The Bees Knees of Cakes

 

Another Thanksgiving come and gone. It stresses me out to think Christmas is right around the corner. To all of those crazy people who have their Christmas shopping done already... how are you so organized??

My most important contribution to Thanksgiving this year may have been this beehive cake I made. You see, in addition to celebrating Thanksgiving, we always celebrate my uncle's birthday. This year my uncle's birthday fell right on Thanksgiving. So in addition to making deviled eggs, I volunteered to bring a birthday cake. I had the perfect cake in mind.

Quite awhile back, I had pinned this cake on Pinterest- a beehive cake. I immediately thought of my uncle, who somewhat recently, took up beekeeping. This cake sat in my Pinterest to-do pile for months before I finally got the chance to go for it.

My first step was to construct the beehive. I didn't want the cake to be overly huge since it would be competing with Thanksgiving pies. My goal was to use one recipe's worth of cake. To accomplish the job I pulled out all of my mini cake/pie pans, plus a few Pyrex containers.

I was very close to going with a boxed mix of red velvet cake, but at the last minute changed my mind. Because I had quite a bit of whole wheat flour that needed to be used I searched around for a whole wheat cake recipe. That's right - whole wheat. Surprisingly I found a few, but Joy the Baker won me over with her Honey Whole Wheat Pound Cake recipe. Bees = honey.

The recipe made a decent amount of batter that I used to fill my various sized cake pans. I ended up with quite the assortment.

plus a couple more not pictured!

To shape the beehive I simply started with the largest cake, and built upwards. The top layer was trimmed down slightly more than the others.

Here is where I and the original beehive recipe diverged.  The original recipe tells you to sort of shape the beehive by using a spatula against the icing. I figured this would be my downfall as I am not very good at smoothly icing cakes.

Exhibit A:

The crumbs ruin everything. This is the primary reason I decided to cover the whole cake in fondant. Creating coils of fondant icing seemed far easier than smoothly icing a cake.

By the way, this was my second time using the Duff brand pre-made fondant and  I continue to be pleased. It's slightly pricey but with a 40% off Michael's coupon I think it's worth it for smaller projects.

I'll pause here for a moment to go over the construction of the bees. Those little bees make the cake.

Using some yellow colored fondant I formed a bunch of these Mike and Ike-looking guys.

Spitting image, right?

Originally my plan was to use an edible marker to draw black lines on the bees. But I was not happy with the results. I don't think I'll use them again. Yes, they work. But the color is much more bold and even if you just use colored fondant. So Plan B won.

After a couple episodes of Love It or List It and making yellow Mike and Ikes and bee wings, I finally had a small army. Yes, there was some cursing along the way when wings would fall off. But eventually I got there. I was well on my way.

Ok, not rewind back to the cake making. After using the yellow coils to create the beehive, the individual bees came in handy to cover up blemishes. The rest I stuck in the cake using their kabob sticks.

That was really mostly it. After getting past the time consuming process of making the bees, the rest of the cake got put together fairly quickly. The final touch was a little "Don't Worry Beez Happy" sign we picked up.

Monkey Cake: Part 2

Cake baking is intense. While making the cake topper took a good chunk of time, the actual cake took longer. 

Tasks included:

- baking 3 boxes of cake mix,

- making a double batch of icing (recipe here)

- making a double batch of fondant (recipe here)

- miscellaneous

- decorating

Beginning with the fondant: I bought some pre-made store-bought fondant to make the details, including the monkey and other shapes. However, because it can get expensive to buy the pre-made stuff, I thought I'd try my hand at making some. The homemade stuff would cover the cake- be the canvas if you will.

The marshmallow recipe I found on allrecipes.com was pretty straightforward. I just underestimated the quantity it would make. (Which is why I doubled the recipe.) I also underestimated how messy it would be.

You start by melting mini marshmallows in the microwave until completely melted. This is the largest bowl I own and it was filled almost completely with marshmallow. I should have regrouped at this point, but did not. Into this bowl I still had to add four pounds of confectioners' sugar.

You slowly add the sugar until the dough becomes more firm.

At this point I was seriously questioning my methods. Why do I not have a KitchenAid?

Then you knead. And knead some more. Then knead a bit more until if finally starts resembling dough. Then you toss it in the fridge overnight and hope that its easier to work with the following day.

And then you clean up your mess. (The dog will handle cleaning the floor.)

Next day... 

The cakes are baked. The icing is made. Now comes the assembly!

Before rolling out the fondant, the cakes got iced. Although shown here with only icing in the middle, they did eventually get fully coated. The icing works like glue for the fondant.

After rolling out sufficiently large pieces of fondant, the cakes were, ever so carefully, wrapped in fondant and trimmed.

Starting to look like real cakes

Of course before stacking the two, the engineer in me assessed the situation and determined there needed to be structural support. After marking where the top layer should go, I added some wooden dowel rods.

Structurally sound

So FINALLY at this point, it was time to decorate. This is actually where the fun began. I even got so consumed with decorating that I neglected to take pictures of the progress. Oh except for these pictures of dyed fondant and of me using the cookie cutter.





 Actually, circles were the foundation of this cake. Why? Because they are easy.

In the end the cake turned out better than I expected. A success! And despite all the planning and work that went into it, I enjoyed it. I may actually do this again.

 

Monkey Cake: Part 1

I am happy to report that my second experience with fondant went much better than the first. I also figured out what I did wrong the first time. I did not follow directions.

The microwave has magical powers. And microwaving rock-hard fondant in the microwave for even just 10 seconds makes a world of difference! What was once stiff and rock-like icing turns into soft, malleable Play-doh. It is wonderfully easy to work with at this point.... as long as you have Play-doh skills from your childhood.

I never got to this point last time.

Making this cake was a 2 week project. I started the first weekend by making the monkey topper. Because, really, what would a monkey cake be without the monkey?

Enter the project plan:



I got some tips on how to make the monkey from this step-by-step blog post from Cake Fixation. I also admired this fondant monkey from Etsy. So I printed out both for inspiration.

I started by getting my work area set up.



For the monkey I used store-bought fondant. This Duff brand from Michael's had pretty good reviews so I thought, what the heck. I got one white (buttercream) and one brown (chocolate). To a hunk of the white one I added some brown and yellow food coloring until I got a sort of tan/skintone color.

Ugh terrible color photo.

Using the chocolate fondant I made a head and a body. Securing the head to the body with a toothpick as the handy Cake Fixation post recommended.

By the way, I had some issues with the chocolate fondant. I'm not sure why it was much more crackly than the buttercream fondant (which was amazingly smooth).  Not sure what was going on here. That is why the monkey looks like he has wrinkles.



Next I rolled out the now tan-colored fondant so that I could cut out a variety of shapes including the skin around the eyes, the mouth, hands, and feet. For this I used one of my Christmas presents: an X-acto knife!





A tip for the hands and feet: cut out two at a time so that they are symmetrical. You can't argue with symmetry.

Next we assemble!

Every monkey needs a cute belly button.

I clearly got a bit carried away and forgot to take pictures at all the steps. But you get the gist. The "Welcome Baby" banner was made by cutting out a longish, rectangular piece of white fondant. Then writing out the words with edible markers.

That's right. EDIBLE markers! Those cake people think of everything.

And finally, a monkey needs bananas. See here as I demonstrate the amazing edible markers.



And that is it. It's done. Hours of planning, and roughly two hours of assembly time.



Monkey got wrapped up in some plastic wrap and hung out on the counter for a week.

I had nightmares he was going to fly off the counter every time I walked by.

It's Friday Friday Friday

What better way to spend a day off than to run errands? Of course if I'm going to run out I might as well take care of a few other things. Like visiting Michael's.

Backup. Or visiting the Goodwill Superstore first.

Why? Well, because occasionally I find wonderfully inexpensive things there. Like used frames that can be spray painted to look brand new. Or these puppies.

They were five dollars. That's right. $5.00.

Ok, back to Michael's. I needed to pick up a few things for a project I will be working on in the near future. Can we guess?

Another hint: It is related to my one of my Pinterest boards.

 

Although I'm not a regular cake maker, I have had spurts of success in the past. This whole fondant thing still eludes me though. And the last time I worked with it I regretted it. I'm hoping this time goes better. I am also trying out a new brand to see if that helps.

(Side note: Just spent 20 minutes looking for a picture of my last fondant experiment. No luck. If you're curious, it was white, square, and had a Colombian flag on it. There may be a reason why I did not document the event...)

The other interesting part of my outing was the mayhem going on at the grocery store. Lots of balloons, purple, jerseys, and other Ravens paraphernalia. Oh and a news crew. At the grocery store. 

I get the whole Ravens thing. But party at the grocery store? Really?

Of course, then again, I'm the weirdo that photographed the whole thing.