Follow the Yellow Brick Road

Somewhere over the rainbow . . . .

Ahh, that iconic song.  Who doesn't love the Wizard of Oz?  In 2015, my niece definitely loved it.  She was Dorothy for Halloween and many times the Halloween costume is indicative of the desired theme for the birthday cake.

But how to do justice to the Wizard of Oz?

There are so many fantastic Oz cakes out there.  Just google it and you will see what I mean.  But I was also trying to keep the difficulty level to a medium (hahaha) and also not make so much cake that we'd be eating it for a month.

I knew I had to have Dorothy.  I've been getting better at fondant figures, but I still have issues with balance and making them look realistic (or realistic cartoons).  I needed flesh color, blue, and brown fondant.

I started with the body and legs.  I made a fleshy "body" and added it to the legs, with ruby slippers on the bottom of the legs.  I added a white color and white socks.  You can kind of see the neck on there as well. 

Next I added the pieces of the blue dress.

I made the arms with the sleeve attached.

The the straps of the jumper and the belt were added.  Next the arms went on.

But Dorothy still needs a head.  I hate making hair.  It looks like it shouldn't be that hard, but it is a NIGHTMARE.  For this one, I did a brown piece on top of her head.  Then I added a little bit for her bangs in the front (also to cover up the horrible looking piece I put on first).  I used a tooth pick to make the curls, wrapping the thin rolls of fondant around them and letting them dry just long enough to hold the shape.

I attached the ears and then used gum glue to stick the curls on.  I was terrified that they wouldn't stay on, but they held.  Finally, I made to small blue bows and glued them on to the spot where the curls met the base hair, looking pretty and covering it up so you can't see the seam.

If you are going to make a Dorothy figure, then you probably should have Toto too.  I made him out of black fondant.  Don't try to make black fondant - it's impossible and you will get super frustrated. Just buy it.

I also had to make the Wicked Witch of the West.  She was a little different - I didn't make any legs or feet for her.  I just took a blob of black fondant and covered it with her long, flowy dress.  Then I added her arms and green hands.  

Next the head went on (I love the nose!) and the iconic black hat.  The last detail was the broomstick.

For the cake itself, I started with a large, green, sheet cake.

I wanted to include the yellow brick road, because, of course!  I also have this texture mat for a brick pattern that I wanted to try out.  It worked pretty well and I had a nice yellow brick to make the road pattern.  

Once I put it on the cake, I covered it with some gold petal dust to make it shiny,

I tried out several new toys with this cake - I have a house cake pan that I haven't used yet.  So I made a house cake to be Dorothy's house after being dropped in Oz by the tornado.  I made the house a non-descript color, since it was from Kansas and not Oz.

Then I piped on some details.

Next I piped, Happy Birthday, Elisa, in the corner.

I added a grassy border and some grass around the house.

But you can't have the house without having the squashed Wicked Witch of the East!  I made the black and white legs using my smallest round cutter.  I cut out a bunch of thick, white and black circles, then glued them together with glum glue, alternating the colors.  Finally, I bent the ends so it looks like they are starting to roll up.  The shoes of course are already on Dorothy's feet.

Now I just had to position everyone on the cake.  I attached Dorothy's head to her body and put Toto next to her on the cake.

Side view of Dorothy.

The WWW got her spot on the Yellow Brick Road.

The WWE's feet went "under" the house.  This is kind of my favorite part of this cake.

This looks like an action shot.  They are getting ready to rumble!  It's also a nice view of the back of Dorothy's hair.

A nice aerial view.

A few more different angles.

It really looks like the house fell on top of her.  Or that the house sprouted a pair of legs . . .

Close up of the yellow brick road.

Nice side profile of the WWW.

Happy birthday (a bit late) to my beautiful, compassionate, sweet niece Elisa!

Teardrops on My Guitar

So a few years ago, I made a build-a-bunny birthday cake for Kiah.  Yay for repeat customers!  She's a little older now (this was back in April or May of 2015) and her interests have changed a bit.  Now she is into Taylor Swift.  So her mom asked me to make her a guitar cake.

I bought a guitar pan in order to make it easier to make the correct shape.  It came out very nicely.

I started by adding the "wood" of the guitar.

Next I added the bridge, the neck, and the sound hole, along with the sides of the guitar.  The darker parts are made with chocolate frosting.  I think I used a tip to get the sides to look so nice and clean.  The tip was the perfect size and it looks really good!

Then I started adding some details to make it look a little fancier.

Including Taylor Swift's signature!

Next I added the strings.

And the frets.

But the guitar needs a little color.

So I added a flower.

And we have a beautiful, autographed guitar.

And then we load it into the box and it's ready to go!  it almost looks like you could play it.

So even though it's more than a year late, Happy Birthday Kiah!

The Doctor Will See You Now

So, I'm about a year and a half behind on my cake blog.  It's not that I haven't been making cakes, I just haven't been posting them.  I also lost my computer (it died an untimely death), so that has made it difficult to keep up with the blog.

So, I'm going to try and do a bunch of posts in the next few weeks.  I also finally figured out how to get the pictures from my Ipad onto my Surface, so hopefully that will no longer present a problem.

My niece, Chloe, turned 2 in December of 2014.  We didn't celebrate her birthday until January of 2015 (that sounds so much better).  At the time, she was a huge fan of Doc McStuffins.  It was so cute when she said Doc McStuffins!  So, I decided to make her some doctor cupcakes.

We started out with the chocolate cupcakes.

And then added pink frosting.  Pink and purple are Doc McStuffin's colors.

Next I made some bandaids out of fondant.  I basically just cut some rectangles, added some lines with a knife and made the holes with a small tip.

I also made some doctor bags, a stethoscope, and Doc Chloe out of greyish blue fondant.

Doc and the stethoscope went on one cupcake and Chloe went on another.

In Doc McStuffins, the bandaids have hearts on them.  So I added those.

And then the bags and the bandaids went on the cupcakes.

Close up shot.

 I also made some reflex hammers.

I tried to get a picture of Chloe in her new shirt with the cupcakes, but she was so busy looking at them, she wouldn't look at the camera.

 This was the best I could do.

Chloe loved her cupcakes.  Some of the adults felt that the bandaids were a tad bit too realistic and therefore not so appealing to eat . . . . .

 I can't believe that this was already a year and a half ago!  That girl is growing up too fast!