Birthday Cake #2

          Birthday Cake #2

One of you may remember ONE YEAR AGO, when I made my first birthday cake for my boy's first. Still a masterpiece if you ask me. But who’s asking right?


So this is year two of Mr Pant’s super exciting life, and I am still young and dumb enough to tackled another giant cake project. You know, I remember seeing pictures from when we were but wee lads, and my mother would make these amazingly decorated cakes. I wonder how many years it took her to finally get sick of doing that? Well, I suppose I will know soon enough.

To prevent a complete and utter catastrophe from happening on the big day, I did a test version of my cake first. Below is the, uhm, somewhat edible results. I’m going to make a four piece lego cake. And wrap it all in colored fondant. I’ve never done this before. So join me as I royally screw up my boys birthday. Remember this is only a test, the real deal is being cooked this Friday.



I’m wrapping the cake with a marshmallow fondant. It’s just marshmallows and powdered sugar, with a smidgen of water, flavoring, and coloring. How hard can that be right? Actually, it’s easy to make, just really messy.



Not to self: never, ever stick your finger in a steaming hot powl of melted marshmallows right after you take it out of the microwave. Although, it does work nicely as a chemical peal. Facial anyone?



Tada! One hard ball of lego blue fondant. Okay, well maybe sky blue. Next time I need to put four times the coloring in.




My cake was not very fluffy. It was good, but not fluffy. I think I know why. Here’s the whipped egg whites and the rest of the mixed dough. And I’m suppose to gently fold those two substances together? It’s like blending a bowl of whipped cream and a bowl of clay. Something is just not right here. Combining those together smoothly so that the finished product is a spongy and fluffy cake dough isn’t going to happen. That would be like saying go punch that dude in the nose but don’t hurt him.



I knew something was amiss. Turns out that the milk I put in it was ice cold. As if I didn’t know. It made the dough really stiff and unmixable. All the egg whites went flat. But that’s why I did this little experiment prior to the real birthday cake this weekend. So I can fuck it up now, and know where I need to change things later. This weekend I will warm the milk, at least room temp.

Before wrapping the fondant, I slathered a thick layer of buttercream frosting on. It allows the fondant to adhere to the cake. For the final cakes, one will be lemon frosting, and the other ones chocolate.



I made myself a fondant rolling table dealy. A thin smooth sheet of particle board type material. And two railings 1/8 inch thick to serve as gauges for the fondant, and a huge wooden stick to roll it out. My rolling pin wasn’t wide enough, so I made my own. Worked fabulous.



That’s what the killer box of plastic wrap did to my finger. It was deep too. Like a paper cut on steroids. And yes, that is blood all over the rolling pin. I didn’t even see it until it was too late. And would I still serve a cake with blood rolled into my fondant you ask? Well, just be glad you’re not invitied.



Now this is the hard part. Everything else is just time consuming, especially given how many cake and icing recipes I need to make. But I’ve never done fondant until now. Well last year I did two stripes of fondant on the treasure chest cake, but that was hardly rolling a cake in the stuff.



I was really tempted to Photoshop the hell out of this cake. I could have easily made it look absolutely flawless in Photoshop. But I figured it was funner to see how jacked up it looks. I thought I would need to cut the edges to make the fondant lay flat. And, you can see how that went. Looks like I used a dull rusty carving knife huh? But then I just gave it a shot, and discovered the fondant can fairly easily be laid over the corner without cutting it. I won’t show you the other two corners, I need some pride left over you know.





I had intended on cutting out small cakes for the top pieces, and rolling them in fondant. Buuuuuut, dang that would add a few hours of work onto my already overloaded cooking day. So screw that. Simple fondant cutouts is all they get. Damnit.

This is what the cake will look like after it’s finished. Wait, no, this is what the cake might look like after it’s finished. Okay okay, this is what I want the cake to look like. Well, in reality, my finished cake will be but a shadow of this perfect specimen of Lego.



So what did I learn? I learned that I need to make 5 cake recipes, and to have enough ingredients to make at least 6 for the inevitable jacked up one. I also learned that I will need enough candy coloring to turn the skin blue of anyone who eats the cake. I also learned that I will be making it from the time I rise on Friday morning, till I drop that night.