Category: Cakes

My son spent 85% of his 2-year old life watching Curious George. I was already planning a big yellow/monkey theme party, when he switched gears on me. All of the sudden it was all about trains! Thomas became a huge celebrity, and there was no way around it. The party was to be Thomas themed.

So, I got myself a size 7 (girls) pink Thomas shirt, and got him a matching blue one. Attires: check. Plates, cups, decals, all Thomas themed: check. Now, the cake.

I will confess that the river down the center of the cake hides a HUGE earthquake-like crack on the top face of this chocolate layered cake. Nobody noticed, though, and people were very impressed!

Nothing hard about this cake. Just a whole lot of different color frosting and purchased props. I’m most proud of the gray sugar grains which doubled as gravel. Quite nice.

ina

My husband’s birthday rolled around and it was time to make a cake that he would never eat (he doesn’t like cake – it’s a texture thing), so it had to be particularly impressive.

As soon as I decided to make an Android cake (we are a Droid family) I went out and bought the white frosting (lesson learned from the Enterprise cake), and green icing. While I was at the store, I passed by the candy isle and Kit Kats caught my eye. My husband loves Kit Kats! Maybe I could throw some mini wrapped chocolates in his present box.

On the ride home it hit me: KIT KAT IS THE NEXT DROID VERSION!!!!!!!!!!!!! And so the idea was born: an Android KitKat cake.

My husband was very impressed, and everything was perfect except for the fact that his first instinct was to pronounce “Stevroid” as “Steh-vroid” (it was supposed to be “Steve-roid”). He destroyed all my excitement then… but not all the way! I’m still mighty proud of this one!

The design was easy: google-image the icon for Android and mimic it as close as possible.

The hard part: I used canned icing for the green. If you’ve ever played with these, they don’t come out “smooth,” but intead they come out as spaghetti-like strings of icing. Trying to get it to look smooth took some creative techniques. So what I did was put a butter knife to a lighter, and heated it up. Then used the knife to smooth out the green areas. It turned out pretty well, but the knife gets cold very fast, so I had to do this multiple times. The icing kept sticking to the knife. Perseverance paid off.

Everyone loved this one! One of my master achievements!

ina

I really don’t understand why or how this happened, but when my baby was born he was showered by gifts that were elephant in theme. Elephant cards. Elephant stuffed animals.

When my niece was born, the same thing happened… this time with owls; but it was not random like mine was. My sister-in-law actually announced that her baby identified with owls. So there went the owl themed gifts and baby shower. This is when it started to click that perhaps all babies are associated to a cute little animal (if this is not true, please don’t tell me — I still don’t understand this, so it helps me to chuck it to a culture/tradition of some sort).

So, when grandmother’s birthday rolled around, I thought it natural to make a cake with both symbols on it. Most of the work came in drawing the figure with a toothpick and getting the sugar to neatly stay within the confines of the drawing. Since I don’t have sophisticated tools, this was the hardest part and I would never do it the way I did it again!!! But it turned out well enough! Grandmother was pleased, to say the least.

ina

I got a call from my mother the weekend before my father’s birthday asking me for tips on cake decorating. How am I to explain the art, the passion, the creativity, the imagination, the [insert more indescribable adjectives here], that it takes to decorate a cake? I told her to make the cake, and not to worry about decorations. I would bring down to New Jersey all the frosting/icing I had on hand, and she would not have to worry about a thing.

When I got there I came up with the PERFECT idea, considering that the shape of the cake my mother made was a bit… uhh… convex? It had a round top, ok? Not a flat one. So, I took one look at the icing colors I had brought, and the cake, and it was so obvious: THE ENTERPRISE!!!! I come from a family of Trekkies, so it just came to me.

Anyways, ideally you would use white frosting, but I used white icing. There is no way around writing such perfect words. You just need a toothpick, black icing, and a very steady hand.

As for the navigational deflector, that’s just gel icing. We used a flashlight to shine a light on it for pictures.

Not too shabby, huh? Considering it was a completely improvised project, I was very proud of this one!

ina

For my son’s first birthday I had no choice but to bring to life his favorite character in the whole world: the beloved Elmo from PBS’s Sesame Street.
I say I had no choice because, really, there was no other choice. My son’s obsession with the red furry fella had overshadowed his love for Curious George in its entirety months before his birthday.

For this project I made my signature chocolate cake (ahem, Betty Crocker Devil’s Food mix) with milk chocolate frosting. Everything else is color icing.

As for tools, I use butter knives, toothpics, and a decoration syringe to squeeze icing or frosting onto the cake with precision.

I was pretty proud of this one, the first real notch on my repertoire. And it was delicious, too!

ina

Back in 2009, a budding talent sprung from the simple love for chocolate cake. It was my nephew’s 1st birthday, and I signed up to make the cake. I thought it turned out ok, I mean, this one will not win any contests, but it gave me the confidence to keep on caking. Enjoy this oldie but goodie.

ina