Monday, February 25, 2013

Baby Shower Cake - "A Star Is Born"

As I have established I like to bake.  I offered to help out for a fun baby shower that was happening.  The theme was "A Star Is Born".  It was on Oscar night.  I was told the colors were: Hot pink, white, silver and black

Here was the inspiration:  




Source: rosebakes.com via Ceri on Pinterest

It was fun!!  I took Friday off work so I wouldn't be up all night the night before.  Note to self: DO THIS ALWAYS!!   

The Plan:  I started baking thursday night so the cakes would cool and Friday I could make the fondant and cover it, what I didn't finish Friday  I would do Saturday.    


This is my go to fondant recipe: marshmallow-fondant-macsmoms-butter cream-flavored-variation. Super super easy, and it tastes good too.  

I really like Rosebakes.com!The host of the party shared the cake idea with me.   Rose linked to this cake blog post 
on cutting ribbon out of fondant:  

Source: rosebakes.com via Ceri on Pinterest

 

Until now, that has been a lost technique on me.  It was super helpful, and made it WAY less scary to try. (I had back up real ribbon in the plan just in case.)


I used 2 boxes yellow cake, 1 box strawberry cake mix.  Don't judge me.  I don't care that it comes in a box.  It's EASY, Hard Mess Up, and Tastes GREAT.... Maybe one day I will try it from scratch. Who am I kidding?? I never will.    I do however "mix" it up.  I follow the box directions but I add a box of instant pudding.  FYI: It makes the mix much thicker when mixing.  I think that it makes the cake dense and so so moist, and adds another level of flavor to it. 

  • Yellow mix got the following changes:  1 box vanilla pudding, and subbed milk for the cup of water. 
  • Strawberry mix:  1/2 bag frozen strawberries.  I pulverized them in their frozen state in my Cuisinart 9-Cup Food Processor. (I LOVE that thing!) until they were tiny bits.  (it was about 1 half cup.)  I figure that I should remove 1/2 cup liquid, so I subbed 1 cup water with the half cup strawberry mix, and then about 1/2 cup milk.  These are estimates, I am a mix an go kind of cook.  When adding the pudding it makes it so much thicker so you have room to play with.  
After the cakes were all baked and cool, I filled them.  Confession time: I cheat with butter cream frosting.  I go to Albertsons, and buy it from the bakery.  They sell it by the pound.  With the cost of butter, it is about the same, and I do not have to make it.  WIN!!!  

I filled it with layers of  Bavarian Cream (I cheated again and bought it at united grocers, cash & carry ran out of time because of the strawberry mix do over) and strawberry filling that I found via pintrest.
Source: allrecipes.com via Ceri on Pinterest


It tastes good and was super easy!  (we will leave out that I burnt the first batch Friday night, and had to make a new one Saturday)   (It was really easy, I just got distracted waiting for it to boil watching American Idol on the DVR)





If you have ever filled a cake before, you may or may not know a trick for keeping it oozing out.  It's called a dam.  You can use that by piping butter cream around the edge.



I wanted a layer of the filling to be strawberry cake A thin layer.  I baked one of the yellow cakes in a spring form cake pan.  The other cakes were done in an 8 inch round cake pan.  I trimmed some of the yellow from the spring form pan, to add a thin layer of yellow in the middle of it.  

This is what it looked like cut:
Anyway, I stacked them up, and dirty iced it.  I need to get better about making them all the same. exact. size, and doing a 2nd layer of icing after the dirty ice has dried.  (I always rush this part and regret it)  From what I read it will help with the lumps I have that annoy me so badly.  

So now, the 2 cakes are baked, iced, and covered in the white fondant I made Friday.  Things are going good!  But.... of course the top was too heavy so I used some of these  Hidden Pillars 4/Pkg-6  from Wilton. ..  First I just put one in.... still sinking.... then I trimmed one so that it opened up like a flower and set the top cake upon my make shift pedestal.

Next I proceeded to make black fondant.  Wow, it took forever, I like the CK Products colors they work really well, but to make black it takes a TON of it.  Luckily I added some raspberry LorAnn flavoring oil.    so it did not taste like food coloring. (I made that mistake before with Red) Using the ribbon cutting method from Rosebakes - how-to-add-ribbons-and-ribbon-borders-to-cake to make the ribbons.  
What I want: Wilton Decorate Smart Fondant Ribbon Cutter Set. What I used: OXO Good Grips Pizza Wheel it works right?? Now I was worried my fondant would stick together so I decided to use my Reynolds Freezer Paper.  This was great for my Kneading, but it STUCK TO THE PAPER SIDE.  So I rolled it back out and cut it again with the freezer paper folded in half so the plastic was on both sides.  (Normally I use parchment paper but i was out)  I was really surprised how easy it was to cut with a pizza cutter and ruler.  Also it helps if your fondant is a little thicker I think.    
RESULTS!







































Next I worked on the Stars I cut up many.... borrowed some vodka from my neighbor to paint on silver and platinum dust.  Then I made these:
Don't look at the mess! All the freezer paper cuttings, I am a very messy cook....

Edible Glitter!! 1/4 sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of food coloring, baking sheet and 10 mins in oven @ 350


Source: planetpals.com via Ceri on Pinterest

I made the rope stanchions from paper straws, and Twizzlers Pull 'n' Peel.  I dipped them in sugar water, and then rolled them in colored "glitter" sugar I made from this pin:

Just mix a few drops of food color, paste, or gel to regular sugar.  Then bake at 350.  There is a note that the paste colors do smoke.  And they are right, it did but I caught it before it got bad and burnt.  Turned out perfectly! 





PROGRESS!








































Then I rolled out the red hot pink carpet using the same technique above.  (Still worked well)  Not before discovering the HORRORS of making Gum paste!!  My stars from the day before were not drying out well.  Because I was making a wall I wanted to make sure it was going to hold and to dry out.  At first I thought I could half the container.  I planned on making a 50/50 mix of fondant and gum paste.  Maybe that was where I went wrong?  It was bad.  

So I had to mix about half a bag of powdered sugar..... way way more than the 1/3rd cup the instructions called for.  It's amazing I got it off! Hubby had to help, and used a spatula....  well this mess turned in to this
   

Simi FINISHED PRODUCT! (I added the shooting stars on the wire once I got to the party:





FRONT


BACK
I did not know it was going to be sitting on an island.  My messy ribbon ends and back of the wall were not perfect so I added a bunch of the extra fondant stars to cover it up.

Well there you have it.  My first baby shower cake!  The shower was pintrest perfect!  Super sweet hostess and co-hostess!  I want to go to more of their parties!  Super excited for the Parents to Be and their soon to be Baby KMG!  

Thanks for Reading... :)

x

2 comments:

  1. I just bought some gumpaste mix 😣 I usually buy the ready to use...nice to know I will be needing more powdered sugar...but my question did it harden enough I'm going to be making some stars and an elmo figure and some other things I want dry...I live in a high humidity area in Hawaii...wondering if I should use more gumpaste than fondant...fondant here holds but melts, and ur just like me just do cakes for family and friends...I've done a few for $, use to make my cakes from scratch but takes too much time...so doctored up cake mixes is me too...

    ReplyDelete
  2. I just bought some gumpaste mix 😣 I usually buy the ready to use...nice to know I will be needing more powdered sugar...but my question did it harden enough I'm going to be making some stars and an elmo figure and some other things I want dry...I live in a high humidity area in Hawaii...wondering if I should use more gumpaste than fondant...fondant here holds but melts, and ur just like me just do cakes for family and friends...I've done a few for $, use to make my cakes from scratch but takes too much time...so doctored up cake mixes is me too...

    ReplyDelete

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