Cake for Adam-21st

Well, after much deliberation about how best to present this cake I decided to go with a fondant covered rocky road base with a 2d pikachu sponge sitting on top.  I then made a spherical  ball cake for the pokeball. 

The pokeball and the rocky road were, pardon the pun, a piece of cake but the pikachu was quite difficult.  I like to make my sponges fresh, as close to the day as possible and although there are advantages to freezing a buttercrumbed cake (ease of cutting a pattern cleanly with virtually no crumbing) I decided to stick with the 'fresh' option and cut the pattern from a fresh sponge which was quite tricky due to the soft texture and the inevitable crumbing; it was also virtually impossible to buttercrumb the tricky edges of the pattern!  It's also good to present a 'fresh' sponge as this means any cake left over can be frozen if necessary although I have to say that there is virtually nothing left of the cake as it was soon devoured by family and friends, mainly at the party and then again after lunch today!

It helped as I had a fantastic new birthday gift of 'The Mat' which enables the ultra fine rolling of fondant but this is then tricky to transfer when rolling to such a thinness. Hence the pikachu has a less than smooth appearance as although rolling the fondant thin was my aim to enable me to cover the tricky edges, nooks and crannies with a fine 'draping' in order to mould it easier, having a thicker fondant does serve to cover any lumps and bumps but I was worried a thick fondant may have damaged the delicate area's around the edges of the pattern. So I had to decide which would work best and thin fondant won the day!

All that said, after much anxiety about having the cake(s) ready and presentable for the night of my sons 21st birthday bash, it all came together nicely and I was quite pleased with the finished product.  Pikachu could have been smoother but take a look at the pictures and judge for yourselves:

Pokeball with a thicker fondant covering:

Pikachu with an ultra thin fondant covering on a thick rocky road base; this was also covered in an ultra thin layer of fondant so as not to be over intrusive on the flavour of the rocky road but again not thick enough to hide the bumps (which should be present anyway in rocky road!)

The completed cake on a 20" x 20" cake board.

Pokeball sliced......very pleased when Adam sliced this open and revealed a lovely moist sponge; wasn't sure how it would turn out as it takes quite a lot longer to cook due to the dense shape but it has, once again, soon been devoured!

 Please leave any comments :)

All for now cake lovers

Bev :)

'Fish' Cake success! :)

After some fretting over the 'fish' presentation part of Steve's 50th cake it all came together really well!

A mirror carp was not so easy to model but I'm really pleased that the recipient of the cake was really happy with the end product!  I am told it looked great and tasted fab too so I'm really pleased.

I had baked the cake fresh at 6am on the Friday and decorated it the same evening.  I had to 'get into it' and think about the scene around the base of the cake and re make a few more fondant bits and pieces as the ones I made previous had started to break due to drying out (I had made them on the Monday so they would set for the decoration) but having had a trial run, so to speak, it came together quite nicely.  It took about 4 solid hours to decorate to the finished cake but it was well worth the time and effort.

See pics below:
The finished cake:

The mirror carp! (A few bull rushes showing at the base of his tail!):

Bait with tin and fishing rod:

Mini fish in keep net:

Must say the 'name' could have been a little better but practice makes perfect and I have my eye on some stencils for my next fondant lettered/numbered projects!!


Next project is Adam's 21st Cake....few changes in mind so watch this space cake lovers!

Bev