Blast From the Past: Baby Block Baby Shower Cake

Since I've discontinued writing in my former blog, I thought for a continual series I would bring over some of my previous blog posts and discuss past cake commissions as appropriate.

One of my favourite cakes I've made in the recent past (March of last year, to be exact), was a baby block "Welcome the the Family Little One!" cake. I made and decorated it with a fellow pastry chef, and we had a lot of fun with it!

We were given a picture of an inspiration cake, plus a napkin with the baby shower theme (jungle/safari animals), and were asked to "glom" them together.  As I remember, each "baby block" was a different, premium cake flavour as well.

 

Inspiration picture plus themed napkin

Our final design concept

We also made a metric butt-ton of cupcakes in the shower colours too

This little fishie in a tiny bowl (seen here on a palette knife) is my personal favourite

Little Tigers make me happy

Both of them

And who could hate this adorable little blue monkey? What's that on his tail?

Why, it's the fishing lure/bobber for the little fishie!

All in all, a great, fun cake to make, and we absolutely thrilled the clients, who have been faithful customers ever since.

And that's really what it's all about, isn't it? *wink*

Commission Tales: So many little'uns, so many birthday cakes...

Right after I had completed the birthday cake commission mentioned in the previous post, I had to start work on the next one due only a few days later.

Also a vanilla funfetti flavour (totally a coincidence, whodathunk...) for the bottom tier, and deep chocolate for the top tier, this cake was a gift to an amazing couple I've known for a while now.   The dad, A, and I met back in 2009 while working part-time at my college's bookstore while I was going through pastry school, and I met his lady love, K, in 2011 when they started dating. Now they have an adorable little boy with a *kick-ass* name, and I wanted to give them a special gift of the cake for his first birthday party. 

This cake was to be safari animal themed; a friend and I had made a jungle/safari themed baby block cake back in early 2012 for another client, and I was interested to tackle it a little differently this time around.

This time, the cake was to be two-tier, with zebra stripes on the bottom tier, and a jungle/safari theme (my design discretion) on the top tier. Unfortunately, I had managed to fillet my right index finger quite messily the evening before I was to do a dry-brush edible paint technique along the sides of the top tier, emulating tall grasses, trees, birds and swinging monkeys, so I sadly had to leave that off the final cake. At least I had already made the fondant figures for the top, so they were good to go...with one exception..dun dun DUNNN!

I had made a sweet articulated fondant monkey figure for the top tier that was to hang off the side of the cake, like he was playing in the (to be) painted trees, but as I was boxing the cake up the morning it was due, he suffered a fatal fall and shattered.  Creepily, the few pieces to survive the fall were both of its wee front paws, which I must say looked super-disturbingly realistic, and reminded me uncomfortably of the novel, "The Monkey's Paw".  No monkey-related pictures were taken prior to the accident, and I was just too disappointed after the fall to document the tragedy, so nobody but myself, my friend Miss Kitty, and the Hubster will ever know how cute he was going to be.  *sniff*

Moving on...!

Of the other fondant figures, I made an elephant and a python, as well as two golden fishies for a small pond circled by stones.  My technique continues to improve; I'm hard on myself, but I know there's nowhere to go but up!

In any event, here's the final cake in all its (unpainted) glory:

  

Zebra stripes hand-cut and layered. First time for me, and I think I know how to do it even better next time (thinner pieces, more slight curves, fewer white spaces).

Yes, I know you can see the layers through the fondant in the top, but that would have been covered over by the brush technique mentioned above. Shuzbut.

 

My next challenge looks like it's going to be a monster-themed cake for Hallowe'en. Miss Kitty and I have some ideas of auctioning off the cake for fundraising purposes for our local Scouts Canada group, of which we are both active volunteers.  Watch this space!

Commission Tales: Elmo says,"Tee hee, that tickles!"...or something.

Pulled myself through a bad case of the flu in order to complete this cake commission last week.  One of two commissions, actually. Ah well, illness never arrives in the right time anyway, so we must soldier on regardless!

Of course, I made scrupulously sure that all of my baking surfaces were cleaned and disinfected, and that I was appropriately masked and aproned, not to mention I washed my hands frequently. I figured that, after five days of illness, I was no longer contagious, so most of these precautions were a bit paranoid and over the top...but I don't take chances with other people's health, especially when I make a cake for a child.

In any case, my commission was for a delightful little girl who was turning one year old. Being a big fan of Sesame Street Elmo, it only made sense that her birthday cake would feature the giggling, furry creature.  Working on an inspiration picture gleaned from the internet, this cake was a delightful vanilla-lemon funfetti five-layer round cake, with vanilla lemon buttercream and homemade raspberry jam filling between each layer, vanilla lemon buttercream frosting in that characteristic Sesame Street bright yellow, and Elmo's face piped in bright red buttercream on the top with "Happy birthday" greetings surrounding it.

I had originally attempted to pipe the Elmo character using the "pinhole" technique, where you cut out a simplified picture of your intended design and place it on your cake, then use a sharp pin to delineate the outline that you then pipe over with frosting. This technique works very well on fondant-covered cakes, but the buttercream came to temp too quickly to be effective. So, I just hand-drew it from the reference picture.

Not bad for never having drawn an Elmo before, eh? *winks*