Wednesday, October 31, 2001

Vampire Cake. (October 2001)

Dan bought me the Wilton "Smiling Skull" pan as a gift. He left it in the oven for me to find. I was totally surprised. I love Dan. With the pan come instructions on how to decorate a cake as a vampire, too. So I thought it would be a great idea to make one for the little party at Joe and Mike's place for the season premiere of "Buffy." Unfortunately, I ended up not having time to bake it, because I was working on the Goodnight Moon cake, but I thought I'd make it for the season premiere of "Charmed" instead. Better late than never.

The cake fit nicely on a 14" board. It was actually a fairly simple cake to decorate. It's mostly just purple stars covering the face. i had to build the nose manually, by building up stars on top of each other in the shape of a nose. For the hair, rather than set aside a separate amount of icing to dye black, I just mixed together all my leftover icing and added black food coloring until it was dark enough.

Problems: So I made a cake mix, poured it into the pan, put it in the oven, and suddenly realized I hadn't put the eggs in!! So I quickly took it back out, poured the mix back into my mixer, and added the eggs. It seemed to turn out just fine in the end.

Saturday, October 20, 2001

Superman Cake. (October 2001)

Another season premiere cake. This one is for the series premiere of Smallville, about the life of the young Clark Kent. I used the Wilton Handsome Man pan, which I got on ebay awhile back and I've been dying to try it out. I used a chocolate cake mix and buttercream icing. Usually, I just use vanilla in the icing, but this time I put 2/3 vanilla and 1/3 almond, which made for a very nice combination. As a rule, I tend to avoid almond in food I make for other people, mainly out of habit because my mother is (or at least used to be) allergic to them.

I decorated this largely during the commercial breaks of "Angel". Note that for a change I didn't use tip 16 stars to cover the surface. I went for the smooth look instead, and things turned out fairly well. It was kind of a rush job because I wanted to get to bed on time for a change. (I didn't, by the way.) One trick I've learned to save on the amount of icing I make is that when I need black icing (in this case for the hair & eyebrows), I wait til the end and mix the other leftover icing together and add black food coloring until it's black enough to use.

Problems: As you can see, this is not the world's handsomest depiction of Superman. He almost looks a little more like Bizarro, except the S on his chest is facing the right way. I've never been good with drawing faces, and apparently drawing with icing doesn't improve things any. Also, it's not a problem, but it almost was: this cake is pretty long from head to toe--about 16". I'm glad I still had a couple 16" rounds & boxes left or I don't know what I would have done.

Monday, October 15, 2001

Goodnight Moon Cake. (October 2001)


Well, one thing I have got to say about this cake, if nothing else, it was a huge success. I made it for a baby shower for a friend of my mother. Everyone gave books as gifts, and they wanted a cake shaped like a book. I decided to make a cake with a design from Goodnight Moon, one of my favorite books as a child. It took a while to decide on exactly what design to use, but in the end I chose the cover, minus a few details. The thing I'm proudest of on this cake is the colors. They're so true to the original. Also, the cow. I was *SO* scared I wasn't going to be able to draw a cow in icing, but it turned out great. I got a lot of compliments from people at the shower.

Problems: I wasn't overly happy with the lettering on this cake. Kind of messy. I wish I'd taken a little more time to practice a bit before putting it on the cake, but I was rushed to meet a deadline, and it certainly turned out well enough in the end. Also, the cake kind of...well...fell apart when I was transferring it from the cooling rack to the cake board. My fault, really. I should have just flipped it back into the pan, and then from the pan onto the board instead of skipping the middleman. But some icing held it back together again, and my mom said nobody noticed. Since then, I've always used the pan to get the cake onto the board. As far as decorating it goes, I wish I hadn't outlined the folds in the curtains in black. I thought I would like the effect, but i think it looks kinda bad, unlike the black outlines on the other half of the cake, which look just right.

Monday, October 01, 2001

Beth and David's Birthday Cake. (September 2001)


I did this for Lee's twins.