Justin Dressler's 22nd

Looks like we're coming back into cake season!

For Justin's birthday last year, I tried to make him a cake to go with the theme of his party - highlighter. This year, I wanted to do something a little more personal. From the start, I knew I wanted to incorporate Frank's Red Hot Sauce because Justin is the type of guy who will (and does) put it on everything. I found a recipe on Frank's website for brownies. I was so curious (and had a craving for chocolate) that I made these ahead of time. Turns out, they are good! Chocolate and Frank's go together!

After MUCH discussion with mutual friends, I finally came up with a cake idea. Justin is a bit of a Lord of the Rings fan, so I went with that theme. I made the Witch King of Angmar, leader of the Nazgul.

Witch King

For those who are curious, I used two boxes of Dark Chocolate cake mix and prepared them as usual, except I added about 2/3-1 cup of Frank's total. 

Frank's!

Construction of this cake was fairly basic. I used two round cakes, stacked them, and carved a bit of an oval out of them for the face. Then I used my 9x11 pan for the tall spike at the top of the head. 

Step 1: Layer cake

Beginning to carve and construct

Large spike added

Facial details

First layer of icing

Side view

I made the rest of the spikes using candy melts. I just piped the melted candy onto parchment paper into the shape of spikes. My black food coloring did some interesting things.. It made the candy melts nearly purple, the cake greenish, and everyone's teeth and tongues purple and grey.  

Candy melts

Piped out into spikes

Spikes attached, final product

  

I ended up having a bit of cake left over from the 9x11 pan, so I used the leftover icing to write a little Elvish message.

"Happy birthday Justin"

"You fool. No man can kill me. Die now."
"I am no man."

Me, the Witch King and the birthday boy!

New inspirations

I jumped on the bandwagon finally and made a tumblr. Actually, I had made it a long time ago but had never updated it. I'm going to be putting up my inspirations as I find them. It may be craft-related or cake-related or just something I like.

Just thought I'd put it on here for the record.

Meg's Inspirations

Happy creating!

St. Patrick's Day

This is my very sad attempt at a festive St. Patty's Day cake. I just wasn't feeling it. I am going to post it anyway just in case it somehow inspires someone to do better. Or maybe it will inspire me to try again?

I didn't have the pressure I usually have for this cake, so that may be why it looks poorly executed. My last-minute cakes tend to be more successful. I guess that means I work well under pressure!

This was my original inspiration: Beer Mug Cupcakes
I never use fondant because I like the taste of buttercream icing, and I don't have a rolling pin. Also, the buttercream icing can look like fondant if it is smoothed properly. This recipe needs fondant. Otherwise, it just falls apart. You will see.

I used white cake, green food coloring and buttercream icing. The handles were gummy letter "C"'s cut in half.

Cake must be green!

Building the mini mugs with 1.5 mini cupcakes

Just awful. Pathetic.

This wasn't working. I tried thickening the green icing and made about 8 of these before moving on. They looked a little better but essentially the same. I didn't even take a picture of them. Then I decided making a giant mug would be easier, so I started stacking the mini cupcakes.

Stacking mini cupcakes using left over pink icing as glue.

Leaning tower of cupcakes?

A sad looking mug. Note: the foam icing on top weighs down the cake a lot! Look how much shorter it got!

A stout beer. Pun intended.

Top view of the foam.

It looks like it's melting. I can't help but laugh at it.

There you have it. Next time I will definitely use fondant. Had I used it, I think this would have gone smoothly. (I'm adding a rolling pin to my birthday list.) Hopefully I have an opportunity to redeem myself soon!

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

Justin Flechsig's Highlighter Birthday Party

Someday I will master the art of making a glow-in-the-dark cake. With a lack of success in making a glowing cake at Justin Dressler's birthday last year, I didn't try again. Instead, I ignored the party theme.

At first, I was worried about the cake I was planning, but Justin is an easy-going guy. If anyone would be okay with this cake, it would be him. And in fact, he was more than okay with it!

I went to Thrifty Shopper and found two Pyrex bowls for a steal of $2 each! This was my first time baking a cake in Pyrex. It took a VERY long time to bake. I didn't know how much batter I would need, so made enough for two. Turns out one was just under what I needed, so I made mini cupcakes!

This cake was really simple to make after I figured out the Pyrex situation. The middle of the cakes were still a little gooey, so I scooped it out and replaced it with a creamy icing. Gross, but delicious. It was especially good because the cake was so thick, so the extra icing balanced that out.

 

I got the idea for nipples from this site. I used two of those large dot-like candies. I'm not sure what they're called. Sometimes they're spiced...

 

First layer of flowers

Final Product

Profile view so you can really see how big those nipples were!

details

Extra cupcakes

Me and the birthday boy!

Happy birthday, Justin!!

YUM :)

Sig's 22nd Birthday: It's a Jersey Thing

Well folks, it has been an awfully  l o n g  time since I have been given the opportunity to make a cake. It seems as though we are entering cake season, however, so get ready for cakes galore! Also, I am newly equipped with some cake decorating supplies and will no longer be working with ziplocs! Hooray, thanks, Mom!

There is one word I work by: inspiration.

The idea is to make a cake when inspired. Sig messed that up when (months ago) he requested a specific cake shape and decoration. I was torn. Who said I was making the cake? Sheesh... OK, I know, I know, I did. So do I give him what he wants and forget about my creativity?

The answer is "no". I decided for several reasons that I needed to create my own design. The most important reason was that I needed to make a cake worthy of this blog, otherwise there would be no point. Not that I make cakes to have a blog post, but I don't have blog posts for cakes I'm not challenged with.

Due to a lack of funding (sorry, Sig), I made this cake from the box. But don't fret, the icing will be homemade. That's the part that really matters unless you have a special flavor.

Here's what's on the menu: Orange cake with buttercream frosting à la VW GTI

If I have one piece of advice for you, it's make orange cake. It deserves more attention. Same goes for strawberry. I have never had cake eaten so quickly!

This cake was actually pretty easy to construct. I printed out a photo of the car's profile and pinned it to a two-layer rectangular cake. I made a platform for the body so the wheels had a place. Luckily Robert and I consistently forget to take out the recycles (three weeks and still going strong), so I had cardboard! I cut the cake using the picture as a guideline, iced and detailed and voilà!

I used up all my red food coloring in order to make this red not pink. It was pink when I finally gave up, but I think it set in after a bit and turned red!

Layer one on the platform. I later added two more for the front and rear ends so it didn't hang like this.

Pinned image. This was too wide so I had to cut off a bit of the side, so the cake was pretty small in the end.

See the pink tink? Maybe it was all in my head...

Viva paper towels work well to give the icing a smoother finish. The tires looked a little flat... more cardboard next time?

Rear end with "SIG" on the plate

V Dubbing, baby!

Sig and his new car! (He is dressed up for his Jersey Shore themed party.)

Cutting the cake! Happy Birthday, Sig!

For those who are curious, this was my Jersey getup! Beautiful if you ask me! :P