Batty Castle Cake!
(xposted)
(As always, click on any picture to get to the whole set, which includes descriptions and photos of the entire process.)
As promised, fyrekaaat's cake was much more elaborate than her little sister's cake! I didn't have a lot of direction on this cake (which is probably my favorite way to create a cake for someone, for the record), and just had a few general ideas given to me - one of which was "bats". She likes both vanilla and chocolate, so I did her baby sister's cake in chocolate, and hers was vanilla, with vanilla buttercream, and covered in fondant ... lots of homemade marshmallow fondant!
Okay - here's a picture of the finished product, then I'll get into talking about what was involved in this cake - because this was *supposed* to be a in-bed-by-midnight cake ... HAHAHAHA! Well, that's just stupid, anyway. I NEVER properly estimate my time for cake-making, really, so that was a lost cause anyway. But really - that's getting into the story area... picture:
There was a castle-like cake in my new cake book I wanted to try, so that seemed like a great idea to combine with some royal icing bats for a nifty cake for one of my favorite kids!
I have to say, I think the author of this book is a complete sadist - and not (necessarily) in a good way! ;) Either that or she only SAID she used fondant, but really someone substituted it with Folger's Crystals plastic or plaster of paris, or something that doesn't freaking SAG and stick and become generally uncooperative as soon as it's VERTICAL!
This is the first time, I think, that I've had a cake that required ... a "maneuver"... like, a seriously wacky cake maneuver! Like ... a "stack up four layers of cake, put together with buttercream frosting, lay them on their side, and ROLL them up in sticky, stretchy, pliable, argumentative fondant" maneuver.
She's an idiot, that author, I swear! Well, maybe I'm the idiot - you can't *believe* how polished and adorable the pictures of HER cake are! On the flip side, kinda unwieldy and saggy actually worked well with the dilapidated castle with bats, so I probably shouldn't complain TOO much. This is the last time the cake or the fondant looked smooth and polished. The fondant was cut out so precisely ... ha! What a joke - it's stretchy, and the buttercream is sticky, so it was anything but precise or neat when this step was done. Aidon, without whom I could NEVER do this sort of thing, was incredibly supportive during this part. It took all four of our hands, and both brains, and even THEN I'm not sure we're still fully recovered from it! I think if I ever do a cake like this again, without something being different, he'll kill me ;)
(I love the deathly pallor of my hands here - it's the fondant coloring: black and blue ;) )
A closeup of the windows, before the bats were put on:
A look from up top, to the bottom. I love how "rocky" some of the rocks really look! It's pretty easy to get nice looking marbled rocks with fondant!
A closeup of the doorway, a bat, and some windows - and the wall, of course!
The birthday girl, in her spider cloak, guarding the candle from the wind while being sung to. Bats and spiders - perfect!
When it was cake cutting time, there was a LOT of "I want a ROCK!", "I want a BAT!", "Can I have a rock ... AND a bat ... um, please?" It's a good thing I have experience in such things, and made enough rocks, and plenty of bats!
The cake had special cutting instructions in case I wasn't back from David's futsal game before cake time. As it happened, I was, so I did the cutting. Because of the huge height, and where the frosting was, Aidon and I figured out the night before that the best cake-cutting procedure would be to first take out the drinking straws that were inserted for support, and then cut the cake in half, top and bottom. Then cut each half like a double layer cake (there were four layers of cake, so that was about right!) I brought extra frosting for the top of the bottom half, so no one would be frosting-deprived.
The crowd made pretty short work of both cakes, actually! The family brought it home, and there are enough of them that I bet it won't go to waste ;)
Happy Birthday my Batty young friend! :)
(As always, click on any picture to get to the whole set, which includes descriptions and photos of the entire process.)
As promised, fyrekaaat's cake was much more elaborate than her little sister's cake! I didn't have a lot of direction on this cake (which is probably my favorite way to create a cake for someone, for the record), and just had a few general ideas given to me - one of which was "bats". She likes both vanilla and chocolate, so I did her baby sister's cake in chocolate, and hers was vanilla, with vanilla buttercream, and covered in fondant ... lots of homemade marshmallow fondant!
Okay - here's a picture of the finished product, then I'll get into talking about what was involved in this cake - because this was *supposed* to be a in-bed-by-midnight cake ... HAHAHAHA! Well, that's just stupid, anyway. I NEVER properly estimate my time for cake-making, really, so that was a lost cause anyway. But really - that's getting into the story area... picture:
There was a castle-like cake in my new cake book I wanted to try, so that seemed like a great idea to combine with some royal icing bats for a nifty cake for one of my favorite kids!
I have to say, I think the author of this book is a complete sadist - and not (necessarily) in a good way! ;) Either that or she only SAID she used fondant, but really someone substituted it with Folger's Crystals plastic or plaster of paris, or something that doesn't freaking SAG and stick and become generally uncooperative as soon as it's VERTICAL!
This is the first time, I think, that I've had a cake that required ... a "maneuver"... like, a seriously wacky cake maneuver! Like ... a "stack up four layers of cake, put together with buttercream frosting, lay them on their side, and ROLL them up in sticky, stretchy, pliable, argumentative fondant" maneuver.
She's an idiot, that author, I swear! Well, maybe I'm the idiot - you can't *believe* how polished and adorable the pictures of HER cake are! On the flip side, kinda unwieldy and saggy actually worked well with the dilapidated castle with bats, so I probably shouldn't complain TOO much. This is the last time the cake or the fondant looked smooth and polished. The fondant was cut out so precisely ... ha! What a joke - it's stretchy, and the buttercream is sticky, so it was anything but precise or neat when this step was done. Aidon, without whom I could NEVER do this sort of thing, was incredibly supportive during this part. It took all four of our hands, and both brains, and even THEN I'm not sure we're still fully recovered from it! I think if I ever do a cake like this again, without something being different, he'll kill me ;)
(I love the deathly pallor of my hands here - it's the fondant coloring: black and blue ;) )
A closeup of the windows, before the bats were put on:
A look from up top, to the bottom. I love how "rocky" some of the rocks really look! It's pretty easy to get nice looking marbled rocks with fondant!
A closeup of the doorway, a bat, and some windows - and the wall, of course!
The birthday girl, in her spider cloak, guarding the candle from the wind while being sung to. Bats and spiders - perfect!
When it was cake cutting time, there was a LOT of "I want a ROCK!", "I want a BAT!", "Can I have a rock ... AND a bat ... um, please?" It's a good thing I have experience in such things, and made enough rocks, and plenty of bats!
The cake had special cutting instructions in case I wasn't back from David's futsal game before cake time. As it happened, I was, so I did the cutting. Because of the huge height, and where the frosting was, Aidon and I figured out the night before that the best cake-cutting procedure would be to first take out the drinking straws that were inserted for support, and then cut the cake in half, top and bottom. Then cut each half like a double layer cake (there were four layers of cake, so that was about right!) I brought extra frosting for the top of the bottom half, so no one would be frosting-deprived.
The crowd made pretty short work of both cakes, actually! The family brought it home, and there are enough of them that I bet it won't go to waste ;)
Happy Birthday my Batty young friend! :)