The Golden Snitch

My roommate finally turned twenty one and as with all birthdays, she needed a cake.  I decided for some input from friends of hers and after getting a suggestion to build her a replica of Hogwarts, something I didn't feel like attempting yet, I got a suggestion for a golden snitch.  This I believed to be more doable after having accomplished both the saturn cake (for sphere cakes) and the narwhal (for sugar design).  After an intense design session with my fellow birthday cake maker John, we sketched out some ideas and got supplies for the big day.

This was our inspiration.

I worked on the cake part of the cake.  The bottom is Styrofoam that we poked lollipop sticks in to make it easier to put the wings in later.  I layered the cake over the sticks as well.

Next, I carved the cake into the sphere shape and made a mess all over the table.

I then frosted the outside of the sphere starting with the cake and then moving to the Styrofoam to prevent the Styrofoam from getting into the cake, while allowing glue for the fondant to stick to both cake and Styrofoam.

 Since we could only find white fondant, I had to knead in food coloring into the fondant to get it closer to the golden color.

I rolled out the fondant to cover the cake.  Luckily, we had just enough to cover the whole thing, but the fondant was a little thinner than I would have preferred as a result.

Next, I covered the cake with the fondant.  Note: the funfetti in the foreground was a back up in case one of the layers turned out funny.  I did use yellow cake box mix for the actual cake, however, I would recommend using a cake that doesn't say "moist" in its description to make it easier to carve.

Next, we smoothed down the fondant to make it nice and spherical.

We added rolled up pieces of fondant for detail and pressed other details into the fondant.  Then John steamed it with his iron to make all the extra sugar melt to make it nice and shiny.  We added some luster dust to get it closer to its intended gold color and to also hide some tiny flaws in the fondant.

While I was working on the cake, John was making brooms and an owl out of chocolate to put on some cupcakes.

We used a blue food color spray to give the cupcakes a sky-like appearance for the brooms to fly riderless in.

He also got to do the sugar work.  He used two lollipop sticks to make it stronger and poured a sugar outline of the wing.

Next he drizzled sugar over the outline to make the filling of the wings.  This also helped keep the wings lighter.  After it cooled, we snapped off the excess sugar.

We assembled everything except the wings to make transport easier.

Here is the final product which delighted my roommate immensely.

Threadcakes

Threadless, my favorite t-shirt place, had a contest to make cakes based off a design for one of their shirts.  As a result, my friend and I assembled a cake based on their shirt "The friendly narwhal."  Here's the link: http://www.threadcakes.com/entries/view/945

The winners are in, and well, I didn't win, but I was beat by some truly amazing cakes.  To see for yourself, go here: http://www.threadcakes.com/winners

But for those of you who want to see all the pictures of my cake, I decided to post them here now that the contest is over.

Here is John molding our sugar into the narwhal's horn.  Also, working with sugar can be difficult, because it will cool quickly, which is why we had to work it over a stove to keep it pliable.  Also notice the gloves.  Sugar is really hot and it will give you really bad burns if you aren't wearing gloves.  As it was, John and I had some trouble holding on to the sugar.

Carving the cake.

The cake is all carved and we added a gum paste tail.

Then we covered everything in fondant.

Next we painted the whale, no nar at this point, and made some sugar waves.

We made the creatures out of fondant and painted them with food dye.

Then we made the little hearts so we had a friendly whale.

Here's a better picture with the table all cleaned up.

Next, we added the horn to transform our whale into the lovely narwhal.

Unfortunately, the horn immediately fell down.  Our narwhal, with its sagging horn, next to our model, the avenging narwhal playset.

As part of the contest, we had to show the cake being eaten, so anyone up for sushi?

Here's the original design for the cake and even though I didn't win, I got to make a cake to honor nature's unicorn, the narwhal.

Travis's Birthday/Return from the Jungles of Indonesia

When Travis finally returned from spending four weeks in the jungle in Indonesia, working on biological conservation and other such stuff, it also happened to be his birthday, so we decided to throw him a joint "you survived" and "happy birthday" party.  To go along with the theme of being in the jungle, I, with the help of Travis's girlfriend, decided to make some cupcakes with insects on them to remind him of the jungle and how he survived by not getting malaria, which was my idea of what was going to happen to him.

We used some tracings from my cupcake book to start out with some insect shapes.

Next, we piped melting chocolate into the shapes that we traced on some wax paper.  We also added our own mosquito design to go with the malaria theme.

After the chocolate was piped on, we added candy pieces to make the insects' bodies.  I would recommend putting more chocolate than just a trace, because even after being in the fridge for a while, the insects were easy to break when removing them from the wax paper.

To continue the malaria theme, we got some jam and injected into the cupcakes that we were going to put the mosquitoes on.  I saw the large needle at the grocery store a while ago and I was planning on making something with cream filling, but this came first, and it worked well.

It was kind of hard to inject jam, because it is so thick, but it worked well.  I injected in two spots close to the middle to disperse the jam.

Here's the final cupcakes from above.  All the mosquitoes had jam filled cupcakes and we made pinkish frosting for Travis's pasty white skin with black licorice hairs on them.  The rest of the insects were put on a green background.  Also, we made some cupcakes into spiders by making chocolate mandibles that look like mustaches with licorice legs sticking out the sides.

We also added some written cupcakes.  These ones say "I'm not dead yet," "welcome home," and "you survived"

Close up part two.  Also "the boy who lived" which Travis seemed to appreciate the most.

Last close up of the cupcakes.  Also including "happy b-day"

And for those of you who were curious, this is what the jam filled cupcakes looked like.  I didn't get to try one, because Travis took all of them home with him, but from the people who did get one, they said that it tasted really good, which makes me want to do some more flavor experiments.

Upcoming: Late July/August

I haven't posted anything in a while, because, well, there hasn't really been anything that I've made or anyone's birthday.  Actually, I did make some more pies for someone's birthday, but since I haven't started making fancy pies, they look like anyone's pies, so I chose not to record them here.  Instead, I've been doing more arts and crafts stuff and have been staying out of the kitchen, especially in the summer heat.

However, I will be making at least one birthday cake, maybe more, in the month of August and I'm excited for those.  I also found a cake decorating contest that I'm interested in entering, but that is only if my fancy cake assistant returns from Spain in time to make and then enter the contest, which I hope he does.

Pies from the past (Part 6): Banana Creme and Mixed Berry

I decided to mix it up a bit and post some pictures of pies I made for someone's birthday last year.  I was asked to make a pumpkin pie, but I couldn't find any pumpkin in the store since it was summer time.  Instead, I got some fresh berries to make a raspberry/blackberry pie and then made a banana cream pie.  Both pies went over really well, but the banana cream was the hands down favorite.  I think it was the first time some of the people had ever had a banana cream pie, so it was good to see people trying something new and liking it.  The berry pie tasted good, however, it came out really watery, so that pie will need some more cornstarch and perfecting.

Cakes from the Past Part 5: Fried Rice experiment

The next post is going to be the first improv cupcake that I've made.  I used some of the ideas in my Hello Cupcake book and with some traversing of the supermarket was able to come up with the fried rice cupcake.  These were made for one of my boyfriend's room mates who is Chinese and likes food (whether it's his or your food that has been in the fridge for a while).  We tried to come up with some ideas that would best personify him or at least remind us of him and for whatever reason it was fried rice, so we went with it.  The only things we did to make it more like fried rice was to add chocolate sprinkles for some burntish rice, green skittles for peas, orange starburst cut up for carrots and broken up chocolate pieces to make it beef fried rice.  Lastly, we needed some chopsticks to go in to make each cupcake like an individual bowl of fried rice.  At first I was going to use pretzel sticks, but they were either too short or too thick.  After roaming the isles of the grocery store I found some snack sticks made by Pringles.  They're pretty tasty on their own, but they look similar to chopsticks if you use your imagination.  Some people even tried to use the "chopsticks" to eat their "fried rice" with a little success.

This picture is kind of blurry, so it's hard to see, but the cupcakes are all on a tray.












Here's a closeup of the cupcakes and yes, the person awkwardly eating their chopstick in the picture is me.

Cakes from the Past Part 4: Camel Cup-Cake

I'm going to post a birthday cake I made for my former roommate.   The cake was made after I found this cupcake kit that allows you to make cupcakes in different shapes that you can assemble to make a larger picture. The kit came with three designs: a turtle, a bear, and a fish.  My friend saw the kit and decided that she wanted me to make a cake for her from these in the shape of a camel (in relation to a really cute stuffed camel she brought me from Israel).  It turned out really cute and she really enjoyed it.