Yo Gabba Gabba

Yo Gabba Gabba cake, with all the characters chillin on their boom box. This cake was almost given to another decorator while I was gonna get stuck with that horrible purse cake and I was pretty upset, but the other decorator disappeared so I got to do all my cakes PLUS all hers at the last second... hooraaaaaaay...?

In any case, I secretly love that show and not so secretly love making little figures for cakes. Close-ups!!!


This dude's name is Plex, and he came out super well. I like his little antenna!


This is Muno, probs my favorite character.


Brobee, maybe actually my more favoriter character.


And Foofa, which is a hilarious but fitting name.

Apparently I didn't take a close-up of the blue cat, Toodee, but that's okay because I'm not a big fan.

The Accursed Purse Cake

Alright, not my favorite cake, but I suppose not bad for a first attempt at the purse shape. I wish we'd had equipment available so I didn't have to use a ruler to mark out the squares and then laboriously hand-paint them with gold luster dust. It was a LOT of work and apparently people liked it, but all I can see when I look at it are the flaws.



Hilariously, the day after I finished this beast was the day my manager decided to tell me that we actually have an airbrush for cake decorating in the shop; nobody had though that might be useful information for me to have. I didn't bother asking to use it for any subsequent cakes because it wasn't necessary, but it would have been SO GREAT to have had some sort of checkered template for this cake where I could have just airbrushed the pattern on. Sigh.


I did really like the pacifier though, in that super cute star shape. I figure you'd probably not go for such a shape with an actual pacifier what with all the sharp points, but for the purpose of this cake I thought it'd be okay.


And I made it super shiny, too. Yeah.

Lil Animals

My second animal figures cake differed stylistically from the first, less "fun" and cartoony and more cute with a little bit of elegance thrown in. It's for a baby shower after all, which is less about what the newborn is going to like and more about the involved adults I think! I really liked how the sides came out with that organic swirled texture in the peach-colored cream cheese icing. The design I based this cake on was given to my manager by the person who ordered the cake, but I don't know where she got it originally so unfortunately I can't reference it properly, but it turned out pretty differently, with different animals and the monkey character hanging off the side.


I love pearl dust. Put that stuff on EVERYTHING and it gets all shiny.


So here's a funny story: my manager was explaining the composition of the cake to me and told me it would feature three animals: an alligator, an elephant and a monkey. So I started with the alligator, worked my way through the elephant and was JUST finished up the monkey and placing it next to its fellows when he came to check up on my. He looked at the figures for a second and said, "A monkey? I thought it was supposed to be a lion." So I sadly mushed up my monkey and started working on a lion, making sure to ask him for the order sheet just so we could be sure he wasn't making things up again. I had finished all the figures and placed them on the cake when I went to the bakers to check on some cakes I needed for another piece I was working on, and when I got back my manager had left the original order sheet on my counter. I read it. It called for an alligator, an elephant and A MONKEY. I was pretty livid by that point, so I took a break, and when I came back to this cake I decided to make the setback into an opportunity and improve on the original cake design. Booyah! Supercute.

I like this shot because the alligator is my favorite, and you can also see the monkey's curly little tail. The family that ordered the cake called the warehouse to thank us when the received it... If that had happened before then nobody told me =P That's actually entirely possible (see above monkey/lion confusion anecdote).

Sacha

I made templates for this cake and then laid them on the top and pricked through them with a pin to give my icing bag a little guidance. The fondant is entirely covered in gold luster dust (hand-painted on) and the embellishments are all painted silver. When the cake was in the light, it shone beautifully!


This one was for my manager's friend, and he checked up on it CONSTANTLY. It was infuriating, but I was gratified when it came out so well.

Monkey Cake (to be continued?)

My first cake with little figures on it! I had some help on this one from a co-decorator. She made those awesome bananas and balloons, while I worked on the monkeys and the polka dots. I took more pictures with her camera, and will add them to this post when she resurfaces and I can get in touch with her (I'm not really sure where she disappeared to...). The top monkey is really cute up close, and you can sort of see that the monkey in the back (to the far left) has a peeled banana and is getting ready to dig in. There was another monkey on the opposite side, that one dangling upside down on the side of the cake, a banana in its tail. Sweeet.

Cakeman Raven, Ella's Birthday and that Chocolate Plastique Skull I Said I'd Post About

So this past Saturday I get a phone call from a number I'd labeled "Cakeman" way back when I auditioned for a position as decorator at Cakeman Raven's bakery warehouse. I had long given up hope of hearing back from that bakery since in my experience it doesn't usually take several months to get a call-back for bakeshop jobs. But they needed somebody to fill in for their regular decorator who's on vacation now, and I've been asked to stay on until I leave for New Mexico at the end of June!

Kiara's Oscar cake is my first confection completed for Cakeman Raven, and I gotta be honest, as much as I liked working on it and how it turned out, I kinda feel like a tool. I'm not into incorporating popular culture (like cartoon characters, designer fashion, or AHEM the Oscar Awards) in my cake designs AT ALL. Buuuuut it's completely out of my hands at Cakeville! Ugh. I've sold my soul.

What really killed me on this cake was the stairs; they came out well, but were the source of a substantial amount of hair-loss. They had to be carved into the cake (with the excess pieces used to create the bottom step), augmented with the bakery's RIDICULOUSLY soft cream cheese icing, and then very carefully covered in fondant and poked and prodded into shape. The red carpet had to be cut to measured specifications out of red fondant that I colored myself, then laid over the first layer of fondant and fixed in place with royal icing. It took so long! Thank god it came out, and while I'm at it, THANK GOD FOR ROYAL ICING. Fluffy gold.


Here's the sign, looking a little washed out (thanks flash), but it still looks good! Okay, a little rough, but I'd never made a sign like this before. The base is a piece of cardboard with two skewers taped to it. I coated the board in royal icing (seriously... so useful) and then red fondant. It held perfectly even though I put together just hours before it was delivered to the Cakeman Raven storefront to be picked up by Kiara's fam. That's cutting things a little close for me, but hey, it got done.


I'ma give a shout-out to the Cakeville crew for being so supportive while I toiled for three days over this beast of a layered confection. You guys are awesome! Go team!

Ummmm..... yeah.

Okay, I figured I should probably knock this other cake out while I'm in a bloggy mood. This is a cake I made last week for the birthday of the little girl I babysit. Ella wanted a Dora the Explorer cake. Mmhm. We all know how I feel about that kind of thing (ugh, brand loyalty. ugh, marketing to children!!!). So she got a weird sky-cake covered in 3D butterflies on top of which I sort of unceremoniously propped a plastic Dora doll (NOT pictured). On the plus side, the detrimental effects of this exposure to corporate advertising were blunted by the fact that the doll remained in place on the cake for a scant four seconds before it was whisked away by some kid (who was not Ella), who had also just blown out most of the candles. In fact, I believe Dora hardly registered as Ella spent the moments between the birthday song and the cutting of the cake struggling to secure a candle for herself before they all disappeared into the outstretched hands of her cluster of friends. MAN, kids are brats! One little fella didn't even wait for the candles to be blown out before he started picking butterflies off the cake and shoving them into his mouth! But Ella was an absolute angel, and not a tear was shed! Good for her, because I would have thrown a sh•t fit if my friends wrecked on my cake like that. Happy Birthday Lola!!!

All piping including the 3D butterflies done in royal icing! Seriously, is there anything it can't do???

And finally, I present to you that chocolate plastique skull that I said I would post about back in January. It's kinda metal in that cakey/candy sorta way I like.



Because the skull itself was not metal enough, I added horns. Rams' horns.


THERE it is. Metal. Also, that selfsame skull is still sitting in my room at this very moment. As a matter of fact, I am contemplating it as I type. I wanna see how long it'll last. Right now it's dry as a bone (haha) but how will it fare in humid weather? I guess I'll find out! Science! (That one's for you, PKC)

Coming up next time: cakes shaped like dice? Apparently, according to my manager at Cakeville. Better start googling stuff like... how to make cake shaped like dice...