This Little Piggy – Pig Cake

This one is for Sara.

For Sara’s birthday she requested a pig cake.  Seems she has something in common with my daughter… the love of pigs!

After all who couldn’t love a face like this?

Thankfully Sara had something a little different in mind. She gave me pictures of the pigs she wanted on her cake. It was… a piece of cake!

Here was my main model. Top Pig, as it were.

 

I started out with the Simple Butter Cake recipe. I can’t stress enough how delicious this cake is.  The recipe makes 7-1/2 cups of batter, perfect for a larger cake and it is the perfect cake for carving and dense enough to hold heavy fondant.

Anyway…this little piggy went to Sara’s house.

with a few assorted pigs

And a little pink velvet on the inside

 

Happy Birthday Sara!

 

Christmas Rudolph Cake

Here is my Christmas Rudolph Cake.

Figurines were made ahead of time to allow for them to harden and keep their shape. Some figurines were made entirely of fondant, others were were fondant covered rice krispie treats.

The actual cake was tremendously delicious.  For this cake I used a doctored cake mix which you will find at the end of this post.  The doctored version of a cake mix makes more batter and gives the mix a denser texture needed for some fondant cakes.

To see the Fondant figures click HERE 

It was about this time during the cake assembly that I decided to make my back up cake !

But I kept trudging on, and I was pleased with the results.

Doctored Cake Mix for a denser cake

1 pkg of any kind of cake mix to which you add all of the ingredients called for on the box
In addition: 1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 cup softened butter 
2/3 cup water

Preparation:

Prepare your pan with spray oil as well as a fitted piece of parchment paper on the bottom.  Spray parchment paper with spray as well.

Beat the butter, then add all of the ingredients the cake mix called for and then all of the other ingredients. Blend on low for 1 minute, then 2 minutes on medium, scraping the bowl down. Generally, cook at 325F for the larger cakes, 350F for smaller and you will need to add baking time, perhaps about 10-15 minutes to the times given on the cake mix box. Check every  5 minutes or so.  You will get about 6 1/2 cups of batter from this recipe.  Deliciously moist, yet dense enough to work with.

Enjoy ~!

Rudolph Fondant Figurines

I’ve spent some time lately making these fondant figurines for this Christmas cake that I have planned (in my head).  Whether or not this cake actually turns out anything like I planned will be another story.

Here is a sneak peek of the Rudolph Characters that will be a part of the cake.

First we start with Hermie the Elf.  I made Hermie as if he was popping out of the snow bank when he first meets Rudolph, (and of course because he didn’t need a body that way).

Next, I did Sam the Snowman.. not bad.. a little rough around the edges, but I’ll fine tune him later.

 

Then, the Bumble.

At the time of this picture he had no arms or legs yet. He’s finished but you’ll see that when you see the cake.

Of course we needed Santa.

With my computer in the background, I keep a picture of the characters up on the screen while making the figurines.

Um… yeah, I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed these characters bodies, but they seem to have gigantic bodies and toothpick legs. So there was no way little skinny branch legs were gonna hold up this fella, so yep, he’ll be stuck in the snow too!

Rudolph took me three different tries… so no pictures yet. I’ll post pictures of the finished cake when it’s done in a couple of days. Wish me luck…  without it, you just might see cupcakes posted instead.