Cute Pony Cake

I was asked to make a birthday cake for a 3 year old girl who loves ponies, and this cake was the result!

I put a lot of elements into this cake, from the cereal treat/ fondant/ modeling chocolate pony adorning the top of the cake to the little molded, hand painted fondant ponies running around the sides.  I tied everything together with buttercream grass and fondant fantasy flowers.

To make the top pony, I molded rice krispies treats around some skewers and toothpicks.  Here he is with 3 legs...

Then I covered the whole thing in a blend of modeling chocolate and fondant.

It was hot and humid, and I had a terrible time with things melting.  I had to trim down the skewers and in the process the legs almost buckled.  So the pony had pretty big feet when all was said and done, but at least he pulled through. :)

I used a clay gun to extrude stringy fondant for the mane and tail, then I added little bows.  I covered the whole body in white sparkle luster dust to add to the fantasy/ girliness of the whole thing.

 The birthday girl's name was Pam, so I put it on little hearts on the pony's body.  Here is the completed pony:

Meanwhile, I baked, stacked, filled, and iced my chocolate blackout cake with buttercream icing.  I stuck 4 straws into the cake to support the pony's feet, and stuck him on with a little buttercream. 

I iced this cake using the upside-down technique, though I ended up re-smoothing the top because of air bubbles and wrinkles in the parchment.  However, I was really happy with the result.  Then, I molded 4 fondant ponies in a chocolate mold and hand painted each one with various luster dusts in purple, blue, and pink.

They were heavier than I'd envisioned, so I had to let them rest on the board a little bit.  Also, if I had it to do over, I would have painted the details on after they were on the cake so that the surface would have been less dry when I went to attach them to the rounded cake side.

Then I started adding some green pastures, and a triple shell border around the top.

I finished the whole thing off with some fondant fantasy flowers, and piped in the centers.

Happy Birthday to Pam and I hope she liked her pony cake!

Quilted Fantasy Flower Cake

This cake was made for my friend Tamera for her masters defense, which was this morning. :)

I started and finished this cake yesterday.  However, the 'finished' part was easier said than done...  Some cakes just don't share your vision.  This cake was a lesson in patience and structural integrity.

I made my favorite Chocolate Blackout Cake, and this time I decided to torte the layers.  This might have been bad idea number 1.  Then, I opted to create my own white chocolate cream cheese filling on the fly, which tasted great, but was very soft.  Using this to fill AND cover the cakes might have been bad idea number 2.  To make a long story short, the first time I covered this cake in fondant, it was a) lopsided, b) lumpy, and c) a general cake-tastrophe.  And that was at 11 PM...

Oy.  This was round 2, after I ripped off the fondant, removed most of my icing, and lobbed off the top layer.  My 'tall cake' concept got shorter.  Fortunately, this cake didn't need to serve too many people, so it didn't matter that it shrunk...

I had to make good old-fashioned sturdy, crusting, class buttercream to cover the sides and top of this cake to prevent any additional filling from oozing out between the layers.  Then I let this cake set up in the fridge, and re-covered it in my light yellow fondant.

The fondant still wasn't as cooperative as I would have liked, but you can see it looks pretty good after the quilting, which I did with the PME quilting tool and a ruler.

Then, I had already made these fantasy flowers (which I made up on my own) earlier in the day:

I made them using slightly stiffened fondant and concentric circle cookie cutters, which I then trimmed into 5 petal flowers and thinned just like the fondant roses I showed you a few posts ago.  For the centers, I used tylo glue (made from Tylose powder  and water)  to affix a bunch of 2 mm silver dragees and 5 stamen (these are store-bought-- Wilton).

I had also made some leaves out of white fondant, which I dusted with some Nu Silver luster dust.  The last thing I did was create some stems, which I hand rolled, dusted with luster dust, and attached to the cake using Tylo glue.

By 2 AM, it looked like a cake.

I also piped a bead border around the bottom with some regular buttercream.

I managed to win the fight with this cake-- well, more or less. :)

So what's coming up?

Well, next Saturday I have a class on embossed buttercream, where we'll learn to use impression mats, make pearls, and make a loopy gum paste bow.

Also, I'm thinking about entering a cake competition at the end of June.  It's a little bit complicated, because I have commitments for 4 days prior to it, and the cake HAS to be real-- no dummies!  But I think I have a strategy... Work on elements for this cake will commence very shortly.

Finally, I got some new supplies from Global Sugar Art today, including pink cake boxes!  So now I'll have some nice looking packaging for the cakes I give away, and I'm working on coordinated labels for the boxes...  I'll show you when I get everything set!

Have a great week...