It's really been awhile since I posted a cake here or made a cake. I was suppose to make one a year ago for my little boy but I just didn't have enough time to do it. This years theme was Angry Birds, and I decided to lock-in to that theme since its only typical for almost 5 year old boys to change their minds quite often.
Topper
I had to make 2 sets of toppers for the actual birthday and the kids party since his birthday wasn't a weekend. I cheated and bought a 6" round cake at Walmart, luckily I was able to find a perfect chocolate fudge cake. My son was so pleased.
The second cake had more that 2 toppers. It took me about two days to finish all of the toppers. But I was so happy with the results and so was my 5 year old.
The Cake
Although the first cake was store-bought I wanted to add my touch. Aside from the toppers I made I added a pretzel sling shot, I used tinted gumpaste to glue pieces of rods of pretzels. I also made grass from a store-bought green frosting and added
milk chocolate rocks I also bought from Walmart. They're about $4 (12oz. ) , I already spotted them even before and I made a mental note that I will use them someday.
Cake #2 is just a basic chocolate sheet cake frosted with buttercream, covered in marshmallow fondant topped with the larger set of characters. The cake was was not my original plan, I wanted to add a smaller cake to make it 2-tiered but I ran out of buttercream. I researched some cake designs and some of them used candy bars. I also bought
pre-made Icing Decorations since they were on sale in my local craft store for $1. So those were the last minute details I added to my cake.
Tools and Techniques
~ This is a best topper medium I have ever used. Very stable and very predictable. But I used half and half marshmallow fondant. Even with the half and half mixture it dried up so well. I should have used this medium sooner. I also didn't have any problem with coloring it.
Tinting 101 - My Way
~ At first I was very skeptical about getting the right colors for the bird and pig toppers. I always get comments that its hard to tint especially if you use darker colors. The best advise I can give is : KEEP WORKING UNTIL YOU GET IT. I did use a lot of gel colors and it does take awhile to get the right hues. Don't be afraid to get your hands all messy.
As for
really darker colors, you can dab gel colors with your fingers unto your gumpaste or MMF. I only use
Wilton gel colors , I was told before they work well with fondant. And so far it has done the job for me.You can also click
here , to see more tinting tips from the Wilton
site.
Painting MMF
~ This was first time to paint a whole cake covered in MMF. I didn't have enough time to think about how I was going to finish the cake before I place my toppers so I decided to paint it. Fortunately it turned out so well, I simply used gel colors and clear vanilla to thin the color and I used it like watercolor. This also made the MMF tacky and it was the perfect glue to
pre-made icing decorations . It was fun and I think I will paint more cakes next time.
