How-To: Li'l horsie!

Seems the world loves little horsies, so here's how I made the cute little one from Samantha's birthday cake!

First, here's what we need:

2 football-ish shaped balls for the body and face, 2 small and 2 large cones for the legs, a different colored fondant for the accents and a 3rd color for mane and tail.

I stamped out little circles for the hooves and the nose, and wrapped them around the legs and the head, like so:

Then I added 2 tiny balls and pricked them in the middle with a toothpick to make nostrils, and made a little crooked, smiling mouth just for the cuteness factor.

Put it all together with fondant glue (a little pinch of tylose powder in a couple of teaspoons of water) or water. The larger cones are the hind legs, the smaller in the front.

Add some details, like mane and tail (I like to use a garlic press for perfect hair) and soon we have this cute little guy.

Birthday Cake: Samantha!

This is Samantha's 2nd birthday cake. Samantha is the cutest little girl who loves farm animals and books, so that's what her cake is - animals and books.
The cake is a 2-tier double layer cake, with 2 layers of orange cake and 2 layers of raspberry-pomegranate with raspberry/ Bavarian creme filling.

 

The little piggie ended up looking so sad, I felt bad for him, but it was so cute I decided to keep him that way.

My new obsession is flavored fondant, but I found out the hard way that once the flavoring is added it gets a lot harder to work with. After a lot of trying (and failing!) I found that mixing a little Wilton pre-made fondant in there, the texture will be 100% better to work with.

The little birthday girl with her cake. She loved it!

A couple of seconds after this picture was taken, she leaned in and took a big chomp off "her own" feet.

How-To: 3D flowers

I have gotten some questions on how I make the little 3D flowers for my cakes, like the ones on this cake:

And on this one:

So I figured I'd make a little step-by-step tutorial.

First an overview of the things you'll need:

Fondant, tylose powder, a flower-shaped cookie cutter, and a spoon. The pearl nonpareils are just for fun!

First, we add tylose powder to the fondant. This will essentially turn your fondant into gumpaste. What is the difference between gumpaste and fondant you say? Well, here's a clumsy explaination:
Fondant is a sugar paste. Gumpaste is a sugar paste with gum ingredient added, such as gum tragacanth or in this case, tylose. Because of the gum ingredient, it is a lot more stable, more elastic, can be rolled much thinner, and will dry much harder than fondant. The downside is, it won't taste as good. That's why you'll want to make little decorations out of gumpaste, but use fondant as your cake covering.

Just a little sprinkle of tylose is enough in these small pieces. On average you'll need about 3 teaspoons of tylose powder per lb of fondant, so that will give you a perspective of how little we need. If it turns too gummy on you, add some more fondant. If it gets too dry while you're working, add some glycerine, or if you're really in a pinch, some vegetable oil.

After we reach the right consistency, we roll out a thick (about 3 mm) sheet of the gumpaste, and easy-piecy use the cookie cutter to make some flowers. Don't be sad if the flowers look skinny and puny, we'll blow some life into them later.

Lift the flower gently with a butter knife or small spatula, and onto the surface of your choice. I like to use this foam from Wilton, but you can use a (clean!) sponge, a soft pile of (clean!) paper towels, a rubber place mat dusted with powdered sugar... whatever you have and feel comfortable with.

Now it's time to add some life to the flower. I like to use this tool from Wilton. There is a plethora of these tools out there, from different manufacturers, available at cake supply stores and hobby stores everywhere. If you don't want to dish out any extra cash, you can use whatever you can find around the house: the (clean!) backsode of a ballpoint pen, a tiny measuring spoon, even your little finger.
 Lightly press the ball down on each leaf of the flower, and it will spring back up and make the flower come to life. Also, press down on the middle of the flower to make an indentation where the center will be.

Next, we'll get our 2nd color fondant ready. All we need is a tiny round-ish ball to fit the center of the flower.

I like to add a pinch of tylose to a few drops of water and use as a glue for the gumpaste. Just brush on a little right where we want the pieces to adhere, like this:

Then add the little center ball:

And give it a little poke with a gumpaste tool or a toothpick.

Next, to the trick that makes the flowers 3D : Drying them in a spoon. You can use a measuring spoon, a kitchen spoon, a shot class, an egg cup, anything you can find that is hollow and round. I usually scramble up anything I can find in the kitchen. My favorites are measuring spoons, but it's fun to use different things, as they will take on different shapes and angles.
You can leave them like this, or you can ad a little nonpareil just for cuteness' sake. Or dust it with a little edible glitter or disco dust.

In the end, you should have a gumpaste flower garden in your kitchen, which is sure to drive your significant other absolutely insane. ("I can't cook lunch with all these stupid little sugar things every-freakin-where!")

But that's ok, because when you can place a baby in the middle and make a scene like this, it's pretty satisfying.

Baby Shower cake: Ani

This is a simple little lemon -strawberry cake with strawberry buttercream filling and vanilla fondant. It's relatively small, feeds approximately 15 people.

Cupcakes: Minnie Mouse

These little cuties are Minnie Mouse- cupcakes. I just made the little gumpaste bows, the birthday girl's mommy made the pink cupcakes with white chocolate chip polkadots and mini-oreo ears. Cute, or what?

Baby shower cake: Fernanda

This is a  cake with tropical flavors, perfect for a spring baby shower. It consists of layers of pineapple, orange, lemon, passion fruit and banana cake, with banana, vanilla and lemon fillings, butter cream and melon-flavored fondant. Flavor wise, it's probably one of the most elaborate cakes I ever baked. This is one of my favorite cakes ever, even though the marbled fondant originally was a mistake. I mixed vanilla and melon fondant to make the flavor less intense, and had a hard time getting an even color. Then I realized that marbling would be really cute, so I stuck with it.
The baby , blocks and teddy bear are gumpaste, everything else fondant. Everything is, of course, edible.

Kid's birthday cake: Dominic (Backyardigans)

This is a kid's first birthday cake. Dominic loves the Backyardigans, so that's the cake he got! This was the first time I experimented with the floating stars, and I think it really makes the whole cake. The clouds were made by warping a flower-shaped cookie cutter (you take what you got!) The cake is white chocolate with strawberry glaze filling and vanilla cream.