Mrs. C Does Stuff

The Little Mister requested a basketball cake for his first birthday cake.  That's right, because of this whole COVID-19 thing, he's getting two cakes this year.  One I made for his actual birthday last week, the other I will make when he gets to have his birthday party. Since I had a bit more time while working on the cake, I decided to film the process.  This cake was a chocolate cake, with French vanilla buttercream icing.  The basketballs where made out of fondant and the details were drawn on with an edible marker.  Hope you enjoy the video!

I actually did this cake several months ago.  It ended up being one of the cutest and most fun cakes I've ever done.  It was for a sweet three year old girl who loves donuts. My goal was to make it look like a real donut...but be cake, of course.  I prefer to use all buttercream.  It just tastes better and is more forgiving to work with, in my opinion. The video below is a sped up version of how the cake was iced.  I started with two round ten inch cakes.  I cut a trench in the bottom layer and piped icing into it.  Then, stacked the other layer on top of it.  You'll notice a little crack in the top layer, but I fixed it when I started icing the cake. I manipulated the layers so much that it split. Next, I trimmed the cake into the shape of a donut, rounding off the top and bottom of the cake.  Two colors of icing were used, a light brown color for the donut and a pink to simulate the donut icing.  I also topped it off with real sp...

Remember when I did the LSU cake years ago?  The technique I used on that cake was called a buttercream transfer.  Well, I recently did another cake using that technique for the Little Mister's Mickey Mouse themed birthday party. I started with a picture of Mickey Mouse, taped down to the counter, with a piece of wax paper taped over it.  Using the appropriate colors for the character, I outlined the face with a size 5 Wilton tip in black buttercream icing.  I continued to fill in all the areas that required black.  To do this, I prefer to use a diagonal motion.  I don't know why, but it just worked for me. The Little Mister had fun watching me work on his cake.  I thought that was the sweetest thing.  That's something special about making his cakes, we get to share these special moments together. Once I completed filling in the face with all the colors, it was time to stick this in the freezer.   I actually flipped...

The Little Mister loves fish.  He likes to talk about the fish in the pond behind our house.  He likes to look at the fish in the tank at the store.  He just loves fish.  So much so that I decided to do a fish cake for him for his birthday. We don't often let Little Mister have sweets.  We are slowly easing him into the world of the sugar overload.  I'm not a sugar free zealot or anything, but we are trying to keep him from being heavily dependent on sugar.  Since he is not a regular cake eater, I decided to make his birthday cake as simple as possible.  I made a white cake with french vanilla icing.  I will share that icing recipe with you in a later post. This cake is only a 6 inch round cake.  One batch of the french vanilla icing recipe did the trick for the entire cake.  I mixed up four colors of icing for this cake.  After putting a layer of white icing between the layers of the cake, I pull out about a tablespoon ...