The Joys of Caking: January 2021

I've already used my cake kitchen again!

My co-worker, Diana, retired this January after many years of service. She worked in the office through 4 or 5 different county attorneys. Because of COVID, we couldn't have a retirement party for her, but we still wanted to give her a special send off.

I was in charge of cupcakes (the COVID friendly cake). I wanted to do something pretty that wasn't super complicated and I discovered the cupcake bouquet!

I started by making yellow cake and adding green food coloring so there would be this yellow color sticking out under the frosting flowers.

We weren't able to have Christmas with my in-laws this year but my mother-in-law sent us some goodies in this beautiful basket. it was perfect for the display. I bought a foam half circle and covered it with green tissue paper.

I filled half the cupcakes with butterscotch pudding. Then I colored the icing and made the flowers. Some of these I learned a long time ago and others I learned from youtube videos. I didn't make enough icing to frost all of the cupcakes, so if I do it again, I would probably do one and a half batches. But it made enough for the bouquet.

Next I stuck toothpicks in the cupcakes and then stuck them into the foam circle. The problem was that the filled ones wouldn't hold up!

I ended up putting the filled ones around the bottom edge and the regular ones on the top. Next time I would skip the filling so it would be easier to place them. Next I tore up strips of dark green crepe paper and put it in between the cupcakes to look like leaves.

As you know, leaves are my favorite thing to pipe because they just add so much depth to flowers. The crepe paper here did the same thing and really made it look spectacular.

If you don't look too closely, it looks like I'm delivering a basket of flowers!

Up until lunch, the cupcakes sat on Diana's desk next to the real flowers. A bunch of people did a double take before realizing they were cupcakes!

This turned out so well. It looked adorable, it was bright and cheery, and it was fairly easy to make. I would definitely do this one again.

Happy retirement, Diana!

Well hello 2021!

It's been over a year since I made fancy decorated cake and probably even longer since I've posted a cake on this blog. I've gone through a lot of life changes over the past year including getting married and moving to a new state. But now that I've settled in, it's time to start baking again!

One of the best things about my new house is that I have my very own cake kitchen, separate from our regular kitchen. This is awesome because now I can make a huge mess over a period of several days and still be able to make dinner (or let my husband make dinner).

Part of my workspace

Two of my favorite people, my nieces Chloe and Sarah, were born in December. I was in the delivery room for both of their births. But I realized that I've never made a cake for Sarah! In my defense, she was born after I moved 3.5 hours away from my family, so it was a little more difficult to make cakes for anyone.

So I decided to make a co-birthday cake for the two of them. Like all of my nieces, they are obsessed with super heroes. Sarah loves the color purple and her favorite super hero is Batgirl. Chloe's favorite (although not sure if she's really a super hero) is Harley Quinn. Super hero cake to the rescue!

Now I didn't know very much about either of these characters but I knew I wanted to make figurines to go on the top of the cake. So I started by getting some pictures.

For those of you not familiar with Batgirl and Harley Quinn

I've done some figures in the past but not as well as I would like. So I bought this tutorial on Etsy from CrumbAvenue. It was so helpful! I highly recommend it. The tutorial was for basic female bodies and I just modified it to work for Batgirl and Harley Quinn. Batgirl was first.

I had a heck of a time trying to get the dowels in at the right angle and close enough to each other. This was the first time I used a dowel rod to help support my figures.

It's the little details that make a difference

Then I had to make the head. Heads are the hardest because mine always just come out looking . . . odd. But with the help of the tutorial, it turned out pretty awesome.

Batgirl's face

I even made eye lids! And those lips don't look ridiculous! I was very happy with my success, but unfortunately, I had to cover some of it with a mask. I was super nervous to add the head and the cape because I was really worried that she was going to fall over from the weight. I didn't balance it correctly when I made the body, so the head was not right on top of the dowel rods.

The cape is the shape of a bat.

For the same reason, I wanted to let the head and body dry for awhile before I added the hair, so I started on Harley Quinn. Her outfit was slightly more involved. Again, I used the tutorial for the skirt and shirt and modified it.

Next I added the detail for Harley's shirt and made her head and arms.

Harley Quinn's face

Just need some hair!

Now I couldn't put it off any longer and I had to do the hair. I didn't do much with the back of Batgirl's head because I knew it would be covered by the hood. But it turned out amazingly well.

And she was still standing up! Harley's hair was a little different. I covered her head and made some bangs. Then I made her pigtails and let them dry so they would hold their shape. I also was concerned about transport, so I decided to wait to put them in until I put everything together.

Now the figures were done but I still had to make the cake. Batgirl was the bottom layer. I made a chocolate cake with chocolate fudge and mini chocolate chip filling, covered in purple buttercream and fondant. The fondant was on point! The Batgirl symbol went on the front and Chloe and Sarah's names graced the sides (thanks to the bazillion cookie cutters I got as a wedding gift!).

Harley Quinn was represented on the top tier. I covered this one in white fondant first. Then I used my diamond cutter (which I usually use to make a quilted pattern on fondant) to cut out the diamonds in red and black. I used the cutter again to mark where they should go on the cake and attached them with gum glue. As a final touch, I made a border of blue for the bottom.

And then came the problems. I made the dowels on the figures too long! Batgirl was too tall for the cake. So my husband got out a saw and a vice grip and ever so carefully cut off some of the dowel rods while I held on tightly and held my breath, hoping it wouldn't damage the figure. Success!

To transport, I put the figures in a plastic container on top of those air bag things you get in Amazon packages. But upon arrival, Harley's head had come loose. On top of that, we discovered the dowel rods on her figure were also way too long! I took the head off completely so it wouldn't jiggle off while my husband bravely used another saw to get through the dowel rods. I was so nervous it was going to fall apart.

But it worked! We were able to place the head back on and everything was fine. Batgirl was a little too tall as well, but I had some extra yellow fondant so I just made some platform boots for her instead of trying to saw off some more.