So as I said in my last blog post, I'm a little behind on updating my blog. This post will focus on the cakes made in 2015. First up is my boyfriend's (now fiance) birthday cake. He is a huge fan of the Legend of Zelda video games, so I always try to make a Legend of Zelda themed birthday cake. This year I decided to make a Majora's Mask cake. Now it so happened his birthday fell when I was in Virginia on a temporary assignment. I also didn't have a full sized oven to bake the cake. Being the engineer that I am, I decided to try my hand at baking a cake in a toaster oven I brought with me. What I learned when baking a cake in a toaster oven is that you can only fill the cake pan 1/2 way, not the usual 3/4 full. If you fill it 3/4 full, the top will burn before the inside of the cake is finished. But I was able to scrape off the burnt part of the cake and still make a decent cake. Not too shabby for decorating a cake in a hotel room with only a toaster oven.
While I was still in Virginia my program director was leaving for a new office. I promised her I would make a going away cake for her. Well being the pro I was at making cakes in a toaster oven, I felt pretty comfortable making this cake. It did take me triple the amount of time to bake the cakes then it would have in a regular oven, but I had nothing better to do in my down time. This cake is a hybrid of my program director's two loves: her dog and her love of skiing. So I combined the two. I don't know how many hours this cake took, but it was a lot. It was definitely fun to make and I loved seeing the look on her face when she saw the cake.
Next up is a Gothic inspired cake with wafer paper roses. This was my first attempt at making wafer paper roses, so I had a large learning curve. The thing that took the most time was coloring each rose petal. If I didn't have to color the paper, it would have taken me a lot less time. I really like the look of these roses and look forward to doing them again on another cake. The pattern on the cake was hand-piped on and then overlaid with gold luster dust.
The final cake from 2015 is based off the 2010 movie "How to Train Your Dragon". The cake contains one of the main dragons from the movie, Toothless. The Toothless character has an internal structure made of foil and wire that was then covered in fondant. The cake part was covered in a marbled fondant with fondant details. Accompanying the cake were cupcakes with other characters from the movie. I'm still working on my figure making skills, but these aren't half bad.
Well that catches me up to 2015. Tune into the next blog post to see what I have been up to in 2016!
Thanks,
Mary Burroughs
Thanks,
Mary Burroughs