Iron Man, Dr. Who, Princess Batman?!

Despite the insanity of the last year, I have actually managed to take a few cake orders here and there. I wanted to make a post about each of them and tell you all about them... but here I am, it's August and I haven't posted a single one. So instead, you get some pics and a brief description. Sorry I'm not caught up enough on this for there to be more... I was baking cakes. ;)

One sweet little boy requested an Iron Man cake for his fourth birthday. Having failed miserably as a mother for my own son's Iron Man cake request by buying one from the local grocery store (he has yet to let me live that one down- he's six and it was for his fourth birthday), I felt maybe I could redeem myself a bit on this one. I didn't go the usual three dimensional route. Rather, I decided to go more comic book style, fashioning three panels from fondant and inking/painting on each with edible inks/paints. The result is below. My favorite part though was the reaction of my client and her little boy, both of which were ecstatic.


Follow this up with another comic book themed cake. Must be the year for it. Or I just keep doing cakes for little boys. This time I was redeeming myself with my own son. He and his sister shared a birthday party this year. I'm a single mom who had just moved to a new town less than two weeks prior. Most of my life was still in boxes. For this one year, I figured one party was enough. But I couldn't do one cake. I tried. He wanted Batman, she wanted a "strawberry butterfly princess" cake. I offered up Princess Batman- pink cape, utility belt holding a curling iron and lipstick, pearl studs in the bat ears... but no, neither went for it. Pity really. And so instead I did two cakes- one Batman and one "strawberry butterfly princess." The results are below.

Batman Cake- three layer dark chocolate cake with dark chocolate buttercream filling and almond buttercream frosting. City scape and Batman insignia are fashioned from sugar sheets.


Strawberry Butterfly Princess Cake- She's three, so I was stuck with a few requirements rather than just one. Still, the result was a strawberry cake filled with a strawberry buttercream puree and topped with strawberry buttercream frosting. Fondant crown painted with edible paints, butterfly suckers, and a chocolate cake butterfly painted with luster dust. It's not my favorite cake, but she was happy, thus I was happy.

After that it was time to do a birthday cake for a bigger boy. His wife requested the TARDIS from Dr. Who. She said she wanted either style A- paint on fondant panels a la Iron Man cake or style B- a slightly three dimensional version laying down on the cake... I opted for style C, which was a whole lot harder and a whole lot more me. The TARDIS itself took nearly a full week to create. It's not fully edible- sorry, I knew it would take too long and I'd be using gum paste to do it- and no one wants to eat that anyway- so I built the under portion out of foam. Everything on top of that (for the most part) is edible... should you really want to eat it.

Dr. Who Cake- Gum paste TARDIS carefully sculpted and hand painted with edible inks.

It was paired with a yummy galaxy cake- triple layer vanilla lemon cake with two filled layers- lemon curd filling for one and strawberry puree buttercream for the other. Frosted with a lemon zest buttercream and painted with luster dust and powder colors.

My final cake for the month of July was simple in decoration, though a bit trickier in the cake itself. A college grad, daughter of a previous client, had requested I do the cake for her college graduation. Her flavor request- chocolate and Nutella. That was a new one for me, so I set out looking for sample recipes and finally found a cake recipe, a filling recipe and a frosting recipe that I would build off of. The result is below-

Rose-Hulman Graduation Cake- a dense flourless three layer chocolate hazelnut cake filled with chocolate-Nutella frosting between the layers, as well as a layer of hazelnuts for added crunch, and a dark chocolate ganache covering. I hand painted the Rose-Hulman crest onto a sugar sheet for the center of her cake. Simple and clean look, delicious chocolate fudgy cake.

And so that's it for now. Hopefully I won't wait another year before posting pics this time. ;)

(Note: Photos for the last two cakes will be updated in the near future. Right now they are lower quality cell phone photos.)