elephant birthday cake

Last year for Doan's son's first birthday, I made this Circus/Carnival cake with a fondant lion topper, and this year she wanted a similar cake, but this time in green and with a fondant elephant on top!

A couple weeks before the party, I started on the fondant elephant, in order to give it enough time to dry. I used a bit of Super Black gel-based food coloring to tint my white fondant the perfect shade of gray (or so I thought), and formed the body, arms, legs, and a ball for the head. Then I use a toothpick in the center of the body, to firmly attach the head.

I also formed the trunk, and used a heart cookie cutter to cut out the shape for the ears. (I also used pink fondant and a slightly smaller heart cookie cutter for the inside of the ears). Finally, for the eyes I used an edible marker. Then I let it dry.

After a few days, I noticed a color change in my shade of gray. It was still gray-ish, but had much more of a blue tone. Hmm ...

Anyway, moving on to the cake! The night before the party, I made two 10-inch vanilla cakes, which I sliced in half horizontally to give me four layers. As with last year's cake, I filled each layer with freshly whipped cream and sliced strawberries.

After stacking all four layers, I was ready to frost!

I whipped up a batch of buttercream, and tinted the majority of it green (I left a small portion of it white, to be used later). I did a quick crumb coat on my cake, then let it chill in the fridge for 30 minutes, and then did a final smooth coat.

With the white frosting, I piped a beaded border around the bottom of the cake, and piped the birthday boy's name across the front. Then I let the entire cake chill in the fridge overnight.

The next morning, it was ready for the elephant topper! By now, the elephant had taken on a strange blue/purple tinge. But at least he was still cute. :)

Happy Birthday Roland! Hope you enjoyed your elephant cake!

monkey and elephant cookies

After I made these caterpillar cookies for my friend Nancy's daughter's first birthday party, our friend Cindy K. got a chance to see and taste the cookies, and then asked me to make cookies for her daughter Reese's birthday as well! If you know Reese, she is quite the monkey, always climbing up on couches, counters, window sills, you name it! So it seemed only natural for Cindy to be throwing a monkey-themed party! She asked for monkey and elephant cookies, and luckily I already had these Wilton cutters which were perfect!

After baking up 2 batches of my buttery sugar cookies (recipe in my new book!), I whipped up a batch of royal icing (recipe also in the book!), divided it, and colored it. First up were the monkey cookies. I used brown stiff royal icing to outline the face and the ears. Then I used brown runny icing to fill them in.

After letting them dry for several hours (overnight), I used tan stiff icing to pipe an oval outline on the monkey's face, and then filled it in with tan runny icing. Then I used pink runny icing to fill in the ears. Once the tan icing had dried for several hours, I used black stiff icing to pipe the eyes, nose, and mouth. Cute!

For the elephant cookies, I started with stiff gray icing to pipe the elephant outline, as well as the outline of the inner ear, before filling it in with runny gray icing.

Once the icing had dried (overnight), I used runny pink icing to fill in the ears, and black stiff icing to pipe the eyes, nostrils, and smile. Super cute!

Once the cookies had all dried completely, I wrapped each one in a cellophane bag tied with raffia. Then I boxed them up with fat bubble wrap, and sent them on their way to Cindy!

Happy Birthday, Reese! Hope you had an awesome day, you little monkey! :)

pink and white baby shower cookies and macarons

To go along with the elephant baby shower cake that I made for my friend Helen's baby shower, I also made elephant cookies, onesie cookies, and pink strawberry macarons for the dessert table!

For the elephant cookies, I used my favorite sugar cookie and royal icing recipes.  Once the dough was chilled, I rolled it out, cut out my elephants, then baked them at 350F for 10-12 minutes.

Once they were cooled, I outlined them with pink stiff royal icing, and then filled them in with pink runny royal icing.

After letting the cookies dry for a few hours, I used a darker shade of pink to pipe the outline and the ears, and then the eyes with black royal icing.

For the onesie cookies, which I've made several times in different colors (see here, here, and here), I followed the same steps, except that I made them white with pink outlines, and little pink heart in the center of each onesie.

Then I let the cookies dry overnight, before wrapping them in cellophane bags tied with raffia and a custom favor tag.

Next for the macarons!  For the macaron shells, I used the same recipe as I did here, but made them pink with strawberry filling like I did here.  Except I made them a darker pink.  Then I piped them on a silpat, and let them rest for 20 minutes before baking them.

They came out of the oven with beautiful ruffled feet!

Then I filled them with cream cheese buttercream mixed with fresh strawberry puree.

You can click here to see more pictures of the baby shower, which was featured on the Hostess With The Mostess blog!

elephant baby shower cake

My good friend Helen just had a baby girl this month, and had asked me to make a cake for her pink and white baby shower a couple of months ago (which is also featured this month on the  Hostess With The Mostess blog!).  I had happened to see a cake that she had pinned on her Pinterest board, and I quickly realized that I had already seen this cake before on Hello Naomi's blog, while drooling over her gorgeous cake creations!  What better inspiration to model my cake after!  So I decided to replicate the adorable fondant elephant, but I wanted to do the cake covered in cream cheese buttercream instead of fondant.

I started by making my fondant elephant almost a week before the baby shower, in order to give it time to fully dry.  At first I tried molding the elephant body and then attaching the trunk and legs, but I couldn't get it to look smooth.  So I ended up molding the entire elephant out of one piece of fondant.  Then I rolled, cut, and attached pink elephant ears on either side, and used an edible Foodwriter pen to draw on the eyes.  For the balloon, I shaped it out of pink fondant, and then formed floral wire into a spiral and stuck it into the bottom of the balloon while the fondant was still moist.  Then I let both the elephant and the balloon dry for the rest of the week.

Helen requested a vanilla cake with strawberries and whipped cream.  I had already made this exact combination a number of times but with different vanilla cake recipes - first for my son's Superman birthday cake, then a year later for my son's Spiderman birthday cake, and then again for my cousin's blue whale baby shower cake - but in my opinion they were all too dense.  I was searching for a really fluffy vanilla cake instead.  I decided to go with Sweetapolita's recipe once more, but instead of adding the whipped cream to the batter at the end, I decided to try using sour cream.

Once the cake had baked and cooled, I set out to assemble it, alternating layers of cake, freshly whipped cream, and sliced strawberries.

Then I whipped up a batch of cream cheese buttercream, colored most of it pink, and applied a quick crumb coat of frosting.

I let it set a bit in the fridge, before applying a second coat of frosting.  Next I used white cream cheese buttercream to pipe the baby's name on the side of the cake, and also piped little dots in sets of four all over the cake.  To finish it off, I piped a white beaded border along the bottom of the cake.

And finally, I added the fondant elephant topper!

Then it was time to bring it to the baby shower!  Stay tuned for the rest of the pink and white desserts that I made for the shower!

Congratulations, Helen!  Little Marni is so precious and adorable! :)

***
Update - To see the other goodies that I made for the dessert table, click here!

carnival birthday cake - red velvet cake filled with cream cheese frosting and topped with cream cheese buttercream

To go along with the carnival animal cookies that I made in my previous post, I also made a 12 x 17 inch red velvet carnival cake.  The only other time I made a cake this large was the Superman birthday cake that I made for my son Matthew, and for that cake I had used four 9 x 13 inch cakes (two side-by-side, and two on top of that for the second layer).  But I was hesitant to do that again, since I felt like I could see a line down the middle where the two sets of cakes met.  So this time I bought a 12 x 17 inch cake pan, so that I could make it the right way!

(Notice in the picture above the size of the 9 x 13 inch pan is on the left, compared to the giant 12 x 17 inch pan on the right!)

I thought since I had the right pan this time, that everything would go smoothly.  But since the pan was so large, I found myself extending the baking time over and over again so that the middle of the cake could finish baking.  When the middle was finally done and the cakes came out of the oven, I could already see that the edges of the cake were overdone, and even looked crispy!  So after the cakes had cooled, I sliced off about half an inch of cake from each of the edges.

After sandwiching the two cake layers with a thick layer of cream cheese frosting, I whipped up a cream cheese buttercream to use for the crumb coating and decorating/piping.  I basically made a buttercream frosting, but added a stick of cream cheese to it because I prefer the flavor of cream cheese to buttercream, but I knew that a straight cream cheese frosting would not hold up on a cake this large (another lesson learned from my Superman birthday cake!)  So this was a way to get the same stiffness of a buttercream, with a little bit of cream cheese flavor.

After applying a crumb coating over the whole cake, and a second coating over the top of the cake, I started to decorate my sides.  I was inspired by the red and yellow stripes of Martha Stewart's carnival cake, and thought the look would go perfectly with this cake.  I had brainstormed different ways to make the carnival stripes, but in the end went with the original idea (see below, my brainstorming sketches for the cookies and the cake).

Next, I piped a shell border along the bottom and the top of the cake, and then I was ready to add the final touches to the top of the cake.

To tie in with the animal cookies, I used black icing and a star tip with various colors of icing to pipe the face of a giraffe:

an elephant:

and a lion:

And finally, I added a birthday message with black icing.  I had originally also wanted to include fondant stars on skewers or florist wire, but in the end I left it out because I didn't want to clutter the cake.  Instead, I bought a little star-shaped candle to go along with the cake (not pictured).

Hope you had an awesome first birthday Jianna!