Yesterday, I promised to post the surprise cake, so without further delay:
The client asked me a couple of months ago to make a cake to celebrate two birthdays, her son and her daughter. I have seen cakes online that incorporate two or more birthdays, so I started to form a plan in my head. I had a few ideas of what I wanted to do, and turned to Pinterest for visual inspiration. I wanted to make a creative and original cake, so I got out a piece of paper and a pencil and started sketching away. I have never done this before... at first it felt a little silly, but at the same time, it felt good to have a visual plan to refer to. When I finished the picture, and I'm definitely not an artist, at least when it comes to drawing, I snapped a picture of it with my phone and sent it to the client. I made sure that she knew we could change anything she wanted, and to let me know what her opinions were. She seemed to have fallen in love with it! Awesome!
Two days before the due date, I got to work with making the crown. I mixed some gum paste with neon fondant and created this with some advice and assistance of my husband. It needed time to dry, preferably around something rounded. I used an empty, clean coffee container and let it dry for 24 hours.
Once it was dry, I could put the rest of the cake together. I had a mishap with the first round of black fondant on the bottom tier... it was too thin, it was tearing in spots and just too thin in others. I had to remove all of it, and the buttercream underneath had bits and pieces of black fondant in it. It was very frustrating to work with it that day. I rolled out more black fondant, much thicker this time, and re-canvassed the cake. The fondant went on MUCH better, and then it was just piecing the white squares over top to make the checkered look. My awesome husband made the Cars logo shape! :)
The bottom tier went back into the fridge, and I took the rest of the evening off, because it was our youngest son's birthday and we had a Staypuft cake to delve into!
The next day, after work, I went right to work on the top tier. I used a cutter tool and a ruler to make the lines criss-cross on the fondant, and placed silver dragees in the crossed lines to add a touch of elegance. I put purple fondant flowers along the border. Then I finished the crown by adding the name of the little princess to it, and dusting silver petal dust over all of the lettering. A purple "1" cutout and some purple hearts (not seen in photo) completed the look.
Then it was just a matter of stacking the cakes, adding the crown and writing the name on the Cars logo shape. I also piped white buttercream along the bottom of the top tier to hide the cardboard round that it was sitting on.
My original plan was to have the bottom cake board large enough to add a race track and a plastic Lightning McQueen, but it was too narrow. I sent the McQueen toy with the cake anyway :)
Then the following day, I had cakes and brownies to bake for a cake we were bringing to a BBQ. This is an annual BBQ we attend to celebrate Canada Day, and every year, I try to bring something original and fun for dessert. One year it was my final Wilton cake class project:
Another year it was 'hamburger' and 'hotdog' topped cupcakes:
And this year, it was one ginormous hamburger cake. :)
I made two layers of yellow cake, and split a large batch of brownie mix between two 8 inch pans.
I iced the bottom yellow round with chocolate icing and put one of the large brownies on top. A little more chocolate buttercream to make them stick, and used orange fondant to make the cheese slice. Then I covered the top brownie with more chocolate icing, leaving about an inch and a half from the edge free of icing. I used a rose tip to pipe green lettuce, and then piped on the mustard and ketchup before placing the top yellow round on. I had been contemplating what to use for sesame seeds for a couple of days, but finally just decided to use real sesame seeds, since they don't really have much taste to them anyway.
A Canadian flag makes the entire cake a bit more festive for the occasion! The cake was totally a hit, and was completely gone within about 10-15 minutes. It was delicious... even as full as I was after the scrumptious food, I made sure to have a small piece!
I should probably try to figure out how I'm going to top that next year! Open to suggestions! :)
And that's the kind of holiday weekend it has been for us. Have fun and stay sweet, and as always, thanks for reading!
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