Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Dragon Slayer

I really wanted to make something special for my fiance, Brandon, on his birthday. He also loves WOW, although not as much as Bryan does. But I'd already done a WOW cake for Bryan, so I wanted to do something different. He's really into other fantasy/sci-fi stuff, like dragons and swords, so I decided to do a dragon cake.

This was only my second attempt at using fondant, so I was a little nervous! The first attempt wasn't so bad... It was back in May, for Mother's Day... I just experimented on a little 9" round cake. It was plain white, with a bow on top. For my first time, I'd say it was pretty decent. Certainly nothing to brag about. So I decided there was too much detail I wanted to do for a dragon to simply use regular icing. It can be tricky to work with and mold just the way you want it, and if it's too warm, it just starts to sag and run. That's certainly not what I wanted. I'm a huge fan of how wonderful fondant looks, but I certainly don't enjoy eating it. It's like... sweet play doh. I tend to keep extra icing on hand so cake-eaters can reapply some icing after they've peeled their slice of cake.

As for his dragon cake, I sketched out a diagram of how I wanted to cut and shape the dragon.

Basic dragon shape:



After I had the shape, I just covered it with frosting, then fondant, cut off excess, and decorated! I gave the dragon some treasure to protect: gold-wrapped chocolate coins, and a treasure chest.


View from the top of the dragon, with his coins:




Brandon checkin' out his dragon, complete with flaring nostrils!


Brandon about to extinguish the dragon:

Cake Envy

I made a silly cake for a friend's birthday this past Halloween... :-) You could call it a gag gift, but that might be a horrible play on words..

I'm not really sure what else to say about it, as I'm sure the pictures (and blog title) will explain themselves.


Rainbow cupcakes:


The cake:

Les Tetons

My mom loves the Teton mountains. She grew up around that area-- her grandfather owned a cabin around there and she's reminisced many-a-time about Sunday morning breakfasts.

I try to cater each cake I do to the person I make it for. What fun is it if you don't make it personal? So for mom, back in September, I decided to express her love for those mountains in edible form. After all, love=food, right? ;-)

I made it with chocolate cake and cream cheese icing.. The mountains were made from cupcakes covered in mounds of extra icing. And then it was airbrushed, of course. This was actually the first cake I did after Brandon had gotten me my airbrush machine... It was terribly exciting for me to be able to use my very own at home, and not just at work!

Here are the Tetons:



Also, a shot of Mom blowing out her candles:

WOW!

And by WOW, I don't mean a cry of surprise... I mean the virtual expanse that is the World Of Warcraft. With over 11.5 million monthly subscribers, you know there's something to it. So my little brother Bryan is a huge fan. And when I say a huge fan, I mean that in every sense of the word. He plays. A lot.

Oh, he's also a big fan of strawberries. :-D

What might you have when you put the two together? Why, maybe a WOW cake and some strawberry cupcakes!

So, back in April, I joined two of his loves together... Now, the cake didn't turn out exactly like I'd hoped it would... I should've spent more time on the keyboard. I spent a lot of time on the drawing/computer screen...

Anyway, it was a nice reaction when he walked into the kitchen and he thought the cake was an actual laptop. That made it worth it. But hey, he probably had WOW on the brain... ;-)


Here's the "laptop screen" depicting the WOW login page:



And here's a scrumptious strawberry cupcake:



Finally, a group shot:

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