Sunday, September 9, 2012

Bubba turned 7 & we celebrated with much cake!

This year, because of budget constraints, we decided to do Bubba's birthday low key, so a simple barbecue with family and a few friends was the plan. Of course, Mommy guilt at not giving my sweet boy - a boy who for the most part is excellently behaved, always does well in school and never asks for a thing - kicked in full gear. To try and soothe that guilt I figured I could, at the very least, give him an awesome birthday cake. Bubba, being who he is, can never settle on one thing, so he came up with 2 cake themes he would love to have -- a Minecraft themed cake and a Mario themed cake. I hit the internet to see if others had attempted these types of cake and I was not disappointed. There were tons. And they all usually involved fondant. Ruh-roh.

I am pretty good in the desserts department with cakes being something I pride myself on doing very well, however fondant is one medium I've never really forayed into. I did cut out some fondant stars to put on Bubba's Angry Birds themed cake last year, but these cakes would involve a lot more work and a lot more fondant. I started to go with making simple cupcakes and printing out Mario/Minecraft cupcake picks just to do this easier, but then I got a 40% off coupon from Michael's. which sells fondant. I figured if I could try my hand at something new for almost half price, why not?

I set out to do my work after the kids were put to bed. Thank goodness because there was much swearing going on. Prior to beginning, I looked up as many fondant tutorials as I could online. Thank you YouTube because I received my best instruction from a YouTube channel called Feast of Fiction. They take recipes from fictional works such as books, movies, video games and create them in real life. God bless them for even having a  beautiful Minecraft cake tutorial!

So here are the pictures of my creations. They look very amateur but I am happy with how they turned out for an amateur. A friend, who is skilled with fondant creations, told me that I did a great job for a first timer, and that practice makes perfect. (I'm taking that as permission to make many cakes!) Bubba was thrilled. His eyes lit up at every creation and his exclamation of "Awesome!" made me forget that I didn't get the seams just right or that my cut out shapes looked wonky. One thing that would be better for all cake makers is if someone could create a tastier fondant. The cakes themselves were delicious, but the fondant remained left behind on the plates. When the kids asked "Do we have to eat this?" I told them no, that it was gift wrapping for the cake.

I am looking forward to getting better at this. October is a huge birthday month in our family so opportunity awaits!


This was my first fondant creation. The large square cake is a replica of the Minecraft cake featured in the game. The little green squares are milk chocolate cupcakes Creepers, also from the game. The faces were cut out of sugar paper.



I'm proud of this cake. I went with a Mario Kart theme. It's a marble cake (butter and milk chocolate), frosted with vanilla buttercreme and then covered in fondant. I know my limitations so instead of trying to craft a Mario and kart out of fondant, I opted to buy one. This actually worked out well because now Bubba had a cake he could eat and play with afterwards!

1 comment:

  1. Great, simple idea for simple mincreft cupcakes - I'll be using it this week. Thanks!

    I'll be using melted cadburys chocolate to make the squares. Melt choc, cool on parchment paper in a tin and cut into squares when almost cool. Use a ruler to cut/make squares similar sizes.

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