Clever Cake Studio

This cake was made for a boy turning 6 years old, and was probably came with one of the most rewarding responses I’ve ever had: jaws dropped and eyes wide, he and his other friends were totally awed and happy about it. It has lots of little details, I tried to keep adding more and more and even wish I had done some others things. But it was a lot of fun to make.

The cake is vanilla dyed blue, with chocolate frosting. The blue fishies are marzipan (the kids really loved them) and the rest of the decorations are fondant. I used some silver and gold luster dust, and sprayed here and there with some blue to add some dimension (I used the can you can buy at the grocery store, nothing really technical). Then mixed up some blue shades and tints of green in some dairy icing (very whipped cream tasting) on the tray to increase the water presence.

This sweet thing was a mini cake for a coworker, as a surprise to his wife on her birthday. They have two calico cats, so I made marzipan miniatures. I’m told the likeness was pretty decent. It was really, really nice to do something sweet and simple after several progressively harder (and larger) cakes.

This is a vanilla cake with raspberry preserves inside, and a whipped icing covering it with fondant flowers and butterflies. As mentioned, the kitties are marzipan, with fondant eyes. The layering and decorating of this probably took a few hours - I was watching reruns of Scrubs and Family Guy while working on it.

This is the notorious Fruit Fucker (or ‘Friend’ to be polite in an under-estimating way) from of Penny Arcade repute, made for an epic birthday party. It caused us much grief, as such machines are likely to, and we had to toss about 10 or so pounds of fondant away. Note to self and others: if the cake is 2 feet tall, don’t bother with fondant. Try something else!

In this case, I just went with gray frosting and used fondant for the black band, eyes, mouth, and antenna. Had to do the band very thinly so that it wouldn’t weigh too much as start sliding down. The antenna is a fondant-covered stick with a ball of red fondant on top covered in red sugar sand. The shoulder balls, arms and hands are painted foam, floral wire and tubing, the engineering of which was the work of my husband The spout thing in the front is just cardboard dusted with silver luster and edged with fondant. The orange sitting there is plastic.

This cake was 12″ wide and about 2′ tall. There are 6 two-layer cakes plus a single layer dome for the top.

I used 5 flavors:

• Vanilla with white chocolate-almond
• Chocolate
• Orange (of course)
• Lemon
• Cherry

The dismantling of this alone drew a crowd. The cakes were separated by a cardboard circle, though something more should have been done to prevent the icing from the cake below sticking to the cardboard. Oh well, it still worked. And yes, that is a photo of me, proving once and for all that cake-making is not a glamorous business. I know, you’re surprised.

To keep a cake like this steady enough, I had 3 short hollow plastic tubes in each cake to support the cake above, and then a 1″ wooden dowel going straight down the center of the whole thing. Since we had to drive with this 30-50 minutes up to Seattle, we had two people in the back of our car helping to watch it and keep it steady while the driver stressed over taking everything REALLY slowly. We stuck a couple signs on the back of our car saying ‘Please be Patient’ and ‘Fragile Cargo’.

This was inspired by Penny Arcade’s game. I had a whole weekend for this, unlike the usual few weeknights I had for the other cakes. So I had a lot of fun really going all-out in details and shiny paint. It’s the most complex and labor-intensive cake I’ve done so far.

To start: the cake itself is vanilla, with dark chocolate between layers. It’s covered in fondant made to look like wood planks, and it was fun doing the wood texture and trying to mimic natural flaws. the dome is also cake covered in fondant. All the details - the gauges, the Instruction Panel (which is, of course, too old and blurry to read anymore, except for a couple faint words and May 21, 2008 sorta decipherable at the bottom, which is the launch date of the game), the control pad, the pipes… all fondant. The antenna is a stick wrapped in fondant. The gears are gumpaste, made a couple days earlier so they’d harden.

The original sketch was slightly different, but some improvisation was necessary, as the place we intended to have the dome didn’t have much interest in supporting it. So, redesign! I actually like the new design better, it feels more balanced and solid.

Also, new technologies! My husband surprised me with a new professional-grade uber-stand mixer, bringing me joy and delight. For the past few cakes, I’ve been doing it all by hand, because the little hand mixer I had died after a couple cakes. Much love, much joy. It’s wonderful.

This final photo was taken on site by someone with a much, much better camera than me. They added a figurine of the Fruit ‘Friend’, which seems to take it to a whole new level.

So, I hear you like mudkips?

This is probably the hardest cake I’ve ever made up to this point. I made mistakes and can see where I could have done better, but I learned a lot from it. I also know better now that I need to come up with a good cake recipe that’s closer to pound cake for sculpted cakes.
The photos aren’t great, but I may have more coming. I had to assemble the fins on-site, so I didn’t take photos at home first. Then I forgot my camera. Luckily, my husband could take photos with his cell phone.

This cake is vanilla, with a strawberry filling I made using organic preserves, fresh strawberries and confectioner’s sugar. Apparently, mudkips taste like strawberry-vanilla. I’m told this is standard knowledge.

The fins are fondant, but I didn’t let them dry and harden for a long enough time, so I ended up using those white sticks as part of the design so they would have the support they needed. Maybe I should have used gum paste, since that hardens considerably better. Live and learn!

This last photo was taken by the person it was made for. It looks so dramatic!