Birthday in Paradise

Last week I received a call from one of my husband's colleagues asking if I would do a cake for his wife's birthday.  I love getting the opportunity to make someone's birthday extra special, so I of course said yes!  Not to mention, the birthday girl is a dear friend of mine and I know she LOVES my cake!  :)

Other than the fact that the cake had to have lots of icing (the birthday girl's favorite part of the cake), I was pretty much given free reign over the design.  I've never been very good at the typical birthday buttercream roses, so I turned to my favorite cake website, CakeCentral, for ideas.  I quickly decided that I wanted the cake to have a tropical feel since this is the last birthday that my friend will be celebrating in our beautiful island paradise before she and her family move back to the mainland!

The CakeCentral photo galleries gave me a ton of inspiration, but given the fact that we have limited access to cake supplies here on the island and that the cake only needed to be big enough for her family of five, I had to scale back some of the grand ideas I had.  Luckily, I stumbled upon these instructions on making tropical flowers using buttercream.  Making these flowers was super simple and the results are great! 

I keep forgetting to adjust my butter and crisco amounts to compensate for the crazy humidity here in the islands, so my icing was a little softer than I would have liked.  I think a stiffer icing would have made the flowers look even better.  Also, at first I was little unsure about the color combination, but it grew on me after a while.  I think it gave it just the right amount of "tropical flair."

What do you think?

Here's a closer look at the flower:

I spoke with my friend today and she loved the cake; she's down the last piece or so of cake and she's rationing it. Haha!  I'm glad I was able to help her celebrate her last tropical birthday!

Tea Pot

For the last few months, I've been planning an amazing birthday tea party for my baby girl. Let's be honest, she's not really a baby anymore, she just turned 5. To me she will always be my baby girl! :)

Part of the tea party planning was figuring out what kind of cake to make. I had grand plans of a topsy-turvy concoction with a tea cup sitting off-kilter on the top complete with tea splashing over the side of the cup. That all changed when I asked the birthday girl what she wanted and she said two words: tea pot. My grand plan flew out the window and I got to work figuring out how to construct the cake she requested.

After browsing the galleries at CakeCentral.com, I came up with my design. I baked a ten-inch round cake and covered it with buttercream. On top of this, I placed a fondant "tablecloth" and on top of that a tea pot made from cake.

Rather than trying to sculpt a tea pot from round cakes, I baked up some cake in bowls. My bowls are stoneware so they are oven safe. Before putting bowls in the oven, check to make sure they are oven safe. Here is a picture of the bowl I used:

I liberally applied some homemade cake release solution to the bowls and inserted a well-greased rose-nail upside down in the bowl before pouring in the batter. I let the caked bake for about 45 minutes before checking on them and to my surprise, they were almost done.

When the cakes were cool, I put them together with a thin layer of buttercream in the middle. After applying a thin layer of buttercream and chilling the cakes for a while, it was time for the fondant. I had some issues with the fondant, mostly because of the shape of the tea pot. Every time I would try and get the fondant to come back down to the bottom of the pot, it would start to tear! Either that or my fingernails would poke a big hole in it! (Note to self: Remember to cut fingernails super short before working with fondant!) I finally got the fondant to cover most of the cake successfully and used a few tricks to cover up the mistakes! :) Here's a picture of the cake:

 

The purple band around the bottom covers up some mistakes. The spout, handle, and lid are all made from gumpaste. Handle and spout were free-handed and have floral wire inside to connect them to the cake.  The lid was molded from the inside of another lid I have.