The Orange Chopper

This one was quite a task. I hadn’t ever thought about motorcycle parts for cake before. But by special request one of the girls at work wanted a late Valentine’s present for her husband who was away for the holiday. Originally it was a toss up between a Skull and a Motorcycle… in the end it was the Motorcycle that won out.

It only had to serve 3 so that opened some options for me. I decided that I was going to do one layer with the cake built up on top of it. I built the bits of the chopper out of the scrap cake that was cut off the top (you know, the bulgy part that has to be cut off to create a pretty cake.) Now, don’t ask me to name the parts of the bike I build because I couldn’t name any of them to save my life. BUT, I got what I needed, tires, gas tank, engine block, rear fender… blah blah blah. I guess I’ve watched more episodes of American Chopper to know what I was doing. The tricky part come when I had to assemble the entire thing.

The picture provided to me of the motorcycle was orange with purple flames.

I decided that the base cake should be black, but upon completing the cake I have now decided that if I ever take up this endeavor again the base cake will be a different color so the tires don’t blend in so well. Perhaps green instead.

I had a difficult time putting a base frosting coat on the motorcycle pieces. I even froze them to see if that would help but it didn’t. Finally I just plastered them on and then starred the entire bike with the orange. The seat is a light brown chocolate frosting. And the bits and engine are silver. I had quite a time deciding how I was going to do the silver parts. Turns out you can buy “Luster Powder” in the cake decorating isle at the craft store. Mixing it with a clear alcohol based liquid will create a nice silver paint that you just use a little paint brush to paint it where you want it.

This was also my first try at using Royal Icing. I used THIS Martha Stewart recipe since I didn’t have any meringue powder, or powdered eggs that all the other recipes I Googled asked for. What an adventure. I think it turned out pretty good. The icing didn’t harden as much as I’d have liked it to, but it worked out well. I enjoyed eating all the left over broken bits. Mmm nom nom nom. I think I’ll have to try Royal Icing again when I’m not at crunch time or needing something to fix the issue right that moment.

All in all the cake turned out great. I think I lose a little patience doing decorating on a week night vs. just getting up on a Saturday morning and spending most of the day on it, but that’s okay. I’ll get there.

Another satisfied Customer:

Thank you SOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO much for the cake!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I LOVE it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  It looks AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thank you,

Athena

Perry the Platypus #2

This cake was made for my cute niece Lucy’s 5^th birthday party. It was fun to make though a little bit of a challenge near the end.

I baked two cakes in my handy bread pan that I only have one of, which meant that I did have to cook two cake taking up twice the amount. But that’s okay, she’s worth it.

Once the cakes were baked and cooled I cut off the tops and smeared one with frosting and plopped the other on top. John said that the completed cake without the frosting appeared to look like a treasure chest.

I used my frosting colors of Teal, Blue and Orange to make the proper Perry coloring. I used frosting tip #27 to do the stars. I used marshmallows for his eyes. Once I set to work it took me about 4 hours to complete the frosting work.
Initially I was going to use cookies for his tail and nose/beak (which is it called on a platypus?) but upon trying to remove the cookies from the pan they all broke! so I had to come up with something quick. It was noon and cake needed to be delivered by 3.
I decided to bake cupcakes and use them as the extra appendages, so I baked a batch. As I was deciding how and what I was going to do next it dawned on me that I could use the extra cake bits I had cut from the tops as Perry's tail. In the end it was a half a cupcake for his nose with the other half holding it up, and the cake top for his tail.  

Upon delivery of the cake a be-crowned birthday girl Lucy proclaimed: 

“THIS IS THE BEST BIRTHDAY EVER!” 

which I took as "this birthday cake is awesome auntie liz."

Her parents were also equally impressed.