Crazy Cakes
I am not a professional baker, but I sure love to make crazy cake art. I often make big sculptural cakes for my kid’s birthday and other family occasions. What I lack in fine precision, I make up for by going all in creatively. Click on a cake to learn more about how I made it.
Unicorn Mermaid Sitting on a Turtle Cake
Upping my sculpted cake game based on a rather random request for a birthday cake. We starting with the idea of a unicorn cake, but that was so done a million times over. She threw in the “sitting on the turtle” for me, because I love sea turtles. The unicorn head I sculpted rice cereal treat mix and modeling chocolate. I ended up have to keep it frozen (horse head in my freezer) otherwise it started to pull apart from the weight. But, it made it through the party which is what counts.
I bought a cake set of horn, ears, eyelashes. Also got some silicon flower molds and fancy sprinkles help jazz it up. I made the tail from a mermaid mold set, but added to it to make it larger.
Darth Cake 1
We are big Star Wars fans in my family, so this was super fun to make. I did a lot of “hacks” to make this come together – as in I purchased certain items. I’m not a “everything from scratch” kind of decorator. Take the help where you can get it.
I bought the Vader head – it is hard plastic and “breathes” when you hit a switch. Also bought the little light sabers, which are basically cupcake toppers.
I also purchased Star Wars cookie cutters originally made for Williams Sonoma. They are the kind with the details you press in. Instead of cookies, I used it on fondant and then hand painted the color details. The little storm troopers along the bottom I purchased online from a UK store (back in the day) They are sugar prints, which are much more popular in the US now.
Darth Cake 2
Since I had all this Star Wars stuff, I decided to use it all again to make my husband’s 50th birthday cake. I did some different decorations, such as a mirror glaze galaxy coating for the cake. However, that glaze is sticky and really hard to put fondant cut outs on. They slide off, so you have to only put them along the bottom. Gravity is not your friend. Also got some dark metallic sprinkles to bedazzle Darth.
3D Cartoon Clubhouse Cake
This was my first sculpted cake – so please be kind. Initially the mouse head was perfectly round, but I had to transport it and it was heavy, so it flattened where I had put it on a paper plate. Oh well. It’s still cute. And I thought the big shoe turned out well.
Cartoon Cakes
Just a couple of early cakes I made for kiddo when she was three and four. I made a basic sheet cake with buttercream frosting as the base.
For the kid pirates/, I bought little figurines (inedible) and sugar sea creatures. The rest I made from frosting, cookies and candy.
Minne was a sugar sheet print out I purchased online and some non-edible character cutouts. Polka dots were fondant cutouts. Little sugar flowers and icing for the rest of it.
Halloween Cake Pops
Made from left over cake I keep in my freezer (see Red Pyramid). Pumpkins are spice cake with maple buttercream frosting. Poison apples are chocolate cake with a chocolate Swiss meringue frosting and a bit of raspberry. I separate out the cake parts from the frosting parts first, to make sure I mix the right ratios.
Various Cakes
Sometimes dear friends or family ask me to make them a special cake. And if they do, they know I will likely be trying something creative.
The Big Coconut Cake was for a charity dinner, it was about a half sheet but it was two thick layers. I wanted to try doing those meringue cookies to make it visually interesting.
For a friend’s winter birthday, I wanted to work with a bunch of new petal molds I have just gotten. So the Flower Birthday cake is all hand made edible flowers from modeling chocolate. Done in soft icy colors and silvery glitter (hard to see in the picture thouhg).
The Tsumy cupcakes were just for fun. Fondant cutouts layered to make the faces and little feet.