Saturday, October 30, 2010

The Cars Cake

I made this cake a couple of weeks ago for a client turning 5.  He told me he wanted 'Cars' with a few of the characters and a race track.  This was going to be a pretty good size party and needed to feed at least 50 people.  I decided to incorporate a few different scenes from the movie and make it a 3 level cake.

 I covered the whole cake in different colors of butter cream and then added fondant accents. I made the base the race track.  I cut out squares of black and while fondant to 'glue' around the sides.  Crushed up Oreo's were the track complete with toy cars of the racers.  The second level was the desert scene.  I made some cactus and mountain looking areas out of fondant.  The top level was the sky complete with Mater jumping through his ring of fire(like on the mini cartoons).  This also has the waterfall coming down into the desert, and clouds out of fondant.  I made some tires, barrels, haystacks, and name and #5 out of fondant and let them dry.  I assembled the cake and used my Shark steamer to shine it all up and there you go.  A very happy 5 year old and plenty of cake to go around.

Friday, October 29, 2010

Grandma Dot's carrot cake

My husband's grandmother is known for her cakes and pies.  Every time we visit she makes a carrot cake, or pulls 1 from her freezer (yep, still awesome).  We live to far away now to just pop in, and I have been craving this cake for a week now.  I have never attempted this one before but found her recipe in my stash.  I went for it and it was amazing!  I should have let it cool properly but was too impatient for that.  Instead I threw the pans in the freezer for a few minutes then pried the cakes out, so my layers turned out a little uneven(but really, who's looking at that).  I made Dot's cream cheese icing with chopped pecans and spread it on when it was still warm. 

One trick I learned for sure...don't serve warm!  We couldn't wait and dug in and it was very good, but it tasted more like baked sweet carrots.  The next day however after being in the fridge over night, it had time to set up in it's yummy goodness.  Served cold with coffee or milk was so much better.  I already have people begging for more.  This may have to become a new regular.


This is a triple layer 6" round and made well over 14 huge servings!

Monday, October 25, 2010

My Attempt at Subway Art

I love sites like Tatertots and Jello and have started trying some of the ideas on there.  There are so many Subway art projects going around I thought I would try my own.  I am not a big crafter so I don't have any of the fancy cutting machines or any of that....just a board, some paints, and freehand.  I found a trick on a fellow blogger's site Sawdust and Paper Scraps where she rubbed chalk on the back of paper then wrote on top which traced into the chalk for you to paint over...works pretty well.  I wanted to add a couple of pictures and here is what my finshed project looks like.  (Ok, I got a little carried away with my daughter's glitter paint, but go with it). You will also have to forgive the lighting, this is in our little entry way.