The Cake for a King

I know, guys, I'm slacking.  But, before you judge, give me some grace. The last cake I made (The Princess Ariel Cake) was a whopper of a cake and it took me a few days to remove the sugar from my hair before I was ready to dive into the next cake.

A few days later, I decided to make the Chocolate Raspberry Genoisé and as you have not seen a post on it yet, that means there is a story--something along the lines of tripping before putting the pans in the oven. No tears, just anger and bitterness.  I'm re-making the cake this week so wait on that post for more details!

But after my cake drama with the raspberry genoisé (and after being exhausted from way too much summer school), I needed a break.  Off to the beach I went and now that I have returned, I am back in the game.

The next cake is not a Rose cake because it is a special request birthday cake.  It seems I'm slowly entering into the cake business.  The lady who commissioned it wanted to make her son feel like a king on his 18th birthday.  So what's more kingly than a king's crown?

Here's the process of getting there:

The Princess Ariel Cake

 Jane Bradley's 5th birthday just came up and she wanted a Princess Ariel party.  Of course if you're going to have a Princess Ariel party then you have to have an awesome Princess Ariel cake.... and that's where I become the cool aunt.

So of course, into the kitchen I go. Here's the final product:

 

I got to the house a little before to assemble the tiers and to add all of the finishing touches to the cake. I was just finishing up when the first little guest walked in the door and went "ooh... a Princess Ariel cake!" Then she ran up to it and looked really closely at it. 

"Now don't touch it, sweetie. Just look," I said to cover my bases.

The last part of that sentence didn't even leave my mouth before the little girl poked out her finger, stuck it straight into the cake, and then licked it.

The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse cake

I have been singing "It's the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse" for about 2 days now haha.

This cake was for a little girl, Taylor, who just turned two and had a mickey mouse clubhouse birthday party!

It was so much fun to make- I love working with fondant- especially when it's homemade. I still have a lot to learn and would love to take a class on it but it's fun to experiment.

The Cake is the classic butter cake from Rose and the fondant is also Rose's from the Cake Bible.  It's 3 layers in a 10 inch pan.  I had to veer off of Rose's Heavenly Cakes for this one but since it was the Cake Bible, you really can't go wrong.  

Jane Bradley's Topsy Turvy Cake

 Before you look at it, know that it is supposed to be lopsided. that's the point of a topsy turvy cake. Think Dr. Seuss.

This is my first ever attempt at a Topsy Turvy Cake.  Here's what goes down: Each tier of the cake consists of three layers.  The strawberry flavored layer turned out to be more than three because the layers weren't thick enough and because I used a brownie layer in the middle for support. You place the first two layers like normal (with icing in between of course) then you cut the third layer in half diagonally.  You flip the second half of the third layer to where the thick side matches up with the thick side of the other half- that's your top layer.

Once you get all of your tiers assembled and iced, then you have to shave the base to where the top is wider than the bottom.  Then you cut around the cardboard base and measure the new bottom.   Once you have the bottom measured, you cut the size out of the top of the tier that it will sit on so that it will sit flat on top of the second layer- you don't want any tiers falling off the cake now do you!

Here are my layers before cut the circles out of the tops of them:

And here is the final product sans lollipops:

It was a cute cake- fit for a 4 year old.  What i didn't do properly is give the cake enough support on the outsides- big mistake- as I didn't angle the cuts in the third layers.  I cut straight into them.  As a result, the slanted tiers pushed out the third layer, making the cake much less stable.

Jane Bradley's First Birthday!

What a fun cake to make! Jane Bradley had a rubber ducky themed party for her first birthday.  As a result, lacey wanted a giant rubber ducky birthday cake for her.  Thick cake turned out to be great for the occasion.  It was a pool party and there were rubber duckys hanging everywhere in decoration!

I also made a second cake without the base (just the rubber ducky) for Jane Bradley to dig into.  It looked basically the same but was a bit smaller. What birthday girl doesn't deserve her own cake?

Kimberly's birthday cake

This is the cake I made way back in highchool for one of my friend's birthday.  I believe it was her sweet sixteen. The first attempt was a chocolate cake (which you can see next to the complete version in the second picture).  Since this was at the beginning of my cake exploration, I hadn't quite figured out how to use support in the cake. It flopped and so my friends and I ate it with a spoon.  I'm quite glad that it did though because in my opinion take two turned out much better than take one ever would have.