Zebra Polka Dot Princess Cake

I am so excited to be able to share this weeks project with you all! It has to be one of my favorites so far!!! 

Recently a family member asked me to make a cake for their granddaughters' first birthday, and I was so excited to be able to do this for them! 

Due to the amount of people coming to the party we decided to make it a 2 tiered cake (a 10inch and a 6inch, with a matching little 4inch smash cake on the side). 

This was the design we finally picked: 

The 10in layer is zebra striped, with a pink and white name plaque on the front, as well as pink (glittery) pearls on the bottom layer. 

The top layer is a lighter pink than the pearls, with black and white dots of various sizes, a #1 plaque on the front, and the same pink pearls as the other layer. It's also topped with a silver and pink glittery crown. 

And the smash cake will be make to mimic the top layer (with smaller details, even a mini crown).

The first part of my project I had to finish was to make all the gum paste and fondant decorations and details that will make this cake special. 

I cut a bunch of black and white dots (3 different sizes) and laid them on a cutting board to dry. 

Then I moved onto the name/number plaques. 

The #1 plaque was made by using a simple round cutter for the black background and a 5 petal fondant cutter to place on top. 

I then used a toothpick to punch holes around the edges to imitate a doily. Then placed a black #1 on the center of it, making it really pop! 

I wanted to keep with the doily theme when making the name plaque to make sure they matched. 

So I cut out an oval in pink fondant and covered it in massive amounts of hot pink disco dust. While that set up a little bit, I made a slightly smaller oval out of white fondant and poked holes in the edges similar to the other plaque. I used the toothpick and scalloped the edges as well, finishing off that doily look I was hoping to achieve. 

The next project I worked on was the crowns. I needed two, different sized crowns - one to fit on the 6in cake and one on the 4in cake.

I used the Wilton brand Baroque silicone mold to help me form all the scroll work for the crown, giving it great detail!!! 

This is the larger crown :) put together with a little gum paste glue and am letting it dry right now.

I used some white pearl dust to give the grey crown a silver sheen. I made the jewel in the center out of electric pink gum paste and covered it with hot pink disco dust. 

Here's a close up of the detailing on the sides: 

And here's the smaller one for the smash cake: 

I LOVE how they turned out!!! Absolutely adorable! Even better than I had ever planned!!! They'll be great cake toppers! 

 

I let those dry for over a week before I planned to use them. It helped them set up a little better and hold up for me.

Now it's time to start building the actual cake. 

She requested a pink zebra stripe pattern inside the cake, which I had never attempted before and was looking forward to trying! I saw about a billion pictures online of batter layered on top of each other until the pattern was made, so I figured I could try it myself. 

I used a measuring scoop and layered scoop after scoop after scoop on top of each other, allowing it to spread out a little between each scoop, until my cake pan was full enough. I made three 4in, two 6in, and two 10in rounds. 

I baked them @325deg for a while, almost an hour. And when they were done they looked like this : 

I cut off the top and flipped them out. They ended up looking like this (which I think is really rather cool) : 

After I cut the top of the cake off (to make it even before I turned it out) I took the scraps, stacked them, and cut them the way you would slice the cake. It DID look like a pink zebra! 

After letting the cakes cool it was time to stack and crumb coat them (I know I don't need to crumb coat it because I haven't really cut any edges but I am a perfectionist, so I do anyway). 

Next it was time to frost and decorate each tier.

I started with the two top layers, frosting and laying the polka dots on it....but got so busy I forgot to grab a picture before I got them in the box...oops! :) 

Then onto the zebra stripes. It was hard for me to be so random with my pattern but it worked out for me. 

All you have to do is roll out your fondant, cut strips(make sure they're not perfectly even), and place them all over the cake. Cutting your strips diagonally into triangles helps give you the more natural zebra stripe. 

I just had to put on the name plaque and pink glittery pearls around the bottom and that tier was finished! :) 

After safely transporting the cakes to her house, it was time to put it all together! 

I stacked the pink 6in cake ontop of the zebra tier to finish it off (also finishing the top tier with glittery pink pearls as well). 

It came out SO WONDERFULLY!!! I cannot get over how much I love it. 

AND it turned out exactly like the picture: 

And I made a matching smash cake for Baby Sophia to eat :) 

This was SUCH A FUN project! I loved working with these colors and this concept! It looks super girly but still crisp, clean, and trendy! I LOVE it!!! :) 

Minecraft Creeper Cake

It has been so insanely busy with everything this summer that I have not had any time to blog. 

I hope you all had a wonderful summer! Hope you were able to get outside in the wonderful sunshine, try something new, and make lifelong memories! We made quite a few - like visiting Crater Lake, camping at the beach for the 4th, and many hot days grabbing ice cream. It was wonderfully perfect but BUSY! 

It's kind of nice to get back to a regular schedule but I do miss them while they're gone.

But anyway...back to the fun cake stuff :) 

I don't normally bake very much during the summer but because it was my son's birthday I told him I'd make him whatever cake he would like. It kind of became a challenge to see how creative he could get. Hahaha! It was fun though. 

He ended up settling on a MineCraft Creeper. Now, having never seen the game before (we bought it for him for his birthday, so I know what it is now but didn't then) I took this as a great chance for my son to be more hands on as well. He showed me a few pictures (for those of you that don't know, a 'Creeper' is one of the bad guys on the MineCraft game. This game is a Pixalized world where you can dig, build, and create whatever you'd like. My kids love it. It's creative and relatively non violent). 

We decided to make it look Pixalized by using many green squares put together to create his face. 

We started out with marshmallow fondant (melted marshmallows, water, and powdered sugar) 

and slowly started adding green to it...

... until we had MANY shades of green to work with.

I rolled it out thinly and had my son help me cut squares. This is the part where the dreaded MATH comes in. My cake was a 6in square. I made my fondant squares 1/2in each, requiring me to make 12x12=144 little squares to cover the top. I ended up making 200 because some break, or don't quite fit perfectly, or was the wrong color. It gave me some more flexibility when making it...it did require a bit more time though. 

I had to layer them to get them all on 2 plates but I got them on there. I made sure they could dry out a little more, which helped when constructing the cake. 

He also wanted a few TNT bricks to go around the base of the cake. I made some of the marshmallow fondant red, formed little squares, wrapped them with white fondant, made a little 'banana peel' topper and then wrote TNT on the front with some red food coloring. 

We frosted the cake with some simple green buttercream frosting and started placing on our squares. They weren't quite perfect but they did the trick, and honestly ended up looking a heck of a lot like the real Creeper. 

I used some black piping gel to paint the face on, and the '11' on the front. I also used a grass tip to make a pretty little border around the bottom. After placing the TNT bricks around the base, it's finished! :) yay! 

AND not only did it look great but it was absolutely delicious!!!! We had to make the cake green too! Couldn't resist. It was such a big hit! 

Can't wait to see what kind of creative cake theme he comes up with next year!!! :)