Mom's Knitting Basket Cake

A birthday cake for my mom who can knit, crochet, or embroider practically anything....

The basket was made out of 2, 9 inch round Carrot Cakes filled with Cream Cheese Italian Meringue Buttercream (IMBC) that I tinted brown with some AmeriColor gel colors.  I didn't want the white IMBC to peak through the basket weave but in the end, with a white "liner" hanging over the basket, it would have technically been OK if it was kept white - if you get what I mean - live and learn =)  For the basket weave pattern, I cut out strips of MMF in 2 sizes (one size for the vertical pieces and a another, wider size, for the horizontal pieces).  I had never done a basket weave before but once I got the pattern down, it all came together pretty easily.


(Recipe for the Cream Cheese IMBC can be found at the bottom of this post:
Korean Hanbok Dol Cake from March 2011)

Once done, I brushed the fondant over with some Chocolate Brown Petal Dust and added the white "fabric" trim around the top rim.  I used a stitching wheel to add the stitch pattern around the top and bottom edge of the white trim.

The balls of yarn were made out of Lemon Cake that were filled and covered with IMBC.  I finally got around to using a cupcake pan my husband bought for me two years ago like the one pictured on Amazon below (Wilton Multi Cavity Cupcake Pan).  They were the perfect size to create the balls of yarn with for the basket.

I put together 2 of the cupcake tops to form a round ball.

Trimmed off the pointed tops of the cupcakes to help make the ball look more rounded.

Used the bottom halves of the cupcakes to make a larger, oval, yarn of ball.

I then frosted all the balls of yarn with IMBC and popped them into the fridge for about an hour to firm up while I prepped the fondant.


There's a really neat post on Vegan Yum Yum on how to make balls of yarn and clothing with marzipan.  I used the same technique but with MMF that I mixed with Tylose and a Clay Extruder to help extrude the miles upon miles (as it seemed) of yarn.


After trying out a couple of the disks that the extruder came with, the 2 disks pictured below worked out the best in creating the yarn look especially once the fondant was twisted.

I used the smaller disk (pictured left) for the green and purple balls of yarn and the larger disk (pictured right) for the pink ball of yarn.

Extruding the fondant, twisting it to look more like yarn, piecing it together into sections.  Trim to size and add to the ball of yarn.  Repeat and repeat and repeat until the entire ball of yarn is covered.

Spirals of fondant yarn to attached to the ends of the balls.

The finished ball of yarn.  I later dusted it with Pink Luster Dust.

To get the gradation of color on the purple and green balls of yarn, I stuffed the extruder with a small amount of colored fondant followed by a small bit of white, then back to color, then white until the extruder was filled up.  As you extrude the fondant, it comes out with a really nice gradation of color.  The idea come to me after I had made the pink one and realized that it would have looked much better with some variation in color added to it.  It actually worked perfectly since my mom had always preferred using the yarn that had a variation of color versus the solid ones =)

The purple knitted piece attached to the needle was something I improvised on and made up in trying to figure out how to show the gradation in color with.  Hopefully these pictures below make some sense.

Marble purple fondant with white.  Cut it out into strips, fold the strip in half, twist, then roll between your hands until you get a nice, thin, piece that looks kinda like yarn.

Brush a little bit of water between each strip to help hold it together then fold over every other piece like in the photo.  Make sure the pieces sticking up are long enough to curl over the needle.

Roll the long pieces of fondant over the skewer using piping gel to help it stick to the skewer.  Flip it over and use a toothpick or a scoring tool to create the knitted pattern into the fondant.  For the knitting needle, I used a wooden skewer and painted it in Gold Dust.

The completed piece.

For the top of the knitting needles, I rolled out a piece of fondant into a cylinder shape and poked it into the end of the skewer using piping gel to help it stick together.  I also painted it over with Gold Dust then imprinted 6's on the top of each needle.  I made the 6 with a My mom turned 66 - a little discreet and very personal.  I don't think the party guests caught that.


The 6's were made by pressing a #10 round piping tip into the fondant and a scoring tool to shape out the tail of the 6.

I added a little cross-stitch heart to the front with Royal Icing.  A little tip to help the royal icing from not breaking on you as you pipe lettering or something thin is to mix a little bit of piping gel into it.  It helps the Royal Icing stretch and not break on you.

Happy knitting...eating!

Barbie Goes to Hollywood Cake

For a friend's daughter who turned 6.  The theme of the cake was, "I can be a Movie Star" and Riley's favorite colors were pink and purple. 

I made the purple, Hollywood mountains around the cake and added spots of sparkling glitter to look like the twinkling lights along the mountain side.

Everything was hand cut out of MMF (except for the alphabet cutters used on the, Happy Birthday).  For the lettering, I used black MMF and dusted it over with blue pearl dust and rainbow glitter.  I made her name, Riley, using a Barbie font which can be downloaded for free here.

I had such a hard time with the face and the nose...She went through 3 face transformations and quite a lot of sculpting before I settled with this one...must have spent close to 3 hours on her face alone.  The easiest part was the arm and hand.  For the arm, I used the tips on a video tutorial by Make Your Cakes - It shows you how to sculpt arms and legs easily.  She did have a bare arm until my 4 year old daughter said that Barbie needs a bracelet and ring.  These were added especially at her request =D

Cake:  9 inch White Vanilla Cake filled with Raspberry IMBC and decorated in MMF.

Chanel Classic Handbag Cake

I made this cake for my mother-in-law's birthday.  She loves Chanel and had requested for me to replicate one of her purses a few years ago.  This year, although being in the middle of a home remodel, I HAD to make her cake....I couldn't let another year go by.  She absolutely loved it and didn't let us cut it.  Luckily, I had also made some cupcakes to go along with the cake that everyone enjoyed.

So, here are the photo's of the process....

2 days prior, I made the Black MMF using black candy melts.  The recipe can be found under the "MMF Recipes" tab above.  You can also use dark brown/chocolate candy melts.  The black candy melts I had were more dark brown rather than black and I had to add a few drops of the black AmeriColor Gel to it to get it darker.

I think the black candy melts I used were either by Merckens or CK....I don't remember exactly but I do know that they were not the Wilton ones.

1 day prior, I made the blossoms, flower petals, and Chanel logos for the cupcakes with MMF (I mix the MMF with tylose to help it dry faster and harder like gumpaste).  I also made the chain links to use for the purse straps with MMF too.

I made over 100 links and only joined them in two's (you'll see why later).  I lay them over popsicle sticks so that they would dry with some curvature to them rather than being plain and flat.

I baked a 10" square cake (10 inch wide purse), and cut and stacked 3 tiers. Each tier was 2 1/2 inches wide by 2 inches tall (6 inch tall purse).

Carved the cake to the shape of the purse and covered it over in Italian Meringue Buttercream (IMBC).  I also inserted 2 dowels down the middle to help hold the purse up since it was narrow and tall.  Then, I put the entire cake into the fridge overnight to get nice and firm.

The following morning, I covered the cake over in MMF.

The 1st piece I did was the front.  I rolled out the MMF and trimmed it to size.  I also used Dark Cocoa to dust the surface with rather than Powdered Sugar or Corn Starch to help keep the MMF from sticking to the table top.  It was great at giving the purse a dark, brown look that matched the color of the purse perfectly.  Using a ruler and a stitching wheel (a sewing tool), I scored the quilt design over the MMF.  Flipped the MMF over so the underside was now facing up, and rolled 1/8" of the edge over and all around so you wouldn't see the cut edges - I wanted to seams to look just like they were sewed together just like the seams on a real leather purse - hope that makes sense.  Flipped the MMF back to the right side and lay it over the cake.   With a fondant tool (a small ball tool will work too), I went over the quilt seams and lightly pressed it into the cake slightly to give it a little bit of a puffed up look.

The next piece I lay, covered the back of the purse and went up and over the front of the cake for the flap.  I then added the 2 side pieces following the same technique above with scoring the quilt pattern and rolling the edges under.  I then lightly rubbed the entire purse with a little bit of shortening to make it look more like leather.

Once the cake was covered, I got started on the details.  I painted each link with edible gold dust mixed with vodka.  Tedious but well worth it - you gotta have the gold, Chanel chain!

I then cut out 4 circles out off the top of the purse (2 in the front and 2 in the back) using a piping tip.  The holes were then covered over with round circles made out of MMF which were also brushed over with gold dust.

  

Now to the fun part...laying each pair of links on the cake and threading the leather strap through it.  I cheated.  The leather strap is actually 1 1/2 inch wide pieces of MMF pinched in the ends and shoved into each link giving it the illusion of the strap going all the way through.

I used the same technique when adding the shoe laces on the sneaker shoe cakes I had done before...see them below:

Tennis Shoe Cake

Running Sneaker Cake

Now you can see why I only connected 2 links at a time to each other.  The part of the links that are under the black strap are not seen so therefore, do not need to 'actually' be connected - cool illusion hah!

I looked over so many purse cakes trying to figure out how the straps were done on the cakes that did have edible straps and didn't like what I saw so after playing around with the links, I came up with my own technique....at least I haven't seen anyone who has done it this way or at least shown us how.  Now, with this tip, I hope to see much better chain links out there by you all :-)

I used clear piping gel to help hold all the links up against the cake and onto the cake stand.

The 'minor' imperfection that really bugs me is that on the following day, since we didn't eat the cake the night of the party, I took the photo that you see above, outside in the morning light.  As you can see, the cake settled and the 2 dowels used to hold the cake up appear as bumps (to me, they look like horns) along the top of the purse...err!  I've been told, by a dear friend, that it's actually a bulging wallet full of cash - gotta love her!  Next time, I'm cutting those things down at least 1/4 inch lower than the actual cake to avoid such an awful bump...Live and Learn!

As for the large flowers, I made them up.  These were the very 1st flowers I've ever made petal by petal.  There are 5 medium petals for the inside and 5 large petals for the outside all glued together with piping gel.  The large, pink flowers are dusted over in pink luster dust and I added pearls of white, silver and black in an assortment of sizes to the middle of each flower and mini blossom.  I just love how they turned out but I do need to take some classes and learn the REAL way to make flowers someday.

I made both regular and mini sized cupcakes frosted with IMBC and topped with the Chanel inspired decorations.  The white, round disks have the quilt pattern on them too which is hard to tell from the photo.  The C's for the logo were made using circle cutters.

The cake is on the pedestal while the 2 purses on the table are the non-edible, real ones.

And alas, 3 days later, we finally cut the cake....and ate it too.

1000 Fan Giveaway...THANK YOU!

In celebration of my Facebook Fan Page reaching 1000 fans (and it's 2 year Anniversary), I'm doing a giveaway!  With the holiday season upon us, what a perfect time to give away a pair of my silicone molds:  1 Reindeer and 1 Sleigh valued at $60.

Use them to create a festive and edible decoration for your holiday themed baked goods or simply hang them on your tree...endless possibilities.



How to enter:

1) Comment below on what you love about the holiday season.  If you're the Grinch, sorry, your entry will not be accepted.

2) For an additional entry, like my Facebook Page and enter a separate comment below that you liked my page.  If you already like my page, comment you're a fan already.

Winner will be selected by Random.org

Giveaway ends Monday, December 5th at 11:59 P.M. (PST)

Shipping fees will be taken care of and the giveaway is open to International followers too.

Good Luck and Thank you for supporting my passion =)

Happy Holidays!

 CONGRATULATIONS #3 - Haley!  I will be contacting you soon.

My Kitchen Remodel

It's been a little quiet here lately.  My home kitchen is being remodeled...floor to ceiling, every inch is new.  I'm excited to have a new kitchen but it's been killing me that I haven't been able to make anything...let alone use it.

We moved out of our old home two weeks ago and have been staying with family while our new home is being remodeled...so much work but at least the kitchen will officially be the 1st room in the house that will be completed soon - crossing my fingers!  As for the rest of the house, which we plan to do as much as we can ourselves, has no flooring still but at least the walls are primed =)

The Bare Kitchen - new flooring, paint and lighting.

Thomas the Train Cake

Choo choo, here comes Thomas!  An 8 inch cake covered and decorated in Marshmallow Fondant (MMF).  Stevie turned 3 so I used the "3" theme randomly around the cake:  3 pieces of wood for the train track, 3 yellow stripes on Thomas, 3 rocks/boulders, 3 bushy trees, and 3 tiny flowers on each bush.

Although this was the 2nd time making a 3D model of Thomas, he was still a challenge...so many parts to add on to such a little guy - he barely stood at 2 inches.  The inside of his body is RKT covered over with modeling chocolate and I used dry spaghetti painted with black gel colors for the 4 rods that are in the front.  Dry spaghetti and piping gel was also used to secure the puff of steam to the funnel and into the body.

Note:  When making edible treats for kids, try to use dry spaghetti over toothpicks - they will bite into anything...and everything.

I kneaded and marbled 3 shades of brown together to create the mountain and rocks with then scored it all over the place with a ball tool to give it some ridges and cracks.  I also made the mountain stick up over the top of the cake a bit.  Finished off the cake by adding the rolling hills in 2 shades of green, white clouds and trees.

A view around the cake....

I left room on the top for Stevie to add a No. 3 candle