive

Today I made stuff.

• Yellow Cakes
  

  For Chris and Brandy's wedding cake, they requested a yellow cake - so I'm testing out recipes as I find them. Conveniently, we are having many people over from my work this Friday to play Rockband, and one of my coworkers will be visiting from a long-haul TDY to D.C. - so in honor of him and his particularly large head, I will be making a cake to honor him - out of these test yellow cakes - two birds, one stone. So, each batch I'm making one round tin of cake, and one mini-bunt for Chris and Brandy to taste. I made the following today

  
  
  
  
  • One half batch of David's Yellow Cake
  
  
  • One half batch of Yellow Cake
  
  
  
  


• One batch of m.m. fondant
  

  This is for the next test humming bird, as well as to cover the Tribute to Ryan's Particularly Large Head (if I have enough left over after the hummingbird, might need to make more)
  Also, I used some (3 tbsp) meringue powder in this batch - I want to see how that effects the hardening of the fondant



• One batch of gum paste
  

  This is also for the hummingbird, I used gum-tex and glucose which I picked up recently from Michael's. Gum Paste is, from my understanding, a more versatile (yet less tasty) version of fondant which dries hard



• One batch of butter creme frosting (no chocolate or flavor yet this will be for the wedding cake testers, as well as the Tribute to Ryan's Particularly Large Head)

So yes. Lots of mixing, lots of baking.

Quilt Cake

My most recent cake was the finalized version of the quilt. I don't have as much photo documentation of that process - as I only just decided to start this blog. Oh well.

Anyway. Party for my Mom was on Saturday.

Wednesday:

I made two batches of M.M. fondant (I only used the prescribed 1/2 Crisco per batch this time - stickier in the initial kneading, but the overall texture in the end was soo much better and easier to work with).

I also made 1 1/2 batches of this fantastic (I do mean fantastic) White Chocolate Butter Cream frosting. I used Ghiridelli white baking chocolate, and I really think that added to the richness.

In both of these frosting recipes, I added some almond extract - because the final cake would be chocolate cherry - I figured the almond would add a nice hint of cherry flavour.

Thursday:

I baked the Dark Chocolate Cake in heart shaped silicon pans. I was worried they'd warp, but they didn't - my worst problem was that the cake stuck in the end - even though the pans were silicon and sprayed with Pam. Dangit.



I also started to play with the fondant colours, practicing marbling and texturing techniques and such. To help me, my friends Chris and Brandy came over to play, and learn what this cake decorating was all about we had fun.


After leveling the chocolate cake, I had some leftover pieces, and so, we made a cake with our play fondant.

Friday:

I spent the first few hours kneading colours and trying as hard as i could to match the colours from the original quilt. This took a really really long time - so many different colours - and not to mention my daughter at my feet and, you know, needing me to interact with her every once in a while :)

After the fabrics were made it was just a matter of cutting and assembling again - this time though, I had a square fondant cutter, thank god. So my shapes weren't wonky, and everything was much more uniform. That, and cutting took so much less time...

Assembling the pieces was a far more tedious job this time, however. I decided that I would lay out a large piece of fondant, rolled as thin as usable - and then lay each piece on it, after wetting the bottom and edges slightly, so that it would stick. So each piece had to be layed out precisely - since once a wet piece of fondant touched other fondant, it usually stuck pretty good and would make a big 'ol mess to repair.

Many hours later.. all of this was done. So I layered the cake with frosting and cherry pie filling - and then lightly frosted it all over. I painstakingly picked up my quilt and layed it down on top of the cake. After that it was all a matter of forming, prodding, and pinching the fondant to fit the cake. Sadly, I again over-judged how much butter cream to use - so there was some oozing - not only that, but the cherry filling caused some havoc as it squished it's way out in some places.

After I was happy with the lay of the fondant, I pulled out my little texture wheel thing and quilted the cake!

To my delight, my mom recognized it immediately as her quilt.

Second Cake - Happy Birthday Des!

Somehow, the second time I did this cake, so many lessons had been learned that I pulled off something that impressed even me.

I'll take you through the process..

The birthday party was on Saturday.
Wednesday:
I made a batch of Marshmallow Fondant, and a batch of butter creme frosting.
Thursday:
I baked the duck with pound cake - and a sheet cake with a white cake mix. I also started to play with the fondant, making a water lily and some lily pads. I coloured the fondant by kneading in gel food colours (available at your local Upermarket - it adds less moisture than traditional food colouring). While the lily pads were freehand, the flour was reliant on some great fondant cutters.




The white powder you see all over is corn starch to assist in the stickiness of the fondant (I found in later attempts that this was due to way too much Crisco). I stored these in the fridge after completion.

Friday:

I started the major assembling....

First, I frosted the duck (made the day before so that it would be cooled entirely to room temperature) with a layer of butter creme frosting. This is to help the fondant stick to the cake. They say you should frost and let it sit for a while before laying the fondant to help with he sticking.. so I then coloured the fondant by kneading in some yellow food colouring. And then rolled it out to a massive sheet. Lifting the fondant sheet was not easy, even if i rolled it back on itself - it had a tendency to crack (the recipe on the baking 101 site says cracking means it needs more moisture - I added more Crisco.. this ended up being part of my problem, I used *way too much* Crisco, so the integrity of the fondant was lessened, it was too soft) - anyway. where was I? I placed the fondant over the duck and started to push, prod and mold it into shape. After much work, I got to a point where I was happy with it. I then molded and attached wings and feathers (again, the leaf fondant cutters, perfect shape!). Fondant is cool in that if you need it to stick to itself, just wet it!

Now for finishing touches - some sprayed on colour accents, thanks to my husband, and some black eyes, and we have a duck!
Now for the sheet cake - very carefully, I leveled the top with a serrated knife. I then cut it in half, for filling. On each inside of the halves I spread a very thin layer of butter cream - this was so that the filling wouldn't seep into the cake and make it all mushy. I then spread blueberry pie filling onto one side, and put the other side back on top.

Next came frosting - but first, you'll notice round rise in the cake - that is a plastic cake board, to support the duck later. I used a white store bought Betty Crocker frosting that I had dyed a bright blue. Then, I started placing green fondant cut-outs of - yes, the leaves again all around the edge.

Finishing up - add the flour and lily pad.. some spray colour accents...
Place the bird over the cake board anddd....

tada!