Those two really don't go together at all! Lol. But, those are two of the cakes that I did this weekend. I actually did 3 cakes this weekend, but I didn't take any pictures of the 3rd one because..... well there really isn't a good reason. I was just slippin on my game. Darn shame. It was an experiment and turned out really nice. You'll just have to take my word for it! Lol. I plan on doing another one ( but even better) in the near future so I promise I'll share THAT one!
The first cake was a 2 tier cake with a Bike Boy theme. The birthday boy was turning 5 and loves riding his bicycle around the neighborhood, so mom was throwing him a bike riding party. Seems pretty appropriate that you would need a bicycle cake! There were a couple of firsts with this cake. This is the first bicycle themed cake that I've done AND this is the first 2 tier cake that I've done in the Neopolitan flavor. This means 3 layers per tier. I'm a 2-layer-per-tier gal myself. Lol. Thank you Farinaz ( the birthday boy's sweet momma) for putting me to work! :-) Anywho, if you've ever had Neopolitan Ice cream.... same thing, but in cake. Delicious, if I do say so myself.
I had a couple of concerns about building this cake. Since I'm a 2-layer-gal, I hadn't stacked a 3 layer cake and was worried that it would be wobbly or one of the layers of cake would collapse ( this has happened to me before!) so I tried to make sure that I put the most dense flavor at the bottom. Sorry Chocolate Cake layer, you drew the short straw. I settled on layering chocolate, then strawberry , then vanilla.
She wanted to be able to remove the top tier from the bottom and save it for later so I didn't stick a dowel down the center like I normally would with a stacked cake. And for some unknown reason Joanne's did NOT have 6'' cake separator plates. Having that plate could have aleviated a whole lotta heart stress during transport. If I would have had a heart attack on the way to Farinaz' house, I surely would be blaming Joanne's!! I put in 5 or 6 plastic dowels so that it would stand level...... though I must have cut one too short cause it was still leaning a little. It would survive. It just needed to make it there to be pretty for the party the next morning and then it was coming off anyway.
The bicycles on the side of the cake were thorns in my sides too! I take that back. It wasn't necessarily the bicycles themselves. They were beautiful. They just wouldn't serve the function that Farinaz needed them to. I was a little slow on the draw and didn't realize until after I'd set the bikes I make out of chocolate onto the cake and the chocolate had hardened. Great going, YemaYa. Now I gotta play Mrs. Fix-it and take the bikes off, carefully, smooth the frosting again and make some new bikes. The chocolate bikes would have made it difficult to pull the top tier off and not mess anything up.....and I just plain didn't like the way they looked. The next option was fondant bikes. This is when I realized that an extruder sure would come in handy. Or one of those plastic play-dough toys that you use to make hair for your dolls! I didn't have either so I just used my hands and rolled the fondant out. Sigh.
Here is the finished product! Ignore the Kickstart in the back of the fridge! Lol.
On to the next one!
The Baby Bottom cake was pretty easy. This is the 3rd baby bottom cake that I've done so I didn't have any structural issues or anything like that. The trouble I had with this cake was the theme....or lack thereof.
My good friend Lay loved the previous baby bottom cakes and simply wanted one just like that. Am I so wrong to want each cake to be unique??! Lol. Some times you have baby showers with a baby animal theme, or an animal print theme or specific colors. The descriptor- It's a boy. So that's what I'm working with here! On one hand, I love having free design reign. It usually makes for a very intricate cake as I like trying techniques or ideas that I've never done before. On the other hand, some navigational beacons would be nice. Oh well. I ended up doing a design I'd been thinking about doing for something baby related.
I woke up that morning feeling really good about this design. I was thinking that teal would be a good color for it. I wasn't sure about the contrasting color though. That would take a little longer. I started working with the teal first since I knew I wouldn't change my mind on that color. I'd decided to do a teal blanket (over the baby bottom) with a yellow border and a teal button border at the base of the cake with teal and yellow polka dots. Once I got that done I took a step back and I realized that I didn't like it at all. Not one bit. How in the world was I going to fix this aweful color mishap!? Grrrrrrrrr. I wasn't sure so I took a break.
Oooh, Oooh, Oooh!! I got it! ( insert bouncing and hand-clapping here). Teal and brown and teddy bears! I had to remove the yellow border on the fondant blanket and make a brown one. Then I cut out some brown polka dots and replaced the yellow ones and filled my teddy bear chocolate mold with some milk chocolate. I had to re-smooth a bunch of spots in the frosting but I liked the color combo MUCH better. I also added two chocolate bears along the borders on either side of the words.
Needless to say, I was a little busy this weekend. I am only one person and I have a tendency to over-book myself, then scramble to get things done, then get yelled at by my husband for over- booking. It's a vicious cycle.
Fortunately, I am really happy with how the cakes turned out and my customers are too so it was all worth it.
Thank you Farinaz and Lay Lay (for Beyounca's shower) for letting me create your cakes. Cheers ladies~
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