I’ve just completed my first ‘decorated’ cake. It’s for a New Years Eve party with a Jimmy Buffet theme. I made a “Cheeseburger” cake, for “Cheeseburger in Paradise.”
The bun is a white chocolate cake, with a brown frosting. The frosting color didn’t come out quite right, but I wasn’t about to make a new batch. It’s close enough. The burger is a chocolate cake.
The lettuce, cheese, and tomatoes are made with fondant. This is the first time I’ve used fondant for anything, so I decided to start small.
The toothpick holding it together is a bamboo skewer, to…well, hold it together when I drive to the party.
It’s not perfect, but I’m really excited about it. I love to bake, but have never been very good at decorating. I really want to take a class and learn some tricks.
Just wanted to share. I’m not posting pictures on facebook or anything yet, because I want it to be a surprise. But I had to tell SOMEONE!
-D/a
That’s awesome! I especially like the fries-and-ketchup on the side.
I did my bestest-ever decorated cake this year, too, but it’s nowhere near as impressive as yours. Just a white layer cake with slivered almonds on the side, and I piped around the top edge to make it a bit fancy. That’s about the extent of my cake-decorating skills.
Mmm. Hungry. Also since I have lately (thanks Sirius radio) become a Parrothead, I wish I could come to your party! Hope it’s as much fun as I expect it will be.
Looks fantastic! The olive is the perfect touch. Now I can’t decide if I’m hungry for a burger or for some cake.
I’m a little envious of your skills, because I’m not very good at creative decorating. Exhibit A: the red blood cell cake I made for a celebration at work. I think my antibody cake was a little better, but it was just candy arranged on top of a cake, which hardly counts.
You should leave a comment on the blog that inspired you. I’m sure the blogger would be happy to see other people’s versions of the cake!
-D/a, I think you did a fabulous job. Looks picture perfect! I wish I had the confidence to pull something like that off. A couple of years ago, I took a Wilton cake decorating class. But I was so afraid of the big final project and its reveal, I made up some lame excuse to skip out on the last day. The only thing I did okay was a cookie. So again, great work and keep it up. Oh, and enjoy your killer party!!
Aww, thanks everyone. For everyone who says they can’t do this..I was so nervous going in this because I can’t do this! It’s really much easier than it looks. If you can make a layer cake, you can probably do this.
The Antibody cake is cute. It doesn’t matter how you get there..it works.
I noticed a comment in the red blood cell about how you’d need fancy tools to get the cake smooth. You don’t. I just learned how to do this last week, by watching youtube. In a nutshell:
Apply crumb coat, let set.
Put too much icing on the sides.
Put too much icing on the top.
Spin the cake (I have a rotating cake stand, but you could use a lazy susan or something instead) while holding a straight edge of some sort next to it.
In other words, you don’t apply the icing cleanly. You REMOVE the extra with a straight edge to get it straight.
After that..and I haven’t tried this yet..you put parchment paper or something else on top and go over it with your offset spatula. That’s supposed to be how to get a really clean top.
I did. But I left it anonymously, so she has to approve it before it shows up.
On preview, I see some other comments. I’m looking to take the Wilton classes. I have a friend who might go with me to make it more social. **faithfool **- you skipped the final class? Horror! Some of the things they teach are things I’m sure I’ll suck at - I have terrible handwriting, for instance. But I’m going to go, and get everything I can out of it.
Yeah..and the great thing is that buns come in different colors in real life, and people want to believe the illusion. No one commented on the bun color at the party, so I got away with it.
Here’s what happened..I pulled out all my gel icing colors. They have pictures on them for what color they turn into. I was deciding between brown and copper. I thought the brown was a little too dark, and the copper looked like a classic bun. So I mixed some copper into my nice, white, clean icing. And it turned RED.
So I threw some brown in.. It got better. I added black. And it got too dark. I had kept some icing to the side in case I decided to make red for ketchup. I added that icing back in to lighten the whole thing.
The cake made it to the party in once piece. I packed it in a cake box the same size as the cake board it sat on, and put that in a cooler that was barely bigger than the cake box. The whole thing sat snugly in the tiny trunk of my car.
At the party, people actually were going by and taking pictures of it! I was pretty happy. I need to post a picture of it cut. I think it looks even better. And it was tasty. Once people got around to eating it, it went pretty quickly.
The frosting color looks much better in that second picture. I’ve never had a burger/cheeseburger with an olive speared on it. Usually, if they’ve got toothpicks at all, the toothpicks are plain or the frilled ones. But hey, it looks good. And I thought that the french fries and ketchup on the side were a great touch, too.
The cheese, tomatoes, and lettuce were just around the edges. Because, well..fondant. It isn’t tasty. I didn’t want layers of fondant going through the cake.
If I had it to do again, I’d make the pieces a little bigger, so they could hang off the edge and be more visible. I actually drew the insides of the tomatoes on them, but you can’t really tell.
I know, right? I did it the ‘new’ way once, and it’s amazingly different! SOOOOO easy. That’s when I decided I need to take the Wilton course..because there are probably a ton of other tricks that are obvious once you hear them, but I just don’t know!
-D/a
So again, great work and keep it up. Oh, and enjoy your killer party!!
It doesn’t matter how you get there..it works.