Brian's Birthday. (May 2004)

Last year, Brian wouldn't let me make him a birthday cake. He said he thought *I* made a bigger deal of his birthday than *HE* did. I kept trying, but he insisted and I finally gave in. So this year I had to be slightly sneaky, and when he came over for dinner, I didn't let him know that I remembered that it was his birthday. He seemed genuinely surprised when I revealed the cake. Steve--whom I haven't seen in almost as long as I've seen Brian--came over for dinner, too, at the last minute, which was really nice, so he got to enjoy the cake too.

The cake is a 5-tier yellow cake, the largest tier being 6" round, followed by 4 more, each one an inch smaller than the one directly underneath it. I had to rush down to Fantes during my lunch break this week to get the smaller pan sizes, since the smallest I'd had up until then was only 6". Also, it turns out, there are no batter amounts or baking times listed anywhere for cakes smaller than 6", so I had to pretty much just guess. The batter amounts were easy, actually, since I just filled each one slightly more than half full. I ended up with extra batter, so I made a extra tiers just in case, and these eventually turned into the Noddy Cakelet and the Max & Zoe Cakelet, which I'll add to the list as soon as I can.

The colors are reminiscent of the Obnoxious Spring Monday cake I did in April 2001. I've always liked clashing, obnoxious colors, and since I know Dan would dump me if I WORE colors like that, I figured I can at least use them on a cake. And I knew they'd work really well on a tiered cake like this one, where you have a lot of room to spread the colors around and see how they relate across the height of the cake. I made 6 colors total, and made each tier a different color, reserving yellow for the star border (tip #16) around the bottom of each one

Problems: A bigger cake with this design would have needed some sort of structural support to keep it from sinking into itself, but I gambled that a cake this small would survive the 36 hours it needed to without collapsing, and I was right. I did have a problem with one of the layers being slightly uneven, and I was afraid the top 3 tiers would slide off, but I proped up the cake board on one side to level it out and things were fine. Also, the last 3 layers were a little hard to ice because they're so light that the move when you press the spatula against them. I actually ended up icing the top, 2-inch later in my hand and then put it on top of the cake to add the final decorations. The last problem is that I found out the Brian's moving to California! (Swimming pools...movie stars) So this will probably be his last birthday cake for a while.

Noddy Cakelet. (May 2004)

This is actually one of the backup tiers I baked for Brian's birthday cake. It turned out I didn't need it, and lord knows I had enough extra icing, so I decorated this for Noddy and took it over to her for dessert. I believe it's a 5" round yellow cake.

Problems: No problems here. It's sloppy, but it was supposed to be. I wanted to see how that look worked on a cake. Kinda nice, actually.

Kirby's Baby Shower. (2004)

The wonderful ladies of the Slide Library commissioned this cake for a baby shower they were throwing for Kirby. They weren't specific about what they wanted, which was kinda nice, because it meant I could do what I wanted. My original plan was to do a stork theme, but I ultimately scrapped that idea when the teddy bear image popped into my head one evening while I was sketching ideas for the cake. Another trip to Fantes ensued, because I only had the big teddy bear pan, not the small one. Thanks, as always, to Jean and Ron at Fantes for their help!

For structural reasons, I went with all yellow cake, which is a lot more solid than chocolate. The bottom later is 8", and the top is 6". I used Earlene Moore's cream cheese butter cream recipe, which has become my icing of choice these days. The bear is covered in chocolate icing, which is basically just the buttercream recipe with cocoa added. I secured the teddy bear to the top of the cake with a bamboo skewer, since it had to survive the car ride to the library. (Thanks for driving, Ancil!)

The teddy bears on the side are just rolled fondant shaped in a press mold. (remember to dust the mold with cornstarch to prevent sticking--especially in this Philadelphia humidity!) I mixed brown food coloring with water and painted them. For the ears, I used a pink edible marker, and the dots on the eyes are black edible marker. I used fondant instead of gum paste for two reasons: 1) it's easier. 2) you can eat the fondant if you really want to. In retrospect, I should've thought about using chocopan, too, but I'm not sure it how much it would harden and retain it's shape. From a taste point of view, Chocopan would be the clear winner.

Problems: I wanted to do something really simple for this cake, because it was a baby cake. So I stuck to yellow and blue (it's a baby boy). It was...okay, i guess. But it really needed something more to bring it together, even with the teddy bears on the sides and top of the cake. Fortunately. I had just finished working on Brian's birthday cake, and I had several other colors already made, including a very nice pink. I added a few dots around the sides, and that seemed to do the trick wonderfully. Also, you can still see some of the guide holes I used to place the yellow stringwork around the egdes. Not a big deal, but it would have been prettier if they weren't so visible.