Assembling The Avengers Cake

Time for another birthday cake for my nephew! His latest obsession: super heroes! So I'm sure you can guess what his request was for the cake theme.

Because the super heroes that Wyatt likes are Iron Man, The Hulk, Thor and Captain America, I decided to make the theme be The Avengers. His favorite Avenger out of all of them is Iron Man, so I chose to make the main colors yellow and red.

For Iron Man, I purchased a cut out from Etsy.

For Captain America, I decided to make his shield. I thought it would be simple enough to find cookie cutters, cups, lids (random circular items around my house), to make each off the different rings of colors on the shield, and then just stack each smaller one on top of the last, followed by the star. Unfortunately, it was not as easy as I'd imagined. Stacking them that way made the shield appear to be very thick. What I ended up having to do for the middle layers is essentially cut out their centers, turning them into rings, and then stacking them. This prevented the shield from getting bulkier with each layer.

For The Hulk, I decided to make his fist, and have it look as though it was smashing through the top of the cake. 

For the finger nails, I used the blunt side of a pair of tweezers, as the shape was exactly what I needed. When I cut the hole on the top of the cake, I used my X-Acto knife, and cut slits similar to what the lid of a fast food cup looks like, where you punch the straw through. It ended up working very well!

The final piece I decided to add was the Avengers "A" logo, just to kind of bring everything together. I found a picture of the logo online, traced it onto parchment paper, and then used my X-Acto knife to trace the outline on to the cake. This way, I could just pipe frosting right on top of the outline. I was pretty happy with how it turned out!

Now don't worry, I didn't forget about Thor! I had decided to try something I hadn't done before. I put the hammer on the inside of the cake. To do this I hollowed out the middle of the top two layers, using a circle cookie cutter, then I hollowed out the middle of bottom layer using a rectangular cookie cutter. I took the cake that I pulled out using the circle cookie cutter and mixed it with some frosting and brown food coloring, and then did the same for the other cake I cut out, but I added gray food coloring instead. I then filled the hollowed out part of the bottom layer with the gray colored cake mix, placed the next layer on the cake, filled that hollowed out piece with the brown cake mix, followed by the last layer and the last of the brown cake mix. So this is what the final cake looked like when you cut into it:

My nephew was so excited! He, of course, had to have Iron Man's face. Not sure why, but he can't get enough fondant. It must be all the sugar! :)

I can't wait to see what his theme request will be next year. It's so much fun to bring his birthday cakes to life!

Baking the Road Less Traveled

Hello fellow bakers and sweet treat lovers! I have recently decided to try to master the delicious art of sugary confections. Yes, I want to be a professional cake decorator.

All my life I have been obsessed with desserts, especially anything with frosting! I also have a great appreciation for art and design. So it hardly seems surprising that many a cake have left me feeling intrigued and awe-inspired. To learn how to create those amazing masterpieces has been a desire of mine for quite some time now. I won't get into too much of my background right now, but if you want to know a little more about me and why this is something I want to do, just click on my "About Me" link.

So as of now, I have already decorated one cake using professional tools. In fact, it was that cake that really pushed me to realize that this was something I truly enjoy, despite the amount of work it takes. It was for my niece's first birthday. I decided that since I had made something special for my nephew for his last birthday, I wanted to do the same for my niece, who have both brought so much joy to my life. Side note: being an aunt is one of the most wonderful blessings I have ever gotten. It is so much fun to see life through a child's eyes.

Violet's princess cake

Wyatt's Elmo cupcakes

The inspiration for both of those creations came from a lot of pictures I found on Pinterest (surprise surprise, right?). So for this project I opted to start by doing some more searching on Pinterest, and some other sites, to see what designs really caught my eye. In doing so I also decided that I will have to first play around with some classic cake decorations, using basic tools.

Right now I have 6 different decorating tips, and plan to accumulate more as I continue to learn more designs. I have already learned how to make a rose, as you can see in the picture above of the cake I made for my niece. That one was actually a lot of fun to learn, because it's been a very common flower on so many cakes I've seen and I always thought that it looks so pretty and even life-like.

The biggest help I found with that design was actually by searching for YouTube videos. There are a lot of good tips out there from experienced decorators who have added in some steps/hints of their own to help you be more successful. Here's a link to one of the videos I found most beneficial: How to Make A Buttercream Rose.

My next step is going to be making a plan for what I need/want to learn. For now I am still waiting on some more decorating tips that I purchased to arrive in the mail. So for my next lesson I have decided to start by playing around with some of the tips I have, and practicing the typical designs that they are used for. Then, if I have time, to make some marshmallow fondant. Fondant is something I have yet to make but have wanted to for a long time because it really gives you a lot more options for creating whatever design you have in mind. I also hope to get good enough at making different shapes out of it, as I anticipate using it to make little minions for the Despicable Me cake I'm planning to make my nephew this year. :)