Meta Cupcakes

It's already late February and way past time that I've updated this blog.  Unfortunately, one of the reasons I haven't updated is because I haven't made anything recently.  My plans to make Valentine's day cupcakes were foiled by a host of midterms and lab reports and other un-fun projects.  Also, the only birthday during this month that I had a chance to celebrate was my own, and, well, it kind of sucks to make your own birthday cake.  So, instead of posting something new that I've made, I'm going to post my super secret birthday cake surprise that my friends made for me.  They couldn't decide on what type of cake to make me, so instead they made cupcakes with miniature meta designs of cakes that I've made on top.  The designs are made of food dyed almond paste (yummy!).  It took me a little while to figure out which cake they all referred to, so as a fun game, see if you can guess which cupcake stands for what cake.  I'll post the answers at the bottom of the blog.

Number 1

Number 2

Number 3

Number 4

Number 5

Number 6

Number 7

Number 8 (two in the middle)

Number 9 (one on the right)

Number 10 (the one not seen in any other pictures above)

That is all the cupcakes so, make your guesses now.  I'll add some more photos and then put the answers at the end for you all to check.

The answers:

Number 1: Cakes from the past: part 1, owls!

Number 2: Shark Attack and Ocean Themed cupcakes

Number 3: Cakes from the past: part 3, Adam's dinosaur cake

Number 4: The Golden Snitch

Number 5: Saturn cake

Number 6: Cakes from the past: part 2, the pumpkin patch

Number 7: Travis's Birthday/The Return from Indonesia

Number 8: Mrs. Helgevold's birthday surprise or sunflower cupcakes

Number 9: Alien (to go with Saturn and also the one that took me a while to guess)

Number 10: Threadcakes: The Friendly Narwhal (it's the horn sticking out of the ocean)

Shark Attack and Ocean Themed Cupcakes

For my friend Shelly's birthday this year, I was going to make her a cake that had a crew theme to it, but being unable to find the right supplies at the store and also waiting until the afternoon of ruined my chances of doing that.  Instead, I chose an ocean theme and went with the "Shark Attack" cupcake from my Hello Cupcake book (which will give you more detailed instructions), since Shelly is a beast in the water just like a great white.

I made blue frosting to cover the cupcakes for the water effect.

I also made some grey frosting for the shark.

I gave the cupcakes texture to make the ocean look choppy.

Next I made the shark out of a Twinkie and put him on top of a cupcake.

I made some life preserves out of powdered doughnuts and fruit roll ups.

On some of the other cupcakes, I added some Swedish fish.  The rest I left blank except for the three I used to write out Happy Birthday Shelly.

Here's a close up of the writing.

Kyle's Christmas Train Cake

For my brother's birthday, I made him a train cake.  He likes trains and was really into them when he was younger and even had a train themed bed room.  He is much older now, but I thought a train would still be a good idea for a cake.

Choo Choo!

I decided to make a chocolate cake with peppermint icing filling.  I started by smashing up some candy canes.

I mixed the candy canes into the frosting.  Just a note, make sure the cake is going to get eaten right away if you want to put candy canes in it and still have the crunch.  they get gooey after a while.

Next I made the cake and cut it into sections for the train.

I layered the cake to make the front of the train and had some extra left over, so I decided to make a coal car to go with it.  I used the peppermint frosting to fill the cake

Next I started frosting the cake with non peppermint frosting.  I also decided to add a cow catcher to the train, which was a nice decorative thought, but really crumbly and a pain to frost.

After I finished frosting it, I added some decorations including a candle for a smoke stack, chocolate wheels and some "santa's coal bubble gum" for the coal in the coal car.

I added some candy canes to give it some extra design and used the crook part of the cane as a way to show how the cars could be connected together.  The cake turned out like this once the smoke stack was lit.  Also, that bottle is root beer.

Here's a look at the inside and you can see how coal like the bubble gum was.

Thanksgiving Turkey Cake!

For Thanksgiving this year, I went with my friend and co-cake maker John to his family's Thanksgiving celebration.  We decided to make a turkey cake to surprise his family with.

We started by making the cake and cutting it into the appropriate rounded turkey shape.

This is the final frosted body (not a brown baseball hat).  The front of the turkey is the left and the back is leveled so that we would have something to stick the feathers into.  We used chocolate cake and chocolate frosting, which helped hide any little errors or crumbs getting into the frosting.  The frosting smelled delicious and I got to smell it all the way to John's family's house as it was sitting on my lap for the car ride.

After the body was done, we made the feathers.  We tried to use a cookie cutter as a stencil to pour the hot sugar into, but it didn't work too well and as a result we got this interesting layer of sugar to come off with the cookie cutter.

Instead of the cookie cutter, we poured the sugar onto a silpat and added food coloring and texturing with a tooth pick.  We then used the toothpick as a way that we could insert the feathers into the cake.

For the turkey's head, we made some rice krispies and molded it into the shape of a turkey's head.  We then covered it with chocolate and gave it a walnut for an eyeball.  We put it into the freezer to let the chocolate set up.

We assembled the cake on the back of John's car once we got to his family's house.

The feathers went into the cake alright and looked better than we hoped for.  The only problem was the ones we put too close to the back pulled at the cake and threatened to fall down.

We just moved those feathers closer to where the head was going to be and that seemed to solve the problem.

Next we added the head to the turkey to finish it off.  We were happy that the head didn't fall over, but after a little while the head slowly drooped backwards.  Luckily by then, John's family had seen the cake and how it was supposed to look.  There was much delicious feasting with it in the end.

Adam's Record Player Cake

For Adam's 21st birthday, I decided to make him a record player for a cake.  Unfortunately, I had little time to make the cake, so it didn't turn out nearly as neat as I wanted it to and you probably won't recognize it as a record player.  It pretty much looks like a circle on top of a square.  Also, with my limited time, I couldn't figure out a good way to make the arm with the needle on it to make the record play, so I just left it out.

I melted chocolate and poured it into a circle to make a record.  I put it in the fridge so it would be hard and easier to transfer to the cake.

Once I put the chocolate on the cake, I iced some lines on to try to make it look more like a record.  It would have been easier if I had some sort of lazy susan to help make the circles evener.

And here's what the final cake looks like and unfortunately, Blogger doesn't want to upload my picture the proper way and wants to make only this one be weird, so I apologize for the awkwardness of it.

Upcoming: November

Well, this October was somewhat unsatisfying as far as making cakes go.  I was planning on making a Halloween themed cake, but you kind of lose the time to do those things when your boyfriend gets into a bike accident (he's fine by the way).  Instead, I'm looking to November to make some cakes or at least one cake for a birthday.

Hmm, I guess I'll ask you few followers of my blog if you can think of any reasons I should make a cake this next month that isn't for a birthday or Thanksgiving-related.

White Chocolate Chocolate Raspberry

I made a chocolate cake with raspberry filling and white chocolate frosting for a birthday celebration.  The celebration didn't go quite as planned, so I have a slight idea of what this cake tastes like based on the scraps and leftovers, but I did not get the pleasure of trying a slice of it.  I started by making a chocolate cake mix in my 9 inch round cake pans.  I let those bake and cool while trying to catch up on my work and chores.  I then received a text saying that the celebration was going to start at six, and looking at the clock and seeing that it was 4 already jolted me into action as I had no idea where the time had gone.

My room mate was kind enough to offer help, so I had her make up the raspberry filling for the cake, which ended up being a sort of homemade jam.  While she did that, I made up the frosting, which I barely had enough of, because I was low on my supply of powdered sugar.  I made my basic butter cream frosting and added half a bag of melted white chocolate chips to it to give it a white chocolate flavor.

To assemble the cake, I first cut the cake rounds so they were level on the top.  Next I cut each round horizontally, so it turned the two layers into four layers.  In between the first two layers, I put the raspberry jam filling.  Next I put a layer of the white chocolate frosting and finished with the other two layers of cake with raspberry filling in between.

I covered the whole cake with the rest of my frosting, and in my speed to get the frosting on, the super moist cake decided it wanted to break off causing a crummy mixture of frosting and cake around the edges of the cake.

I took some leftover raspberries and decorated the top of the cake to finish it off.  Upon reaching the destination, I discovered that the celebration was cancelled, so I left the cake for the birthday girl to enjoy when she got the chance.