Dora and Boots cake - how to

I made this Dora and Boots cake for a friend of mine who's daughter turned 3. It wasn't necessarily hard to make but it did take a while! It was like making a puzzle!

I started with a 24 cm round vanilla cake which I filled with strawberry flavored butter cream. I also thinly coated the outside with it. Usually I use ganache to make the cake straight and easy to work with but the roundness of the cake was already pretty perfect so I didn't feel it was necessary.

I then coated the cake with pink marzipan and let it harden overnight. This way I could trace my Dora and Boots picture into the cake so I would have a good reference for adding all those puzzle pieces.
The picture I took from internet. It was really tiny but I have an easy way of making it exactly the right size.

I open the picture in microsoft picture viewer and zoom in until it's the size I need. I then take some sturdy paper and trace the picture right off the screen. It saves the hassle of having to blow up the picture with a copier or something and printing it out.
After the marzipan had hardened a little I took the picture and placed it on the cake. I then used a thin pointed cake decorating tool (a scriber I guess) to trace over the picture. You have to press a little so the lines go into the cake, but not too much that it goes right through the paper.

After this I cut out all the different pieces of the picture so I had little templates. And then it was just a matter of cutting them out of fondant or marzipan. The hassle was really coloring all the fondant and cutting all those little pieces. Because the picture was scribed onto the cake it was very easy to put the pieces in the right place.

I placed the eyes on top of the face because I thought it would make them stand out more, as they also do in the animation. Dora's mouth I pressed down a little to create depth, and Boots' mouth I actually just painted on (except for his tongue) because I found it too delicate to try and cut it out properly with those extra lines. The noses are also painted on.
Boots' hair stands up a little and Dora's hair rests partly on her forehead, just for a little added depth. I also scribed some of the lines into the fondant pieces (like the collar of Dora's shirt) and painted some too (like Boots' hand). 

I added some big flowers from corresponding fondant colors to the side and the name plus age on top, just to finish it off.

I think it turned out really sweet!

Cheese platter cake

I made a cheese platter cake for my dad's birthday a while back.
Everything is cake and all are different flavors.

Lawyer cake

I made this cake for a friend who is a lawyer.
She sent me pictures of the law books she uses and I made those. I also added some judge hammer cake pops.
The cake is chocolate with raspberry jam. The pops are vanilla.

Pink Floyd The Wall cake

I made this Pink Floyd The Wall cake for my hubby's birthday.

I painted the picture of the Professor on the cake. I started with the background colors and let them dry overnight. The next day I painted all the details and lines over the top making for a pretty accurate Professor!

I added vinyl record cake pops and some tiny music details to make it look just that bit better :)

On the inside it was a chocolate cake with Dulce de Leche and lemon curd filling. Yummy!

Winnie the Pooh cake

For my birthday in April (woops, that's a while back) I made a Winnie the Pooh decorated two-tier cake. It was my first time sculpting with modeling fondant. I didn't make it quite right because it kept cracking but nevertheless Pooh turned out pretty nice. My niece recognized him, and Piglet too :)
The honeypots turned out really cute.

For my dads birthday I made a cheese platter cake. It was a platter of cake shaped like different types of cheese and each had its own flavor. I'm still waiting on the pictures of that one.

For my BF I'm going to make a musical cake, because he has a super huge record collection :)

How to make Easy No-bake Mickey Mouse cake pops

I really liked the No-bake cupcake tutorial and I had been trying to figure out how to make easy Mickey Mouse Pops so here's the combo!

Easy No-bake Mickey Mouse Pops
(Also check out my other Mickey Mouse/Disney Cake Pops How to. It has some other ideas for making and sticking on the ears. And has the stick the other way.)

I made the ingredients list so you know how much you need for the amount of pops you want to make, instead of making you make a certain amount of pops or having to due complicated mathematical things to figure out how much you really need.

Materials:
- Pack of Oreo cookies (2 oreos per pop)
- Cream cheese (1/4 tablespoon per pop)
- Dark chocolate, enough to be able to dip all of them. I'd use about 500 grams for a dozen I think.
- Red sprinkles
- Mini marshmallows (or large ones if you live in a country that charges about 50 cents per mini marshmallow like me)
- royal icing (or tiny white drops)
- Lollipop sticks


Preparation

 









Take your oreos and make them into crumbs. You can do that with a food processor or if you don't have one put the cookies into a plastic ziploc bag. Push the air out and zip the bag closed. Take a rolling pin and roll over the bag until the cookies are crumbs.
Now mix the cookie crumbs with the cream cheese until you get a dough like substance. Put this in the fridge for about 15 minutes.

Now if you have mini marshmallows you can skip this part, otherwise:

Take a few big marshmallows and something to make small circles. I used an apple core remover thing (sorry don't know the correct term for that) Push out little circles.

Making the pops

Take your cookie dough out of the fridge and roll it into balls about the diameter of a big marshmallow or walnut. Put these on wax paper on a plate and put them back into the fridge.
Now take a really small bit of chocolate and heat it in the microwave for 30 seconds on half power (400 watt on mine). Stir, heat for 15 seconds and repeat until it looks like the picture below. Don't over heat it or it will burn and be useless to you. Now just keep stirring and the pieces will melt. If not microwave another 10 seconds and stir again. This should temper the chocolate so it hardens when it cools.

Lay out your lollipop sticks, the mini marshmallows and the chocolate. Take your cookies back out of the fridge.

Dip a stick in the chocolate and push it into the cookie. If the ball becomes a little less round it's ok. If it is too much just reshape it with your hands.

Now take your mini marshmallows, these are the ears of course. Dip the marshmallow partly in the chocolate and paste one on both sides of the stick. Once again put the cookies in the fridge for 15 minutes.

While waiting on those cookies to cool, make the royal icing and temper the rest of your dark chocolate. This is not just melting so use my How to temper chocolate.
You need enough chocolate so that you can dip all your cookies in the chocolate all the way. Take the smallest deepest container you can find that will still fit your pop including ears. That way it will take the least amount of chocolate.
Set out the chocolate, red sprinkles and royal icing.

Take out your pops, dip them in the chocolate taking care to coat the ears but try not to coat the stick. Try also to do just one dip because otherwise the chocolate layer is too thick and there will be the possibility that the ears fall off. Let the excess chocolate drip off and then dip the pop half way into the red sprinkles. Put the pop back on the wax paper and into the fridge. Do the rest of your pops and put each back into the fridge as you make them. When they are all in leave them for another 15 minutes.

The chocolate I had left after dipping, I used to make little chocolate bonbons. Just pour it into a mold or spread it on some wax paper. Sprinkle the rest of your red sprinkles on there and you have some nice leftover treats. Pop in the fridge until set.

After the chocolate on the cookie pops has hardened take them out of the fridge and pipe little round circles on both sides of the "pants". If they stand out too much, use a moist finger (water not spit please) to lightly push it down.

Tada! I wanted to decorate the stick a little too but I couldn't decide how. So I just left it like this. Could have done with a white background too... hmm.
You could also make these pops into Minnie Mouse by adding more white circles on the "skirt" and making a tiny bow out of red fondant for on top, or make it in pink.
They would also be pretty impressive if you stuck the stick in the bottom instead of the top. Then you can push them in some styrofoam or a cup of sugar and you'll have a real eye catcher at your party!

My hubby and I tried them and they tasted yummy!!! Super snacks for kids birthdays or pretty party treats for goofy (well, Mickey really) grown ups.

Happy Popping!

No- bake Cupcake Pop tutorial

It's not mine but so worth watching if you plan on making cake pops.

No-bake Cupcake Pop tutorial

Starting a decorated cake shop

Ok so it won't really be a shop. I'm just starting a business in decorated cakes, and just plain yummy pies. I've made quite a lot and since I can't seem to find a decent (or any) job, this is a good time to start my own business :)

I haven't quite figured out what it is going to look like but I do know I am not including the color pink in my name, logo or website. All cake stores here seem to be pink, and not a little pink, very very pink! Any guy wishing to make a nice cake (and lets face it, with Buddy on tv I'm sure there are a lot of men out there), is never going to want to go into a store that is so extremely frilly.

Well I have thought of the name, which is translated is Cake and Art. Though in English it doesn't sound wonderful, in Dutch it is nice and it makes for a nice logo because the word art is part of the Dutch word for cake (huh?? you say...: taART)

So I'm hoping to get the business going sometime soon and then I'll happily link you to it. In the mean time check out this fabulous fabric I got for the nursery (yes I said it, I'm pregnant woohoo!): World of Susy Bee

How to make wood pattern fondant and scones :)

I love baking :)
I just made some scones. It's been 15 years since I did that. The last time was in middle school and they tasted awful! My friend and I got the amount of salt wrong, yuk! I decided to make these because as I already said I love baking, and because there's a pot of lemon curd in my fridge which just screamed SCONES! The recipe wasn't the best in my opinion so I'm not posting that. You can google and find much better.



Btw if you read my last post, the cake turned out fine. Actually better then I expected and everyone loved it. Plus it tasted great, or so I heard. That's the only downside to making cakes for other people, you can't taste them ;)
It was my first try using buttercreme instead of ganache. I'm not wildly thrilled. It works a lot easier and quicker but jeez that has trouble with temperature fluctuation! Every time it got a little warmer bubbles started to appear and I hate it when a cake doesn't look absolutely neat. For this cake it was ok to see the layers but generally I want those to be invisible. Maybe I wasn't using the right recipe buttercreme, it was nutella.
I did spend a while trying to find out how to make fondant look like wood. Eventually I just winged it. It worked out really well!


To make fondant look like wood:
You need a base color (I used chocolate brown). Take enough to cover the whole cake, because you're using just a little of the other colors.

Now take about a sausage roll of a much darker color (I used black) and the same amount of a much lighter color (I used white). You need these colors to deviate enough from your base so when you're kneading all of them together they don't vanish into your base color.

Now knead your base fondant a little, push it down so it makes a rectangle the same length and a little broader than your two sausage rolls (the other two colors). Lay the two sausages on your base, not touching each other. It's very important not to start kneading like you're used to or you're just going to mix everything together. Instead fold your base lengthwise in half with the sausages on the outside. Pull it apart and fold it the same way again. It's like pulling taffy. Repeat this about 5-10 times, depending on the amount of fondant. Don't make the lines of dark and light too thin because you also have to roll it out so they'll get even thinner. If after you rolled it out, it doesn't look right, you can just start afresh with two new sausage rolls of dark and light fondant.

I hope it's clear. If not, don't hesitate to ask in the comments! 

Venting

I just spent a few hours working on my woodwork cake and am now totally discouraged. It has to be done the day after tomorrow and it's not going so well. I had to back the 4 layers separate because I don't have a square deep dish pan. I also had to make the batter from scratch which I never do. This resulted in two layers being ok, I hope and two being totally ruined because the batter didn't mix well and the cake sagged. Sigh. Now I have to bake more tomorrow. Also it has to become a box, with dove-tail joints and I just noticed that I already iced the bottom two layers without cutting the cake and it's corners are round.... aaaah! This is the last time I agree to make a cake with just 3 days to do it in.