Scooby, Scooby Doo, where are you?

 

What a week!  My gorgeous little Jessica, aka Jedi, turned 8 on Friday - my dad, aka Grampsie also had his birthday on Friday, if I tell you that he was 60 the day that Jessica was born then you'll be able to work out his age without me having told you ha ha.



Mystery Machine à la Jessica!



I was surprised when back in December Jessica said that she wanted a Scooby Doo cake and birthday party, well not least because it was 4 months away but also because she's a fairly girly girl.  She never waivered from the Scooby Doo theme all the way along and it became very apparent that I was going to have to make the Mystery Machine - in a cake and 3D - Zoinks!

She also slipped into the cake equation that she wanted a vanilla pudding filling except in strawberry flavor!  No mean feat as Jello doesn't make a strawberry flavor pudding, or at least my local Publix doesn't carry it.  With necessity being the mother of invention, I doctored a vanilla pudding box - there's not a lot that heavy cream (double cream to my UKian followers) and a couple of drops of strawberry extract can't do to make something taste yummy ;-).  So, vanilla cake with strawberry filling done - just the small matter of making it resemble the Mystery Machine......



Shaggy?



Being the type of worker I am, I set about filling and carving the cake on Friday afternoon, yes, the same Friday of her birthday.  I'd already told her that the cake would be ready for her party on the Saturday and she was okay with that, not least because I made 2 dozen Scooby Doo cupcakes for her to take to school for a class lunchtime treat.





Anyway, back to the van.... I don't mind telling you all, I had a hell of a time with the fondant on Friday afternoon.  The reason of course was the weather - hot and humid are not friends of fondant.  It makes for a real sticky, soft mess to try and work with and mold.  It did actually tear once I got it on the cake and not too long ago I'd have ripped the lot off and started again but when you're against the clock and just want it finished you quickly learn that a well placed flower can hide quite a lot of things :-) 

I baked a 1/4 sheet cake - that's a 9 x 13 inch cake to most of us.  I cut it in half, so that I ended up with 2 x 6.5" by 9" cakes - it looked a little small at the time but I'm glad I didn't go any bigger.  With the cake filled and dirty iced and resting in the fridge out of the sticky Southern weather I set about coloring the fondant.  I just couldn't put it off any longer and it was time to get down to turning the cake into a van, and not just any van but possibly the most famous TV van (after the A-Team that is) in the world.

I'd printed out The Mystery Machine logo and sat for over half an hour painstakingly I mean lovingly cutting out each and every tiny letter with my exacto knife so that I could then lay the paper over the green fondant and cut out the spaces to then lay that over the orange fondant.  Well, suffice it to say it didn't work out!  I did mention the humid weather right?  Well the paper stuck to the green fondant and made a huge mess, I can't remember what I said exactly, but it was along the lines of 'Oh shucks, now I need to come up with another plan'!!!!!

I left that part and moved onto making the wheels, bumpers and headlights - instead of using vodka to mix with the lustre dust to get the chrome effect I drank the vodka and used lemon extract.  Plain water doesn't work as it makes the fondant sticky - same thing as the humidity but I'll stop going on about that.

With a few flowers and number 8's scattered around, it came out okay.  I didn't love the windows and wished I'd taken more time over cutting them and recessing them but truth be told, I was ready to throw the whole thing in the bin at this point and buy a sheet cake from Publix!  Jessica loved it though and that's what mattered.  A few parents who dropped off their daughter the following day all commented on it too, in a very positive way - or they did to my face at least....

Top view

Dodgy front view with foam support on full display

Don't look too closely at the bottom that's where the fondant puckered!



Boom boom aka lacka lacka boom

Are you all singing yet?  I've had this song in my head since early this morning (It's Was Not Was - Everybody Walk the Dinosaur), well after I got rid of the "Maggie and the Ferocious Beast" theme tune that is!

Life has been pretty busy of late - I've been baking almost weekly but I've just not had the time to post on here, or rather when I have had the time I've been snoring my head off on the couch instead.... like the song reference above, it's an age thing!

So, why dinosaurs on the brain? I made a dinosaur cake for my handsome little neighbor who is turning 6 and after much discussion and worry he settled on a green dinosaur cake - oh to be six again and having the only stress in your life being what cake you should choose.....

He asked for a chocolate flavored green dinosaur and that's what he got! 

I was humming and ha-ing (that is a word!) as to the best way to go about this one as it didn't need to be huge - just enough to feed 14 hungry boys who'd been bouncing all afternoon - perhaps I should have gone huge?? 

Eventually I settled on the Wilton Sports pan and me being me had enough cake batter to also bake a 3 inch high, 8 inch round chocolate cake ;-) 

I carved one of the ball halves to make his head, I think it's a boy, and the other half I sliced vertically and filled with the chocolatiest chocolate buttercream which elongated him into the perfect shape that I wanted.  Of course I acted like I knew this would happen. 

With him dirty iced in more of the CCBC (chocolatiest chocolate buttercream) he slept in the fridge overnight all nice and safe whilst I partied for St. Patrick's Day - I know any excuse right?

This morning I colored the fondant and covered him and cut out lots and lots of triangles and circles for his body armour, and made his tail and legs.  FYI - they don't have to be anatomically correct when you're going to eat them.

 I wasn't going to do much for his mouth, truth be told I'm not the best at doing mouths but I couldn't resist adding a cheeky tongue :-p

For the record, I hate these cake boards!