animal kingdom birthday cake

My good friend Helen has an adorable daughter named Marni, who I've been making birthday cakes for since she was born! Since her birthday party is coming up this weeked, I thought I'd better get around to posting her birthday cake from last January! (So sorry for the delay, where does the time go?!)

The theme for her birthday party last year was "Animal Kingdom", and it was a five-way party with some of her friends from class. Each child picked an animal to represent them on the cake, and I had decided to make them as flat fondant characters to go around the sides of the cake.

First: Marni chose a giraffe, and I started by tinting fondant with golden yellow gel-based food coloring, and then rolled out and cut my shapes. For the head I used a circle cutter, but for the body and ears I used a knife to free-form cut my shapes out. 

For the details, I tinted fondant with chocolate brown for the muzzle, mane, and spots (with which I used a medium round piping tip to cut out), and for the feet and horns (antlers?) I used fondant tinted with chocolate brown and a bit of super black to achieve a darker brown.

Second: Marni's friend Lauren chose a monkey, so I used fondant tinted with chocolate brown. The steps were basically the same as the giraffe, using circle cutters where ever I could, and otherwise using a paring knife to cut out my shapes.

For the face, belly, hands and feet, I used ivory to tint my fondant. And a heart-shaped cutter worked out great for top 3/4 of the face.

Third: Marni's friend Emma chose an elephant, so I used a tiny bit of super black to tint my fondant a light gray color (use sparingly, as the gray can get dark very fast!) Here, heart-shaped cutters worked out create for the ears! (I used this set of nested heart-shaped cutters).

Fourth: Marni's friend Sabrina chose a penguin, so I used super black to tint my fondant, and a combination of nested circle cutters and nested heart-shaped cutters to assemble the penguin with black and white fondant.

For the details, I tinted my fondant with orange, and used a paring knife to cut out my shapes.

Fifth: Marni's friend Wyatt chose an owl, so I tinted my fondant with chocolate brown and a bit of super black to get a darker color brown. I also used white fondant for the eyes, and orange tinted fondant for the feet.

After finishing all of the fondant details and using an edible marker to add eyes and other details, I was done! Here's how all of the animals came out:

Aren't they cute? :)

And instead of writing all of their names on the cake, I made little leaves out of leaf green fondant and a leaf cutter, and used an edible marker to write their names on them.

For the cake, I made 1.5 batches of my favorite vanilla cake in two 10-inch round cake pans (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), and after it was baked and cooled I sliced each cake in half horizontally to give me four cake layers. Then I filled the layers with fresh whipped cream and fresh sliced strawberries. (I make this combination every year for her!)

Once the cake was assembled, I whipped up some cream cheese buttercream, tinted it with sky blue, and frosted the top and sides of the cake with it. (I usually do this in two steps - a quick crumb coat to lock in all of the cake crumbs, refrigerate for 30 minutes, and then a final smooth coat).

Then I let the cake chill in the refrigerator overnight. In the morning, I added a piped beaded border along the bottom of the cake, and then added my previously made fondant animals.

Then I pipe some plants in between the animals (using frosting that was tinted with forest green), and added my previously made fondant leaves next to each animal.

I also made a second cake, a 10-inch coffee chiffon cake for the adults! This one was decorated simply with rainbow sprinkles surrounding the number "5". (You can read here on how I did this!)

The party was held at the Discovery Museum in Sausalito, which has so many fun things for kids to do, as well as spectacular views of the Golden Gate Bridge.

We had a fantastic time celebrating with you, Marni! Happy Birthday!

giraffe baby shower cake

A few months ago, my neighbor and good friend Cindy was helping to plan a baby shower for one of her friends, and she asked me to make a small baby shower cake for the dessert table. It wouldn't be for the the 100+ guests to eat, rather a little cake for the parents-to-be to bring home and enjoy. Since the baby shower theme colors were yellow and gray, we decided on a 6-inch yellow cake with gray letters and piped beaded border. And a little giraffe fondant topper for the top!

Inspired by the fondant work by Paola's Creations, I set out to make my fondant giraffe. I've only done a few fondant toppers in the past (an elephant with balloon, a mustached baby, and "BABY" letters), so I was excited to be making a giraffe!

First I tinted my fondant with a combination of lemon yellow and golden yellow gel-based food coloring. After kneading the coloring into the fondant to get an even tone, I roughly formed the giraffe's pieces.

For the head, I made ears and added a light brown fondant for the muzzle, and dark brown tinted fondant for the little tuft of hair. Then I used an edible food marker to add his eyes and nostrils.

Then I added dark brown fondant to the feet and a dark brown tuft of hair, and then light brown fondant for the spots and antlers. And then I could assemble it!

Isn't he cute?!

I also made some green fondant leaves for the giraffe to sit on, to add a little more color to the cake.

For the cake, we had decided on strawberry shortcake, so I baked up my go-to vanilla cake (recipe in my book, The Hello Kitty Baking Book!), cut each layer in half horizontally, and filled it with freshly whipped cream and sliced strawberries.

Then I made a batch of yellow buttercream and covered the top and sides of the cake with it.

I smoothed out the frosting out with an offset spatula, and then piped a quick beaded border along the bottom with gray buttercream.

After adding lettering and securing the fondant giraffe with a bit of buttercream, I thought it was so cute as-is that I almost didn't want to add the fondant leaves!

But in the end I added them anyway, for a pop of color.



The best thing about making fondant toppers is that the recipient can keep it indefinitely! Just wipe the frosting off of the bottom, and you can keep it on a bookshelf or something, as long as it's not in the sun and in is a cool dry place.

Hope you had a wonderful baby shower, CC and Ryan!

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!