This experiement has definitely taught me a lot about cake making and decorating.  I did everything quite backwards, learning to play with fondant and scultped cake before even taking a basic piping class.  I do plan on taking those standard Wilton Cake Decorating courses they offer at Michaels’ or JoAnn’s stores, which should broaden my skillset.  I’ve figured out much of it on my own, but I expect the classes to be useful.

I’ve gotten contacted by several people new to ‘doing cakes’ and have one particularly useful thing to tell them: The internet is awesome.  There are so many great websites with tutorials, not only in writing but also in videos.  A search on Youtube brings up some good ones on learning to roll fondant and some piping techniques.  Books and magazines are very nice, but just flip through them at the store for some inspiration.  If they don’t have any really detailed, specific techniques being illustrated, then skip it, it’s an expensive art book.  Save your money wherever possible - you’ll need it!

Fondant isn’t cheap, especially when you’re just starting out.  The easiest fondant to find is usually Wilton brand, but it tastes like old bland gum.  Mix in a bit of vanilla or almond extract to help it out, and use it for all your practicing until you either find a better supplier or learn to make your own (no need ot rush on this, some professionals never bother).

Don’t worry about using box cake mixes, provided that it’s a cake that doesn’t need to hold an unusual shape or more than a few layers.  I usually substitute some of the water for milk, maybe add some more extracts for flavoring, or if it’s chocolate I add some dark cocoa powder.   I also don’t use very thick layers of frosting, to help balance the over-sweetness of the mix.  But mixes are cheap and easy and consistant, and it’s hard enough learning to decorate a cake - you don’t need to also spend more time trying to perfect a recipe.

When you need a recipe that can withstand sculpting or stacking, then you need something more like pound cake.  If you already have a recipe for an amazing, moist and fine pound cake, try it!  Otherwise, just do a search for “sculpted cake recipe” and you’ll find some forums and websites with lots of advice and recipes.  See which you like best, and experiment till you have your own. Lots of professionals doctor a cake mix to get the right density, because it saves a lot of money.  Making anything from scratch will generally cost more and take more persistent effort, but it feels good to know that when they compliment a cake, it’s ALL you.

Generally I find that the tasty cakes that still feel soft (fine crumb) and moist in the mouth often brown easily on the outside, so I have to plan to trim all the outside off when I’m figuring out how much and of what size to bake.  I’m still trying to find the ‘right’ recipe for me.  It can take awhile.  I’m also insanely picky.

I can’t say not to worry about your mistakes, because I sure have cried a lot over my own.  This is art, and cooking, and it’s on a deadline.  You’re hoping to please other people by how it looks and how it tastes. It’s stressful.  Go ahead and cry.  But then get back to work.  Don’t give up.  Cakes are not for inflexible people, or for those unable to handle new situations and emergencies.  Be creative, be clever.  You can cry while you do it, but as Tim Gunn says, “Make it work!”

I would recommend not talking too much about details before the cake is done, if you can avoid it.  As a beginner, you need flexibility.  I’ve been lucky enough to have friends who have been pretty broad in their comissions - “something to do with chemistry and science,” “something from Katamari” or “a dragon.”  Those are nice.  You need to be willing and able to shift your plans based on how things are working out.  The dead cow cake was originally supposed to be quite well and alive, but the head refused to stay on the body.  I didn’t have a good enough support structure, so it fell over, taking a good chuck on body with it.  I went comatose for about a half hour with my husband trying (very valiiantly) to cheer me up and inspire me to try something else.  Fortunately, the friend it was for has a very big sense of humor and liked the idea of a dead cow trussed up for dinner.

Almost every cake is different from how I originally pictured it in my mind.  Most of the time, I like the outcome even better.  But this is why I generally avoid making very detailed sketches, and try to feel out how flexible the person is.  It’s very difficult to make a cake that’s exactly what the perosn wanted and pictured, particularly if they really had an exact outcome in mind.  So we must bow our heads in respect to the pros who has been able to consistently manage this.

I’ve never claimed to be professional, which is useful.  It keeps my cakes off Cake Wrecks (for now) and my mistakes aren’t as big a deal (to everyone else anyhow).  Speaking of that blog, it’s one of those things that you will be told about ten times a month once the news that you’re doing cakes is out.  You’ll also hear about the show Ace of Cakes on Food Network, as well as any number of their Cake Challenges.  Don’t get annoyed, it’s just the way it goes.  All those shows and the blog are awesome, they really do help inspire you.  Once you learn to watch closely enough, you’ll learn some good techniques too.  Cake Wrecks is great for reminding you that, not matter how bad you may sometimes think you are, there are people out there doing far, far worse and getting paid for it.  So buck up.

I’m not sure I ever want to go pro.  I’m happy taking my small commissions here and there.  Ace of Cakes talks about that often - if it’s your job to do cakes, well then, it’s going to feel like a job.  You may love it enough to overcome that, but a lot of professionals don’t even like eating cake anymore, they get sick of it.  I still think about it.  I think about opening a little restaurant or a catering/event business too.  But these are, while interesting and doable for me, very exhausting and stressful.  It’s one thing to stress over a cake/party/food for a loved one, but something else entirely to feel the same priority for a cranky, picky stranger who doesn’t understand the work involved.

Enjoy making cakes, enjoy eating them (till you get tired of sweet things) and keep reminding yourself that it’s supposed to be fun.  It takes time to develop skills, so make sure you’re amused by the journey.

My first attempt at a corset cake came with many learnings. I shall share these with you, so that we may better the world together by bringing forth greater sexy cakes.

First of all, don’t use a soft cake recipe or a cake mix for a cake that needs to hold its shape. Even if it’s not very tall and doesn’t have a lot to support, you should really stick with a recipe that’s between cake and pound cake, with a fine crumb (texture). Because fondant is heavy, and soft cakes just aren’t made for it.

Secondly, I envy those of you with air conditioning. Even with a bunch of fans blowing around, I realized very quickly that trying to decorate a cake in the heat of summer is a very unpleasant experience. The fondant is softer (which makes it easier to work with, but then it wasn’t holding it’s ‘pinstrip’ look as well).

You can look at the original shape of the cake with only the crumb-coat right here compared to the completed cake at top, and you may notice how much bigger the boobs used to be. That poor torso went from a D to an A-cup, due to these two problems. Likely just having the better cake recipe would have helped tremendously. I also might consider doing the fondant over the boobs separately to get the shape just right. It’s an idea, anyhow. I plan on doing another corset cake in the future, and hope that it will have a whole lot more outrageous va-VOOM to it

So anyhow. I wanted to really make this feel 3D, as a lot of corset cakes I’ve seen tend to be rather boxy and the front is too flat. I added an extra strip down the stomach to carve into a more realistic shape and was really happy with it, as well as the curve of the hips and how well the fondant hugged them. Really, the boobs are the main thing I’m disappointed about.  Just wait till next time… I’ll have enough scheming for it.

The painting (done in this photo by Pip, who was helping me that day) is just food coloring and water, which leaves it shiny and tacky. This is where having a food-grade airbrush would be kinda awesome, but ohwell. I work with what I have. I get tools slowly. This time, I got a roller that let me do this pinstrip effect. You’ll want to press deeply, because of how it flattens a bit when painted.

This little fella was for a young man’s birthday. It’s a vanilla cake with chocolate frosting. For a tastier result, I used marzipan (a sweet almond paste) rather than fondant for the scales, which were just individually shaped by hand and applied. You can get a more refined look by rolling out and cookie-cutting smaller circles, but I didn’t mind the more imperfect cartoony look for this one. I made little wings as well, probably the only thing distinguishing it from a dinosaur. The eyes and claws are fondant, simply because I wanted them to be very white, and marzipan is that light beige-almond color.

I brushed on silver luster dust to give it that fantasy shimmery look. If you mix luster dust with a tiny bit of grain alcohol, you get an edible metallic paint, which would be another way to go for a bigger wow.

How are these for cute baby shower cupcakes? The new mom and dad are both geeks and gamers, and babies are both adorable and delicious, so pikmin seemed a perfect choice.

The cake is a simple vanilla-almond with simple whipped icing. The pikmin themselves are made of marzipan, which is a nice sweet almond paste. It’s easy to mold, doesn’t dry hard, and is much more tasty than fondant (no matter how much flavoring you try and add).

The pikmin were a process to make. I had originally intended on them being much, much smaller and then ‘burying’ them into the center of the cupcake (digging a hole for them to fit) so that just their ’stems’ would be showing. It would be very true to the game, but I’d have to put floral wire in the stems to keep them upright. I didn’t want to put anything inedible in them, so I tried this instead. Ended up being fun to give them all some personality (for plantlike drones).

I used the same cake recipe I had been using for the past several cakes, which is a middle ground between standard cake and pound cake, so it’s denser and better able to withstand sculpting or the weight of tiers. In a slice of cake, you don’t always notice that, but in a cupcake, it stood out. But it was complimented, people liked that it was a richer, firmer cake. Coolness.

This was a small cake done for a friend, who commissioned it as an anniversary surprise for his wife. The cake inside is vanilla with a pale orange cream filling. Their wedding colors had been deep and light purple (lavender and lilacs), very classic and clean.

The design is pretty straightforward and simple: two tiers of square cake covered in icing and white fondant with twined ‘rope’ and flowers, all fondant. Then on top, a white box, within he hid another present to her, some custom jewelry. Seriously! How sweet is that?

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!