I can’t really consider myself to be a true Ace of Cakes, but I figure I’m about a 10 – maybe even a Jack! Despite my lack of professional training, or even professional tools, I think I did pretty darn well on my kids’ birthday cakes this year. And because of that, I’m allowing myself one “brag” blog post to show off my…well…talents.
Here is the infamous Tank Cake for Trey’s Army birthday party:
To make this cake, I used two cake mixes. I baked one in a 9x 13 pan and the other in 2 loaf pans. Once the cakes cooled, I stacked one loaf cake on top of the 9×13 cake. I used white frosting and green food coloring to tint the frosting. It came out too bright so I mixed in some chocolate frosting to give it more of an olive-green color. I frosted the whole cake with this green frosting. Then, I placed small spoonfuls of the remaining chocolate frosting on the tank and swirled them around to give a camouflage look. The “wheels” are oreo cookies stuck onto the side of the cake. The “treads” are pieces of black twizzlers cut into 2″ lengths. The turret on top is an oreo cookie covered in frosting. The cannon was pulled from Trey’s Playmobil stock. Crisana helped me make the “dirt” which is a mixture of crushed graham crackers and oreos spread around the tank.
The extra loaf cake I decorated in camouflage icing using the same technique as the tank cake. I used this cake for the candles and wrote “Happy Birthday Trey” in black icing around the cake. The adults ate this cake.
Now for Crisana’s “My Little Pony” cake:
There were no great examples (on my skill level) of a “My Little Pony” cake to be found on the web. And not having access to a horse-shaped pan (rocking or otherwise), my options were limited. I baked two white cakes, stacked them (with frosting in between the layers) and frosted the whole thing with strawberry-flavored icing. I then separated a large container of white icing into four bowls and tinted each a different color: blue, yellow, green, and purple. I decided red and orange wouldn’t look good on a pink cake. I then created the rainbow stripes and outlined them with black icing. The cloud was made with a tube of white decorating icing with no tip – just squeeze the tube slightly to create raised dots. That’s also how I edged the cake with the white and multi-colored “beads”. I used a few of the little ponies from McDonald’s awhile back and a treasure chest from Crisana’s My Little Pony collection to create a “pot of gold” at the end of the rainbow. I got so many compliments on this cake and it tasted even better than it looked!
This is a view of the cake from the back.
I had a ton of fun making these special cakes for my birthday children, but I’m happy to take a break from cake decorating for a little while!