chocolate - I'm Topsy Turvy

Avengers birthday cake

February 6, 2013 by Ashlee · 8 Comments

When I got an avengers cake order for a sweet little boy I was SOOO excited. I’m a total geek deep down and I love all things hero, comic book, etc…

avengers-carved-birthday-cake-shield-hammer-glove-Tesseract

I was given free reign to do what I want and have fun. The only request was to have hulk hands and 3 D effect of some kind. ree reign is always a mix of super fun and very hard! Too much freedom

I actually went through about 6 drafts of this cake. When I finally came up with this plan I swear I heard a chours of hallelujahs, “Aaaahhhhhhh”.

avengers-carved-birthday-cake-hulk-hands-iron-man-gloves

Captain America’s shield being held up by the Hulk hands and Iron man’s gloves/hands, topped off with Thors hammer and the Tesseract!

I started it by shaping the hands out of rice krispy treats on the back of the 14 inch pan I used for the shield. I used two 12 inch cake plates and plastic hidden pillars to create the separation/wrists. I started out with pretty small iron man hands, but they kept breaking so they ended up MUCH fatter and thicker than I wanted.

Once they dried I flipped it over! Voila! Then I covered them with royal icing and then fondant! I spray painted the hulk hands green and the iron man gloves red, adding nails, and armor plating to each afterwards.

for the Shield I started with a 14 inch cake, that I carved into a dome.

frosted with chocolate ganache frosting, and then fondant.

to get the stripes I wrapped it in plastic, then cut a 9 inch hole. Then placed a 6 inch pan over the center leaving a 2 1/2 in strip! I airbrushed it…

then placed a 12 inch pan down and airbrushed the outside edge.

Take it all off and you have the stripes! I hand painted the blue triangles to create the white star.

I placed the shield into the hands! It was PERFECT!!!! I was so excited!!!

The hammer was easy, just a rectangle with the edges cut off at angles, ganache, fondant and some detail work. Finishing it off with some silver airbrushing.

The tesseract is another easy one, a square cake, covered in ganache and fondant. To try to get the inside look like it was glowing I spray painted different layers, silver overall, blue edges, pearl centers, more silver, more blue, etc… I’m really happy with how turned out!

Then I delivered the cake and set it up! Stacking as I went. I love love LOVE it!!! While there is always something I’d change about each cake it totally lived up to my vision of it!

I seriously took SO many pictures because I was so excited it came out so well!

I don’t often use my airbrushing gun, but I love the texture it created and depth on each cake layer! This entire cake is all white fondant and all the color comes from the paint!

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So… whose your favorite super hero? And what would you have wanted on your Avengers cake?

barbie standing guitar cake

October 24, 2012 by Ashlee · 6 Comments

I was tickled when my friend Holly asked if I could make a cake for her daughters Barbie – The Princess & The Popstar Birthday Party! When she asked if I could do a guitar cake I was even MORE excited!!! How totally awesome!!! You know me, I can’t just make a guitar cake… I have to make a STANDING guitar cake!

I enlarged a guitar shape in photoshop and used it to draw an electric guitar shape in 3/4 in thick wood. Then I cut it out with my jig saw! My kids love the Barbie movies so I quickly bought the new one for “research” to get the shape of the guitar just like the one in the movie.

once I cut it out I created shelves of more wood as well as built out the neck of guitar and covered it all with aluminum foil (we don’t want our cake/food touching raw wood!!!) Then I added rice krispy treats to the bottom, cause it’s light weight, and “glued” it in place with ganache, royal icing works too.

Then I started stacking the cake to the shape, also using Ganache to “glue” it together. You can choose to stack it the way I did, from the back, or upright, from the shelves. It took two oval cakes to get the right height, I barely had to carve any off the top!!! It was perfect!

To create the standing I screwed some metal corner brackets to the base (I used my jig saw and cut a star) and to the guitar shape. THEN I bent it back to the angle I thought would work best (and not fall over).

I covered the body of the guitar in purple, then sprayed it with a pearl sheen to glitter-fy it! then added the fondant to the neck! Time to add all the details!!!

I dried fondant ovals to some covered wire and stuck them out the back for the string tighter’s. To hold the string I screwed some, well, screws right through the fondant into the wood.

on the other end I tied the string to some straight pins and shoved them right into the cake!

I covered the screws with fondant and I left some of the string hanging out, to look more real. I used upholstery string for the thickness.

And covered the other end with more fondant!

A close up of the details…

And the full guitar! I am still SOOO in love with how it turned out!!! Eeeek! I’d love love LOVE to create a realistic looking guitar, painting the fondant to look like real wood… anyone NEED one?

Filed Under: cake tutorial, Cakes, carved, Party cakes · Tagged With: airbrush, chocolate, fondant, gygi, thread

White Trash Trailer cake

September 13, 2012 by Ashlee · 35 Comments

I love love LOVE two things best when cake decorating- a fun cake design and making a cake for someone I know! This cake had both! When Jesseca from One Sweet Appetite asked if I could make a cake for a going away party she was throwing I said of course! When she said she wanted a white trash trailer I about DIED! I was SO excited!!!

The cake is the trailer… everything else is fondant… but the details MAKE it! I wish I’d taken a better picture of underneath the trailer… I made little fondant cinder blocks to cover the dowels holding the cake up! I’m SO in love with it all!

I took two layers of 8 inch chocolate cake and “glued” them together with chocolate Ganache. Then placed it on the side and started carving! Jesseca choose the tear drop shape (or canned ham) trailer! Then covered it with whipped Ganache.

I covered it with grey fondant and used a pizza cutter to create lines on the sides of the cake. then “glued” on the details with vodka (or clear vanilla if you’d rather). This is when it got late and I forgot to take more pictures- (although I instagramed a few…) dang it… but I sprayed it silver and hand created all the rest of the details out of fondant.

See? Silver… The fondant board is just covered with brown fondant and then to create the dirt look/feel I added Cocoa! In fact I used the cocoa on my fingers to rub along the details of the cake (once the silver was dry) and give it a “dirty” look! After that it’s all about the details… tires, rocks, stairs, curtains…

I created an aged, broken down, tufted couch (more cocoa for dirt) in this “lovely” color- going for an out of date aged couch… (and crumpled beer can on the ground)

My favorite pieces is probably this broken folding chair! Actually my broken version broke, so it’s TWICE broken, how white trash is THAT!

I made a TV for our trailer dwellers… I wanted to BREAK it, but I couldn’t figure how the best way to do that, so I added aged rabbit ears instead.

And of course our random, long grass/weeds around our mounds of “dirt” and old broken down tires… (and more dirt)

The TOILET… one of the few requests Jesseca gave me, that and the random beer cans around. I made 4 different toilets trying to get it JUST right. I’m dying I’m so in love with how it turned out!

I love my trailer cake and I hope you all do to!

Filed Under: Cakes, carved, Party cakes · Tagged With: carved, chocolate, fondant

Utah Truffles- review and giveaway

June 15, 2012 by Ashlee · 15 Comments

I have a treat for you today:

TRUFFLES!!!!! You.are.welcome. Don’t you wish you had a scratch and sniff monitor??? A few months ago I got to tour the Utah Truffles factory, and let me tell you it was AMAZING!!!! I think I gained 12 lbs just breathing in the air in there!!! Seriously delicious!

Do you recognize this label? If your local you’d better, these are seriously the BEST tasting truffles I’ve EVER had, and let’s just say I’ve had more than my fair share of truffles in my life. If you haven’t head over to the Find A Store page and find your local source of Utah Truffles and buy one- you’ll thank me (or not depending on how many you end up buying )

I DRAGGED my sister along to be an official photographer (she didn’t mind ONE bit) and we headed up with our kiddo’s right after dance class! The girls LOVED their special hair nets and did a great job following us around as we drooled!

These truffles are gluten free and made of high quality natural ingredients and Belgian chocolate. First they melt the truffle mixture and mix it up really well (with a drill and huge mixing paddle just like when I mix up mortar for tiling!) then they pour it on to these tables to cool!

See how it’s getting dull? it’s cooling, they have a bunch of tables with chocolate at various stages of cooling! (I LOVE seeing how things are made!)

You can tell this one is ready to go! They removed the metal bars holding the chocolate in already…

then cut them into truffles or bar shapes and place them on trays. This was a HUGE 6 ft tall rolling shelving unit FULL of truffles (I promise I didn’t sneak any… but how awesome would a sheet of these be???)

Time for a chocolate shower!!!!! They separate the cut chocolate truffle and place them on the conveyor belt to get their outer chocolate layer… This is better than watching krispy kreme donuts get a shower of icing!

Mmmmmm, This just SCREAMS for a spoon, or fondue sticks… fondue sticks with the truffle filling on the ends. I didn’t of course- food standards of cleanliness and all, but it would be fun!!

And AFTER the shower of chocolate- out the other end… (have I mentioned my love for factories and assembly lines? We LOVE that show “how it’s made” at our house)

Then they continue down the belt cooling (taunting me) and getting ready to be packaged! This totally reminds me of “I love Lucy”- I’d totally be stuffing a few in my mouth/hat/clothing while packageing them up!!!

And some really good news for you white chocolate lovers out there, they had these AMAZING lemon white chocolate truffles we got to try and have plans for white chocolate peppermint for the holidays later this year, Mmmmm. I hope they are ready soon!

I also LOVE cool machines, we got there just as they started lunch so I totally missed this machine in ACTION, but how TOTALLY cool would this be to operate? They had a whole wall of all their brands and packaging as well!

And finally everything in packages ready to ship out to your local store or sold on their website!!!! I love the toffee ones, my mom loved the almond and my sister loved the mint! My kids loved the chocolate dipped treats, oreos, cinnamon bears, orange slices and pretzels. My husband liked the orange and raspberry flavored truffles!

So who wants to win some Truffles? Utah Truffles is SERIOUSLY generous have given me 2 giftcards to their website! The first winner get’s a $50 Giftcard to their website and the second get’s a $25 Giftcard.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Filed Under: giveaway, review · Tagged With: chocolate