Adam's Pistachio Poker Cake

We threw Adam a surprise Las Vegas birthday party this year. Everyone dressed up like they were in Vegas and there were themed games and decorations all around.

Last year, I made Adam a Pistachio Mudkip cake, but no one could tell the cake was pistachio because the buttercream icing was overpowering. This year, I was determined to make sure everyone knew it was pistachio flavored. I learned from Amy's Lemon-Blueberry cake that the filling is the key to getting a specific flavor across.

• Cake: I used the same recipe that I did last year. It was so simple and actually tasted very good.

• Icing: I sort of made this up. Using this recipe as inspiration, I combined a package of pistachio pudding mix with a container of vanilla Cool-Whip (it was a seasonal thing, so it was on sale) and some (maybe a half a cup? I don't usually measure.) confectioner's sugar to thicken it up.

• Filling: For the pistachio filling, I simply made a packet of instant pudding mix. Easy peasy.

Now for the fun part! How the heck do you make cards and poker chips? I used white chocolate, a little bit of icing and, of course, food coloring. Melting chips are the best for this. They melt smoothly. I used a double boiler, wax paper, cookie sheets, a rolling pin, and a sharp knife. I poured the melted chocolate on a cookie sheet lined with wax paper. I put another sheet of wax paper on top and then used a rolling pin to flatten the top. Once they were cooled, I cut rectangles for the cards and cleaned up the edges of the chips.

My helper

Making the chips

Making the cards

The cards look like American cheese!

Pudding for the filling

Layer one

Filling

Layer two

All iced! This spread surprising well for an easy icing

I made some colored chips

Decorating the cards (while sitting on the kitchen floor and watching The Office)

The cards

I added some chips underneath the cards for support. You can kind of see it under the Ace here

The birthday boy got a highly unlikely hand

Me with the cake

A collaboration :)

Birthday boy looking sharp with his cake

Justin enjoying the cards

I think Tim liked it...

Happy birthday, Adam!

I hurd u liek Adam's Birthday

I hurd u liek me.

For those of you who don't know Mudkip, allow me to introduce you. He is a pokemon who always hears about people liking him. Adam originally requested my help at Halloween to make him a Mudkip costume. We ended up making him into Four Loko instead. While that was a pretty funny costume and well-worth the effort, I felt like Adam missed out on his Mudkip moment. Back in October when we were sewing the orange felt for his Four Loko costume, I decided to make his birthday cake Mudkip.

A challenge with Adam is that he doesn't really like cake all that much. You might say, OK, just make him brownies. Well, he doesn't really like sweets. I asked him if he liked banana bread, zucchini bread, angel food cake, etc. He refused to answer.

Luckily, I remembered Adam liking a particular flavor of ice cream- vanilla-pistachio. Ah-ha! I found a simple pistachio cake recipe here (which I doubled) and paired it with the recently popular buttercream frosting.

Before I go any further, I need to explain the design further. This cake is based off of a poorly drawn version of Mudkip, not the real Mudkip. It is supposed to look stupid.

Somehow they got this (poorly drawn version)...

 

 

...from this (original).

I have to admit, the stupid drawing is pretty funny. Anyway, I made one 9x12 cake for the main body and two 9in round cakes for the features.

That's a lot of cake! (FYI this recipe took 8 eggs)

This is the 9x12 pan

I thought this was a funny stage

Somewhere along the line, the legs got lost in translation with the tail. Luckily, it's supposed to look deformed.

I outlined it in black to make it look more like a paint drawing.

My icing bag burst :(

I hurd u liek me.

Me and Adam (taking a picture of me taking a picture of us)

The birthday boy with his Mudkip