not all my cakes are tasty

Ninjas EVERYWHERE!

Erin and I got together today to make Ninja Teddy brownies! They are sweet-awesome.

Making all these brownie cut-outs made for lots of leftover brownie bits, so we decided to make Bakarella's mini-cupcakes! Maaan they are more work than we expected, but quite cute, and we didn't waste* all the leftover brownie bits! Photos to come in a later post (once I take some)



*eat

Sneaky Bear

To make him I used the Wilton Teddy Bear pan to get the basic shape, pressing dyed rice crispie treats in with all my might to get a dense and strong shape, trying to pick up all of the details of the pan.

Turns out rice crispies really aren't that strong, so it was lucky I decided to paint this guy with chocolate rather than using butter cream or fondant - since the former two really don't add any structural integrity - chocolate however, dries hard and is great to work with.



First I coated him with a layer of melted white chocolate - tinted blue, to fill in the cracks and try to even the shape out. After which I painted him once more to get the texture I wanted.


Next some detailing with more tinted white choclate..



I used bittersweet chocolate clay for the button eyes, nose, and mask.
The sai and shuriken are from gumpaste (previous posts) painted black and then heavily dusted with silver shimmery goodness.



Last minute addition:
I used some of the leftover chocolate clay to make a pair of nunchaku. (the rest of the leftover clay will go towards making Annie a small town of stick figures which she has expressed desire in being able to eat each in one bite) Seems the oil-based nature of chocolate won't let me paint them with waterbased food colouring (maybe if i made a paste with powdered sugar?), or the chain would have been silver. oh well!

Silver Sai

sai

I had ninja stars yesterday... but Des ate them :(

Moroccan Wedding

The finished product!

Bottom layer was chocolate with a chocolate mint ganache
Second layer was white cake with a chocolate ganache
Third layer was white with funfetti icing
Top layer was chocolate with chocolate buttercream
All layers done up in chocolate buttercream, chocolate fondant, and chocolate paint. Decorations are white and milk chocolate, ropes and pearls are fondant.

And for comparison, here's the final design I had.

Ninja Teddy

Baby shower coming up - it's for a guy friend at work, and we're making it more guy-like than a regular baby shower, and thus, I shall be making a.. NINJA TEDDY!

Here's the sketch.
The thing he's holding in front of his face is a ninja star - the cake pan I'm going to use is molded with the bear's hand in front of his face for whatever reason, so we're making him devious.

Work in progress

Just some photos of the insanity of making what turned out to be a VERY large cake (45 people at the wedding.. this thing would have fed 100, easy. This, however, meant generous portions and seconds to your heart's content)

I didn't get to take any photos after this because I was working feverishlyon the cake at the site - although the wedding photographer checked in on me continuously and got lots of fascinating action shots ;)


All the items I had made over the past week, just waiting to be assembled into one big 'ol cake.


Just checking to see how big it was going to be assembled.


Buttercreamed layers.


Fondant covered layers.

tedious, but pretty!

so much chocolate...

more playing with texture and color...

Fantastic Buttercream

The recipie Buttercream - Classic Recipe on this page is phenomenal.
I just made it

(after two failed attempts - follow DIRECTIONS Ammy, sheesh - note to those who don't know better, fat and oil causes egg whites to fail miserably at the whole fluffing/stiffening thing when you whip them, so if there are even traces of butter in the bowl, or if you add something with fat in it (melted chocoalte) before the eggs are as whipped and stiff as you want them - you will RUIN EVERYTHING)

with about 3 oz melted bittersweet chocolate (added AFTER the butter), and probably almost a cup of cocoa powder. (added at the very end) And it's.. god it's good. I ate so much I feel ill. I regret eating as much as I did, that's for sure.. but it's super awesome frosting, I must tell you. And so very smooth and beautiful too!