Stargate SG-1 Cake

This is the cake I made for my husband's birthday back in August. It is a star gate from the show Stargate SG-1 on the Sci-Fi channel. My husband is a big fan. Even though it was his cake my husband helped me make this cake because he wanted to. He baked chocolate chip cookie dough in a six inch round pan to make the round part at the top (the actual star gate). The stairs and the "grass" it is sitting on is chocolate cake that he cut into the shape he wanted. I iced the bottom layer with regular store bought icing that is why it looks all shiny. For the stairs and the star gate I used home made icing. I just printed off a picture from the internet to see how to make some of the details. For the blue watery looking stuff in the middle I swirled in some blue coloring and some white to give it the right effect and I also poured on some blue sugar crystals. To attach the cookie part we cut a slot in the chocolate cake and stuck the cookie in with two popsicle sticks in the back to support it. I iced the popsicle sticks grey so they would blend in with the back of the cookie which was also iced grey. This cake was good because you could choose to eat the cake or the cookie or both.

Castle Cake

Here is the castle cake that I made for my nephews' 4th and 6th birthdays party. They had a knights theme with a castle bounce house and big blow-up swords...lots of fun for the kids. I got most of my ideas for the cake from a website that I like called coolest-birthday-cakes.com. There were a whole bunch of similar cakes and I just picked the ideas that I liked the best from each cake and used them. This cake is made out of two 10in. square cakes, two 6in. round cakes, and lots of icing. I used black and blue to get the blueish gray color. I covered two 16in. cake circles with foil first then blue plastic wrap to look like the moat. I used Hershey bars to make the windows and and the door. The draw bridge is made out of these cookie things called Pirouettes and orange licorice. The turrets-or whatever they are called- are cupcakes and ice cream cones (pretty obvious, I'm sure). I just cut the flags out of construction paper and wrote on them with pen. The accenting colors were chosen by the birthday boys because orange and green are their favorite colors. This cake was fun to make and not really all that hard. It probably took a few hours one day and then maybe one the next to put on the finishing touches. I thought about putting another turret in the middle but when we tried it the cake came off looking a little too Cinderella-ish. We wanted it too look more masculine more like a fort rather than a princess castle so we left off the middle tower. Of course this cake would be easy to make for a girl's part just by changing the colors (maybe using gum drops or something instead of kisses) and adding that middle tower, so that would be an idea. I was very happy with how this cake turned out.

Quilt Cake

This cake was definitely one of those learning experience type projects for me. With the help of my sister-in-law, I made this cake for my mother-in-law's birthday this weekend. One of my mother-in-law's favorite hobbies is quilting so I wanted to surprise her with a quilt cake. I looked some up on the internet but I had trouble finding very many that were like the ones that she makes. She makes really nice like rustic type log cabiny quilts with earthy tones. I was mostly finding baby shower quilt cakes. But I did find one that gave me the idea for this and it also had some really dark purple in it. Her favorite color is purple so I wanted to incorporate that with the cake but still keep it sophisticated by making it a really dark plum or eggplant type purple. Well as you can see my plan did not quite work out how I wanted. I kept adding more and more purple coloring to the icing and it just kept getting more and more Barney looking. I tried adding some blue, not a good idea. So I looked up on the internet how to make plum color with Wilton icing. It said to mix purple with a little Christmas Red. Well I only had Red Red so I used it instead. This produced an okay color but definitely not the color I was trying for. Oh well.

So anyway, the cake is white cake that I iced in white first then used a toothpick to draw the squares. Then I iced certain squares certain colors. I had a drawing of how the actual pattern should be that we went by. My sister-in-law and I decided what other colors might look good. Since I only have the basic box of colors I really did not have the right colors to make the shades we wanted to make. We did discover that adding black to some of the colors produced a shade pretty close to what we were thinking. I put the purple on first then the green. Then I took a step back and thought, "this is looking a little clowny." So from there I just kind of felt like this cake was not turning out the way I had envisioned. We tried to make several more colors and none of them seemed to turn out right. So then we just kind of went for it and started decorating the different squares and this was the product. Not horrible but not anything like what I was thinking or trying for. Once the icing dried a little the colors darkened a bit and they did not look quite as bad as they did at first. My husband said that it looked good. My mother-in-law said she really liked it and most people had no problem figuring out that it was supposed to be a quilt. Also, I find that if you stand back and squint it really does look like a quilt. So that is good.

Some things I learned from this cake: sometimes it is necessary to buy special colors. I don't think my basic box of colors will do the trick for every cake. It is also necessary to do the research ahead of time on how to actually produce the colors you want, you really cannot just make it up as you go. I also realized after the fact that the squares with the white background needed to have a second layer of icing so they matched up with the other squares. I used a toothpick to make little stitch marks and I actually kind liked how that came out, I would do that again. I also think next time I will have a specific idea before hand what each square will look like and draw it out with color (I think I need to buy colored pencils) just to make sure that the contrast and areas of light and dark and all that look good. I think if I did a quilt cake again I could do it way better but this is a good first attempt and my mother-in-law was happy with it so that is all that matters. But I will be trying again.

Naruto Cake

For my niece's 7th birthday she wanted a Naruto theme. So I found an image of him online and put it on her cake using the good old gel and wax paper transfer trick that I am so fond of. This cake is white confetti cake. I could not decide what color icing to use for the background. I had found some red crystal sprinkles and thought I could ice it in yellow and them use some sprinkles to give it a kind of firey look. Well I forgot to put the sprinkles on before the icing dried and so it was just plain yellow. Then I remembered that his hair is yellow and I thought it would not stand out very well. So I tried to make his hair a little yellower and I outlined it in gray. I also used a star tip to do the hair and that made it stand out and gave it a good spikey look. My husband came up with a great idea to make the writing look nice. He suggested using the gel/wax paper transfer thing and it worked great. He printed off the wording in a font and size we liked and then traced the back and we transferred it to the cake and came out looking just right. I think I will use this idea as often as possible from now on.




This picture shows the dessert sushi my sisters made to go with the cake. They are Rice Krispy treats with Swedish fish and fruit roll-ups. They were pretty fun, I think the kids really enjoyed them.

My Son's 2nd Birthday Cakes

For my son's 2nd birthday in April I had him a bug party. I made two cakes one was a caterpillar made with white cupcakes and the other was a chocolate dirt cake. To make the caterpillar cake I made several (20 something) white cupcakes. I iced them in green and decorated them with M&Ms. Then I poked licorice through each side to be legs. I also used licorice as a mouth and antennas and M&Ms for the eyes. The hardest part was poking the licorice through, using a toothpick to make a hole first helped. By the way I just have to add that adding M&Ms to cupcake does something magical. I can't really explain what it was but these cupcake were just so good and I think it was the M&Ms.

The dirt cake was something I just kind of made up as I went I tried to remember how to make a regular dirt cake and used that basic recipe. First I baked chocolate cake and then cut it into chunks to fit on the plate. Then I mounded some cake on top. Earlier I had mixed together Cool Whip and chocolate pudding with some Oreo crumbles mixed in and refrigerated that for a while. After the cake was made I piled some of the pudding mixture on top then added some more Oreo crumbles. Then I put some gummy worms in it and that was it. It took me like five minutes to put it all together and people loved it. So if you want an idea for a cake that tastes really good and looks pretty neat make a dirt cake. It is sure to impress.

A Book Cake For My Mom

Here is the book cake I made for my mom's birthday in March. She is a huge fan of Dean Koontz and it seems like Lightning is the book that she is always recommending to other people. So I thought it would be fun to make her birthday cake look like a Dean Koontz book and I picked Lightning. To make this I first searched for images of the cover of the book. I mostly came up with the more updated version but when I came across this one I had to use it because it looked a little older and more like the the books I was always seeing laying around the house when I was a kid. I changed the scale so it would fit just right on half of a 9 by 13 in. cake and printed it off. Then I baked a cake (white of course- my mom's favorite) in a 9 by 13 inch pan and cut some off the top to make it level, then I cut it in half and each half would become a book. I wanted it to look like two books stacked on top of each other. I iced three sides of the bottom book in white to be the pages. Then I made some black icing and iced it on one side and the top. Then I stacked the next half on top. I iced it the same way and let it stand for a while for the icing the to get stiff. Then I used the gel to transfer my tracing of the book cover onto the top book and filled in the letters and illustration with the right color icing. I also made sure to pipe a very thin line around the bottom edge of each of the cakes to look like the back cover. One more thing I should mention about this cake was that I iced the black parts the night before and I did just have the cake sitting on a white cardboard cake circle. Well during the night the black food coloring kind of leaked out onto the cardboard so I covered another piece in foil and my sister helped me ever-so-carefully transfer the whole thing from one circle to the other. So just fyi, it is probably a good idea to always cover those cardboard cake circles with foil anyways but especially if you are using black icing. I think everyone really liked how this cake came out, it was definitely more fun then just the standard old birthday cake.

My Parents' Anniversary Cake

This is the cake that I made for my parent's anniversary this year. I can't remember I either used two 9in. pans or one 8in. This cake is really pretty basic just iced in white with three Wilton roses. I was pretty happy with the way the roses turned out. I think this was the first time I made them since learning how to do them in my cake class. I kind of had to re-teach myself. It is kind of hard to tell in the picture but I am pretty sure I managed to mess at least two of them up in some way by dropping them or squashing them some how. But overall they came out looking fine (if stood back and squinted when you looked at them). The part about this cake I was disappointed about was the writing. I tried to make the icing really thin and I also put a lot of gel in it. Well, I way over-did it and it came out looking pretty gloppy. If I were to do it again I would just use regular thin icing and just little gel.

This cake also marks the special occasion when my dad first realized what goes into the icing (a cup of vegetable shortening and four cups of powdered sugar, among other things). He kind of freaked out a little and thought maybe I was trying to kill him. I really wasn't that is just how to make the icing. So just in case you are not aware now you have been warned about what icing is made of (at least the kind I make, but I bet store bought is not any better for you). But I think that you should be fine unless you sit down and eat an entire cake by yourself.