Before our 3rd little girl was born, we had been shopping at Walmart (we live in a small town and Walmart is literally the only thing to do around town) and saw this huge Tinker Bell cake on a poster hanging over the bakery. We got the idea to order a "special" cake geared for our oldest in celebration of her new baby sister. At the time, we were heading to check out so we really didn't get a chance to actually look through their cake books to see how many people this cake would feed.
At a later date, I finally got a chance to look through the book and the cake we saw was estimated to feed anywhere between 24-36 people! I let my husband know and needless to say, he had the same reaction as I did! :-D We looked through the book some more to see if we could find a smaller cake that would better fit our family.
We actually found a cake design that we liked, but we were not sure if the cake could be decorated with the theme of the Tinker Bell cake we had liked,...so like any fine parent would do in order to surprise their children, we asked the baker if they could decorate this cake with the Tinker Bell theme that we liked. Luckily, we had a very good baker and was very flexible with what we wanted for the cake. We wound up with this:
A beautiful waterfall with the Tinker Bell cake kit and lilies. Our eldest was so ecstatic when she went with her daddy to go pick it up, but the greatest thing was the baker's reaction. My husband told me that the baker seemed very proud of her work when she saw how happy my daughter was with it.
After a few days of eating this gorgeous, yet delicious cake, we got the idea to order the same style cake but geared towards a baptism/christening theme for our youngest who was getting baptized a few weeks after ordering the cake pictured above.
I found a kit that I liked, but it wasn't going to be in until the weekend AFTER our baby's baptism. I felt a little heartbroken because it was such a beautiful theme, but then I got to thinking to myself....I bet I can make a cake similar in design as the Tinker Bell with decorations that I want for the cake. And that is exactly what I did!
I got a couple marble cake mixes, baked them, and decorated away!
When we had ordered the Tinker Bell cake, the baker told us that they basically bake two round cakes, cut one of those round cakes in half, and stack the two halves on top of each other then on top of the a full, round cake. Easy enough yes? Well that's what I thought, but it just wasn't tall enough for me. So with my cake, I have four cake halves stacked on top of one another.
 |
| I used a 9 inch cake pan. Probably should have gotten an 8 inch! |
I used whipped icing as the "glue" for each layer. My husband and I have different tastes when it comes to icing on cakes. He likes the buttercream icing and I like the whipped icing, so I compromised and used the whipped icing for the layers and some of the decorations and iced the entire cake with the buttercream. Although I think I made the buttercream a little to thin so I had to keep it in the fridge while I got some of the other decorations ready.
I made up two small batches of whipped icing so I could color them separately. I had a "rose" color, which was a light pink color, and a light purple color.
As for my decorations, I spent a couple of days googling baptismal/christening cakes to see what I like, or try my hand at making. A few of them I fell in love with so I took one element from each cake and incorporated it on mine.
The first one I saw had a rosary on it with booties. I went for the rosary. It seemed so unique and very fitting for our faith. The person made the rosary "beads" and "crucifix" out of fondant, but I certainly did not feel like rolling 50+ beads! Instead I used the rose colored icing for the beads. I did make the crucifix out of fondant. I found an old rosary and used its crucifix to make an impression on the fondant. I tried to do the same with the Mary piece, but it didn't turn out so well, just stretched out too much.
The second cake I saw had a baptismal font on it and a standing cross. At first I wanted to use the cross as a sort of "cake topper," but as I started making the cross, I realized that my hands had warmed the fondant up too much and it just kept falling over when I tried to stand it up. It was very frustrating. One thing I realized, after I gave up, was that rice krispy treat would have helped me out a lot with making a crucifix, but I did not have any. Instead, I made the baptismal font and poked a wooden skewer down the center of it so it would stay on the cake better.
I then used the purple icing and tried to make little flowers around the bottom of the cake and across the bottom of the stacked layers. They didn't keep their form while I was decorating the cake so some of it just look like blobs of icing.
After about two days of baking and decorating all the way down to the first 5 minutes of family being at our house, I was finally finished!
Would I make more cakes along the road? You bet I will! I had a lot of fun doing this, but I will definitely set aside more time for decorating. :)
No comments:
Post a Comment