I’m so far behind!

Is anyone still reading? I’ve been neglecting my sweet side. Blame my camera and its insatiable appetite for power…

This cake is from forever ago. One of my favorite people asked me to bake a cake for her hubby’s birthday. MXQ is a big fan of all things Apple (the brand, not the fruit, though I don’t know where he stands on that one) and adores the movie WALL-E. Come on, who doesn’t? That movie was fantastic.

I hafta say, I was SUPER intimidated by this assignment. I mean, I would be replicating well-known characters. If I screwed this up, everyone would notice and possibly even make fun of me. I won’t lie, I had a little panic attack until my husband told me to shut it and get with the program (okay, he was much nicer about it, but my version is sassier).

I don’t know that I’ll ever perfect buttercream or that I’ll ever give in to the pretty and cover a whole cake in fondant (yummy is so much more important to me), but I do like decorating with fondant. It’s great stress relief and the end result can be very satisfying.

Anyhoodles, PQ took a quick video of the cake before she left that you can see here: wallecake (or just enjoy the following crummy stills from my craptastic camera).

View from the top

The front..."Directive!"

The iconic Buy-n-Large logo and oh-so-critical fire extinguisher

The lightbulb EVE turned on but WALL-E couldn't and, of course, the Apple logo (while it's not horrible, trust me, I know I'm not good at hand-cutting shapes)

The mothership and one of WALL-E's many knick-knacks

The final accent, WALL-E's ratty lunchbox

I again used imitation vanilla as the glue between separate fondant pieces, but also got to play with painting in food color. It was important for WALL-E and some of his knick-knacks to be dirty, so using food coloring and water was a simple and fun solution to achieve the end result.

I also used edible markers for the first time, which made creating WALL-E’s character details much easier. I had so much fun that I decided to include the Rubik’s cube and used the markers on white fondant to create that as well.

My biggest challenge was hand-cutting a few of the pieces (B, L, lightbulb, fire extinguisher, Apple logo, cube). I can’t draw to save my life, my painting skills are at a 10th grade level at best and my husband tries to prevent my use of knives in any capacity as he fears for my appendages. Therefore, I know a few details are less than stellar, but they all came together nicely in the end.

MXQ and everyone at the party loved the cake (white cake with raspberry filling is oh-so-popular) and he was completely surprised when PQ gave it to him. I’m so glad I could contribute to making his birthday a good one!

Since WALL-E, I’ve been sticking to the cupcake end of things…and cupcakes aren’t quite as photogenic…and my camera needs batteries…and I’m failing as a blogger, so I apologize. 

Until my next kitchen adventure, SassyCakes, out! (Working on a new outro, too…Seacrest is sooo two thousand and late.)

My first tryst with fondant

And no, I don’t say “FonDONT” like Buddy does - I’m not a pretentious asshat. It’s freaking FONdant, people. I don’t care what the actual correct pronounciation is - if it tastes like that, it doesn’t need a hoity-toity accent. Yes, fondant-covered cakes are beautiful. However, fondant is nowhere NEAR as tasty as a well-made buttercream, so I’m really trying my best to perfect my buttercream technique. So far, not so good.

But the good news? If I work with fondant regularly, I won’t have to do an upper body workout anymore…coloring it takes a bit of endurance, really. It’s a great stress reliever, too. The next time I have a bad day, I’m going to go home and pound on some fondant until I feel better.

My lovely friend Schneiderdoodle threw a baby shower for her sister this past weekend and asked me to make the cake. She didn’t have a set theme, so she sent me a link to the crib set her sister wanted and I used that as inspiration. You’ll see those images near the cake in my photos.

I took Friday off work because I wanted some time to play with the fondant and allow the decorations to dry in time for application. My only training with fondant came in the form of watching every Food Network Cake Challenge possible over the years, so I was nervous to say the least. Turns out, this time the buttercream was my nemesis and the fondant was nothing to worry about. The coloring went well and everything was even and bright - just like a baby shower cake should be, especially for a little baby girl.

Baking the white cake was easy and I leveled a cake pretty well (that Wilton leveler can suck it - a serrated knife was far more effective)…but the raspberry filling that I’ve made several times acted up a tiny bit and I didn’t fill the cake as thickly as I would have liked. Once the cake was torted and filled, I guess I lost my mind a little.

Let me back up a bit - before I filled the cake, I made the buttercream…a double batch of the crusting buttercream that I’ve made so many times. This was one of the parts I expected to go smoothly, but alas, I was doomed. I don’t really know what my mistake was here, but the buttercream was chock full of air bubbles - and that’s a nightmare if you want a smoothly iced cake. The air bubbles also changed the consistency of the icing, making it supremely difficult to work with. My technique has really improved, but you can’t tell on this brat of a cake. The only thing I did differently was use water (like the recipe actually calls for) instead of milk, because I wasn’t coloring the icing purple for the first time in recent history.  Bah.

My second mistake? So stupid. I didn’t go around the middle and fill the gap with icing first. I should have, but I was overeager and it slipped my mind.  I think my house needs a dehumidifier as well, because the icing really never crusts as firmly as I would like, so I suspect humidity might be a problem.

Anyhoo, the final product came out really cute, but the buttercream makes me insane. I had thin spots because the icing kept wanting to pull back off the cake, the air bubbles wouldn’t smooth away, etc…ugh.

You can see the ridge where I should have filled...and the inspiration photos.

The front of the cake - I'm a horrible photographer.

The right side, if you're looking at the cake from the front.

The right side/back...again, my photography is horrid. The cake was actually pretty darn level.

The left side of the cake.

The left side/back.

A closer shot of the top. All decorations are fondant except the butterfly trail and the bodies on the two side butterflies.

Schneiderdoodle said everyone loved the cake and it tasted great, so at the end of the day, I’m happy. I just wish the damn buttercream had come out the way it was supposed to. Practice makes perfect, so it looks like my coworkers and friends will be getting lots of cake to eat! Thank you, Red, for letting me make this cake for you!!!

SassyCakes, out!