The Backyardigans Cake

I made this cake back in September for my co-worker's granddaughter. She loves The Backyardigans. I on the other hand weren't too sure who they were so I had to do some research. I'm glad they weren't the coloured blobs I had originally thought they were - I'm not quite sure what I was thinking about; maybe Teletubbies? Is that even a show anymore? I watched part of an episode of The Backyardigans, and while it helped with what the characters looked like, it really just confused me. They weren't in a backyard, but in a city - one was driving a streetcar, I think one was being a doorman. The streetcar probably lost control going down a hill and had to be saved. By the doorman. I don't remember - 5 minutes was enough for me!

I originally decided to make the character out of colour flow, however when I went to use them I found hadn't dried properly and some of them ended up breaking. I couldn't figure out why because usually colour flow turns out so well. It wasn't until a day or two later I realized it was because I used one of my plastic cutting boards instead of the 2 arborite ones I usually uses. There was moisture trapped under the wax paper which prevented proper drying. Another lesson learned! My kids were delighted they broke because then they got to make a fancy dessert with cake scrapes and broken Backyardigans. Luckily the letters for the name, and the 2 were okay.

I got out the fondant, which is what I should have done in the beginning and made the 5 characters.

I'm actually glad the colour flow didn't work because they turn out pretty cute. The moose is my favourite.

I haven't decided if the blue one is a penguin or just a bluebird, and I think the purple one is a kangaroo. I have no idea what the pink one is. No idea. Wikipedia doesn't know either.

I glad I made the flowers, it really brightened it up and made it more little girly.

There they are, hanging out in the backyard. Everyone getting along.

Kinley loved her cake and the characters were a hit. Although one of them fell victim to their dog - dogs get to celebrate too, right!?

Sunflowers and Roses

Last year, shortly after my brother and his girlfriend got engaged, my brother asked me if I would make their wedding cake. Of course I was delighted - and then a little nervous when he said he would design it! We talked about it a few times throughout the year but there were no real decisions made until a couple months before the wedding. He wanted the cake to be at least 5 tiers, decorated with sunflowers and roses (Shannon's favourite flowers!) and with pillars so the cake topper could be in the middle. The rest of it was up to me!

I pulled out my square and round cake pans, sat down on the basement floor and started stacking them in various ways. I'd text a picture of the cake pan cake to my brother and he'd make a suggestion and I'd adjust it accordingly and text him another picture. It didn't take long before we had one he liked - 5 tiers, with pillars. I told him he would have to find a fairly short cake topper if he wanted it to be in the middle. He told me he had it taken care of!

I started with making roses, adding lots of red colouring to make sure they didn't turn out pink! Then I switched over to sunflowers. I had never made sunflowers before, but following Wilton's directions they were surprising simple to make.

The tricky part of make this cake was the location of the reception - about a 2 hour drive from my place. I didn't know if I should haul all my stuff to the city and decorate there, or decorate it at my house and carefully transport it. I had this on-going list of pros and cons going on in my head for weeks. Finally I decided (the week of the wedding) that it would be easiest to decorate it at home and hope the cake made it there in one piece.

I started with decorating the bottom layers,

and then the top layers. As requested the cake was different flavours - lemon, chocolate, white and vanilla.

We loaded up the cake, an emergency cake repair kit, our wedding clothes and the kids. We hit the road just in time to make it to rehearsal (a half an hour late!)

The cake, much to my relief, survived the trip! The buttercream boarder didn't even melt despite the sun beating through the windows!

The wedding was beautiful, the reception was a lot of fun and the cake was completely eaten! I loved the cake topper my brother picked out - it was a perfect choice. And I was worried he wouldn't find one that would fit nicely between the tiers! He did a brilliant job of designing the cake as well. I don't think I ever would of thought to put sunflowers and roses together. It really was a great combination for a fall wedding. I might just have to consult him on all my cakes!

Pontoon Boat Cake

My boss retired this spring and to celebrate this milestone, along with her husbands 65th birthday, they planned a party for this summer. She asked if I would make a cake that had her and her husband in a pontoon boat with their little dog.

Up until the day before I made the cake I was still tying to decided whether it should be a pontoon boat cake or a pontoon boat on a cake. I didn't think a pontoon boat would have enough cake in it for everyone so I decided to do both - a pontoon boat cake on a cake.

I was a little unsure about how big the boat should be (and since I doubt my people making skills!) so I was having visions of giant people in a little boat. In my mind, the most logical way to make sure this didn't happen was to make the people first and then make the boat. That way everything should be in proportion. Fortunately this plan worked out and I didn't end up with giants or a boat that wouldn't fit on the cake (which was my other worry!).

Since I wanted to make the boat as edible as possible I made the pontoons, walls and benches out of fondant covered rice crispy cake. The base of the boat was cake.

The dog was surprisingly not that hard to make, and is probably my favourite part of the cake.

Their pontoon boat is actually black, but since it takes so much food colouring to get black fondant I figured it would taste more like dye then icing and so I just left it white. I almost forgot the motor. That was a last minute addition.

Truth be told I was a little nervous about making this cake. Having never made a pontoon boat before I wasn't too sure what I was doing. I almost never got it done on time - but that is because I ended up going to a movie. Ant Man was in town! I couldn't miss it!

In the end the cake turned out pretty well and my husband even thinks my people make skills are improving! The party was lots of fun as well and the supper was fantastic. Usually when I make a cake for someone my kids have to watch it leave knowing they don't get a piece. They were delighted when I told them that they were going to the party too! Thanks for inviting us, and thanks for asking me to make your cake!

Trailer Park Boys

I never thought I would find myself making a Trailer Park Boy's birthday cake! Never say never, I guess! I actually made it the same weekend as the Iron Man cake, and am finally getting it posted!

This cake was for a surprise 50th birthday party for my brother-in-law's sister-in-law's husband. I wonder if there is an easier way of saying that?

I struggle with making fondant people, but these guys actually turned out not too bad! My husband helped me get the details right!

Iron Man Cake

The first time I made a Iron Man cake was years ago, before the Avengers were really popular. I didn't really even know who he was - just that he was my husband's favourite comic book super hero. It didn't turn out so well. Now there are all sorts of Iron Man cakes ideas on Pintrest, which is exactly where I turned when I was asked to make this one. I put a few of the ideas together to come up with a cake that I thought little Joshua would like.

The best idea I came across was putting a LED light in the cake as Iron Man's arc reactor. I knew I'd seen them in the dollar stores, but wasn't sure if they came in red. As it turned out, luck was with me, they did! They also had blue and silver, in case you were wondering! I wasn't sure how long the batteries would last so I left putting it in until the morning of the party just to make sure it wouldn't burn out.

One of my favourite things to do on a birthday cake is to write their name out of cookies. I've done it a couple times, and it always goes over well - cookies and cake all in one! I had to squish Joshua's name together to make it fit, but in the end it was better then having the letters in a straight line. I also made Iron Man's helmet out of a cookie. The template I found on Pintrest, where else!

It was a fun cake to make, and I'm really glad the light idea worked out. My source told me Joshua was thrilled with Iron Man cake and knowing that one of my cakes brought a smile to someones face is the best part of it all!

A Castle Fit For a King

For my son's 7th birthday I was unable to make the cake he first picked out. I needed the dump truck cake pan to make a candy mold. I looked everywhere with no luck. A few days before his birthday I told him he was going to have to pick something else out. We started going through my cake pans, and I mentioned to him that I had a castle cake pan. He was pretty interested in finding that one, so I thought he might like to see the castle set I have. As soon as he saw that his mind was made up.

I think I've only used this set one other time... or maybe twice, so even though it was a little elaborate for amount of time I had, I was up for making it. Of course, he wanted it complete with a moat and drawbridge.

Each turret tower had to be wrapped in fondant, imprinted with a little square cookie cutter. It went a lot quicker then I thought it would, although by the end, had a stone layer guy in the mid-evil times laid the stones as unevenly as I was, he probably would have been executed. Never the less, I got it done, and it looked okay. Windows were cut out and stuck on. The castle was actually suppose to have several more windows on the side and back walls but it was getting really late so I skipped them.

Getting the top tower to stay was a little challenging. I ended up propping it up with empty paper towel rolls and left it dry until the morning. Luckily it stayed after that.

We had to move this cake around a bit since we were having the birthday party in the backyard and to my surprise the top tower stayed in place! One of the side ones fell off, but that was no big deal, it was just stuck back on. After Happy Birthday was sung they were all coming down anyway!

9 Foot Retirement Cake

This cake has been about a year in planning. When my dad started thinking about retiring, he wanted to make sure he did it right. He told me he wanted a cake that showed every job he had ever had for his retirement party. I told him to make a list. I new he had quite a few jobs, but I wasn't expecting 17!

First off I scoured the internet to find suitable picture that accurately described each job. Some were easy to find, others a little more difficult. I then made a paper model, true to size, so I could determine the proper sizes of the pictures, and figure out how long it was going to be.

Once the paper model passed my dad's inspection, next came making all the pieces out of colour flow. Colour flow is pretty fragile and needs to be handled with care. Because I was going to have to transport them 5 hours south on some pretty awful highways and because I am not always as careful as I should be, I decided to make 2 of every piece. This doubled the work, but I was taking no chances. If one piece broke, the cake would be ruined. It took me approximately 20 hours to finish making every job. I used wax paper covered cardboard, thinking it would be the easiest. Normally I use my cutting boards. Colour flow takes 48 hours to completely dry and so by the time was done I had colour flow on the both of my counters, the table, the highchair and in the china cabinet. Cooking and eating supper was a challenge for a few days.

My husband and I decided the easiest way to transport all the colour flow pieces would be pizza boxes. I have some pizza boxes that I use to put flowers in, but they weren't big enough. I called our local pizza place and asked if I could get some extra large boxes from them. Luckily they said it wouldn't be a problem. 10 pizza boxes plus 2 other boxes later the problem was solved.

I had a list going of thing I needed to take for baking and then decorating the cake, even so I was paranoid that I was going to forget something. My new method of packing things (besides clothes!) is to put everything in a laundry basket. It makes life so much simpler. Everything is all together and it is easy to carry. Every time I remembered something it went into the laundry basket.

I drove down to the farm on the Thursday before for the retirement party and spent Friday baking cakes. 5 different kinds, 15 cake mixed in all.

Saturday morning a few of us headed to the hall, they cleaned up, and made meat trays while I started decorating the cake. There were tables set out for supper and I covered all of them with my pizza boxes and cake supplies.

I covered the 2 x 10 my dad had left for the cake with tin foil and got to work. I did break a couple of colour flow piece so it is a good thing I had duplicates.

6 hour later I had used 8 batches of icing on 9 feet of cake.

On the side of the cake are signs telling where the job was, and the brown signs on the cake state the job description.

In case it is a little hard to read the jobs are: Farm Hand, Ranch Hand, House Mover...

CPR Switch-man, Gas Attendant...

Custom Combiner, Painter, Graham Construction...

Garbage Man, Dragline Operator, Coal handler...

Apprentice Industrial Mechanic, Journeyman Industrial Mechanic, Farmer...

Foreman, Oil Analysis, Training Co-coordinator, Retirement!!

This is with out a doubt the biggest cake I have ever taken on. Everyone had such nice nice things to say about it, and a few discovered the easiest way to take a picture of it was actually to take a video and walk along side of it! I was so pleased that it turned out as well as it did with no disasters to speak of. (Except that while my husband and I were at the hall, one of our darling children overflowed the bathroom sink at the farm and caused a flood!) After working as long and as hard as he has, my dad most certainly deserved great send off into retirement.