Ambulance Cake

Our niece was turning 3, and wanted an Ambulance cake for her Ambulance-themed birthday party!  So I made a 3-layer Dark Chocolate cake with a Bavarian Cream filling and Vanilla Buttercream icing- all covered in fondant.  Excuse the sad photos- I couldn't find my camera so had to resort to my cell phone camera.

 

Ambulance pre-party- notice the Lego carnage on the table :)

Inside the cake after the birthday girl sliced into it!

Birthday Girl posing with her cake and her big sister:) She was the envy of the park with her custom cake!

Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?!

Why, Spongebob Squarepants of course! Here is a WASC with strawberry filling and a vanilla buttercream icing covered in fondant that resembles our favorite sea sponge.

Father's Day BBQ Cake

I made a BBQ for my dad for Father's Day. 

It is a Chocolate WASC cake with a White Chocolate Ganache filling (2 C Whipping Cream whipped, 16oz melted White Chocolate chips, blended together then chilled for 1 hour prior to applying it to the cake).
The cake is covered with vanilla Fondant. The flames, burgers and hotdogs are colored vanilla fondant.

Baby Grand Piano Cake

My cousin Chuck graduated from high school last week! He is going to school to be a pastor!  He has an AMAZING gift to play and compose the piano, so for his graduation I wanted to do something special. I made him his very own baby grand. Now, it didn't last the night, but it was pretty yummy :)

The cake was a Chocolate WASC with Vanilla Buttercream frosting and Bavarian Cream Filling. The cake is covered with Black Fondant and is on a cake stand that my husband made after I carved the cake.   Here are the pictures showing how I made the cake:

The pictures below are of the following points in the process.
1) Newly carved cake- no icing.
2) Bavarian Cream filling.
3) Crumb coating on the cake.
4) Fondant covered cake.
5) Almost done! Accent pieces placed on cake, ready for transport.
6) The final cake- ready to be cut into.

Coffin Brownie Cake

Here you see a very sad picture of my coffin cake- I will take better pictures when it is finished- this is just my rough draft :)  This coffin "cake" is actually a mix of gooey chocolatey brownies with caramel (Here is your chocolate Roberta!). I cheated and used a boxed mix for the brownies (but added chocolate chunks and caramel bits because thats how I like my brownies!), and used the "cake-like" recipe instead of the "fudge-like" recipe listed on the box.  I baked the brownies in a 13"x9" pan for 40 minutes (remember, it was a double batch!).  When I took the pan out of then oven, I allowed the brownies to cool for 10 minutes, then flipped the pan and removed the sheet of brownies. *Don't forget to use cake release or line the pan with foil or waxed paper- it can be a pain to separate the brownies and caramel from the bottom of the pain- trust me on that one!

While the brownies were baking, I made a double batch of rice krispie treats (some will be used for the Haunted House to be made tomorrow, some for the coffin brownie, and some to take to the peeps at work- they hate my cooking ;) ). 

I carved the brownies to look like a old standard wood coffin, and its depth is approximately 2".  I then cut a set of rice krispies to mirror the brownie coffin piece.  Once I set the rice krispies on top of the brownie, I cut out the middle to leave space for a final resting place for the fondant skeleton you see here:

The middle piece that I cut out will then be used as the lid that will be slid off enough to peek inside and see the skeleton. 

I plan to cover all pieces in brown fondant to give the appearance of a wooden coffin, and I will give the skeleton a pillow to rest his bony head! These steps will be completed Friday night to prepare for the Saturday party! :)

Fondant Figures

These are my Fondant creations. I purchased the fondant (no, I'm not quite confident enough to make my own- but someday I tell you, someday I WILL make my own Fondant) in two colors- black and white.  So far I have managed to make a spooky tree (that was my first attempt), an almost-complete skeleton (notice he is missing hands and feet, and his head is a little too small for his body), some cute black cats (who happen to be missing eyes and whiskers at the moment) and some fondant-covered marshmallow ghosts (aren't they cute?!). 

Making my fondant creations has been extremely therapeutic; however, they can be quite time consuming when attempting to make anatomically correct skeletal bones, and not speshul looking cats.  Although I am sure my mad skills will improve with time, I am pretty happy for my first attempt at making fondant figures for my spooky Halloween cake!

Sorry no recipe on this one- HOWEVER, I highly recommend using a fondant made by a local cake supply company, or purchasing flavored fondant online. I tried using the Wilton brand fondant, and was very sad to say that it was very difficult to work with and was not very yummy... the black fondant I bought at Pila's Pantry in Temecula, CA tastes like tootsie rolls, and the white fondant tastes like white chocolate- yum! I will post more of my spooky Halloween creations when I finish them later this week!