MOM... Phineas and Ferb are laying on the grass doing nothing!

Lazy Days of summer with Phineas & Ferb



Wow - 3 posts in the one month, I am keeping to my new year's resolution :-) 

This week I've had a lot of fun making a Phineas & Ferb cake.  Now of course I'd heard of them, my girls watch Disney channel in between the adverts of all the other channels that they surf whilst watching the one they're really watching!  But, I did have do to a little research on them and that meant hours of web surfing flickr.com for ideas and other cake blogs & websites - not too arduous a task except well a few things did suffer because of it, namely the laundry, and well is it really terrible to serve reheats for dinner just one night of the week?  Stu seems to think so!

Of course I've still no idea who's who except for Perry the Platypus and that's only because he's a dead give away.  He might well be Agent P in the cake but I'd know that tail anywhere, lol.

As with most cakes I'm asked to do, my first thought is, okay this is going to be a challenge.  Usually followed by what the F was I thinking, how am I going to do that?  And, then I settle into it and color the fondant and gumpaste and get in the zone.  Getting into said zone absolutely always involves loud, good music (and this isn't subjective, my music is good!), no children no matter how good they are at helping and a clear space so that I can spread all of my stuff out and be able to see it and still spend 10 mins searching on the table for it because it is so cluttered - what can I say?  I'm messy. 

I made the triangly headed one first, I'll call him Phineas ;-).  The head was the easiest part, a square fondant cutter cut again to get the triangle and the bottom of  a massive icing tip to curve the mouth, so far so good.  Then it was onto Ferb.... hmmmm not so straight forward.  I rolled the fondant/gumpaste mix into what I'll call a sausage shape and not what it truly looked like(!), several times until it genuinely looked like it could become a person.  I tried 'glueing' fondant ears onto the side of his head but they looked plain daft so I pulled a little out of the sides of his head and well, I think they looked alright.  His nose was easy as was his mouth.  I also made the tree trunk out of chocolate marshmallow fondant and marked it to resemble bark - it really does okay?!  Feeling quite pleased with myself I estimated that the amount of time I'd need to make the rest of the bodies, leaves, and toadstools was (as per usual) no where near the true time it'd take!  End result, all time went to the cake and the Brownie & Daisy movie night party had non-homemade snacks and candy for dessert - they definitely didn't complain.

Alright, ready for some more pictures?




 

Agent P





Ariel view - I love that Agent P is hiding behind the tree!



♫ Pink Wheels keep on turning...♫

Okay, so a little poetic licence if you please....and yes, I'm now singing Sweet Home Alabama and probably will be for the rest of the day - you are so lucky you're not in the same room as me ;-)

Ever since I made the beaver cake for Nicholas, Abby has been thinking of a cool cake to come up with for her birthday and this one didn't fail - a rollerskate!  I was very excited to make this one - I know I'm easily pleased but it was a very fun cake to do.  It's a lemon pound cake stacked and carved from a 1/2 sheet cake.  Honestly, there's no end to my delusional state but it worked, and pretty darn well too if I say so myself!

Everything is edible, the wheels are rice crispie treats (home made of course) covered in fondant, the silver is lustre dust mixed with lemon juice - often I use vodka for this as it dries quickly and doesn't leave a taste but well perhaps not for a 7yr old's cake.... Okay, so the only bits not edible, or rather not recommended edible are the polystyrene blocks under the front and back ends to help suspend the cake.

Colours were chosen by the birthday girl and for a roller disco party I think they rock.  There were also pink & purple cupcakes in vanilla to complement the skate but again you'll have to take my word for that.  Well y'all have seen cupcakes before, right?

Is there an app for 'I love my iphone'?

Here goes one of my New Year's resolutions, that I haven't yet broken or abandoned... I'm going to make at least one post per month, fingers crossed here goes....

It's been a strange week here in the 'burbs of Atlanta.  It snowed last Sunday and we were all excited at the prospect of no school on Monday - we got our wish, five-fold - school's been out all week, the roads have been treacherous for the most part of that too.  The end result has been cabin fever, which is a very real and very traumatic form of psychosis!

A good part to being stuck home is not the endless cleaning that I could have been doing, where's the fun in that y'all?  But, I had time to make Stu's birthday cake.  What other kind of cake could I have made for the guy who has his iphone attached to his hand most of the waking day, but an iPhone.  I had fun doing this one.  It's all on a x3 scale - yes I measured meticulously and then set about cutting out the squares for the background apps and then making the icons to go in them, and no I don't have a cutter that's 2.7cm square they just don't exist!  The only cutter I had was for the music notes, all others are originals by my hand.  There are a few details missing, i.e. the chrome trim & buttons on the side and the white writing under each app.  These were the extra supplies I was going to pick up this week, along with his other birthday gifts but are all still in the stores right now as the roads have been horribly icy.

The cake is 13.5" x 6.9", 3 layer chocolate orange cake with chocolate orange whipped buttercream.  Cake balls with the trimmings to come.  The girls are making the cake balls, it was the trade off for them not 'helping' with the big cake, this might be the only post for January as I'll be cleaning the kitchen into February (and as always I had to google how to spell Feb!).....

Thanks for looking!

♫ Fa la la la la....♫

Where has this year gone?  It's now December for crying out loud!  So, with time a-ticking it was time yesterday to wedge the laundry room door closed, out of sight out of mind and all that and get on with doing some holiday cakes.  I've started small with some cupcakes - well they take way more time than anything else as everything has to be so small to fit on the top.  For that read, they take more time which means less time to do laundry, are you with me now?

The cakes themselves are regular yellow cake with vanilla buttercream and fondant tops.  Now I've been using this same recipe for a good while now, so much so that I can make it without the instructions, smarty pants huh?  Well the fall usually comes after some silly show of pride and fall I did, or rather the 6" cake did.... I used 1% fat milk in the recipe instead of whole milk (that's what I usually use).  Well you know it's the season of over indulgence and I thought if I could save a few cals here and there it'd all be to the good.  Regardless that the recipe has 12oz of butter and there's another 6oz in the buttercream, ahem... Anyway, the recipe like all scientific formulae didn't like being messed around.  The cake took way longer to bake, of course I kept checking it every 5, then 10 mins past the time it should have been ready and yes I ended up with a divot in the centre of it, d'oh!  So what did I do?  Well, what any self-respecting baker would do.  I cut the cake in half, filled the sink hole with the oh so yummy buttercream and turned it upside down for the cut side to be decorated, 'ta da'.  And, yes, it does completely, utterly and unquestioningly blow away the calories and the reason for trying to reduce them in the first place, but what the H, it's Christmas, or nearly.  The Coca-cola ads have been on so it's definitely on its way!

Everything is edible and everything was hand cut/made by yours truly.  How cute are these?  I've got loads more designs to come, these are just a taster but first I need to get on and do a baby shower order due for tomorrow.  Pop back early next week to see what else has been going on in my kitchen.

Here they are individually too.

'lego, lego, lego what's goin' on 'ere en?

It's been a while since I've posted but that doesn't mean I've not been baking! What it does mean is that I've been going from one cake and week to the next without really knowing how I've got there!

This week I've been making lots and lots of lego bricks out of fondant. Now, you'd think that with the amount of Lego stuff out there they'd have a mold of some kind but no, nope, nada! Each brick on the cakes, oh yes there are 2 of them, are hand made/cut and to within a cat's whisker in dimensions of the real sized bricks. Now of course I could have stayed with just the one size of brick, but where's the fun in that? So, a variety of sizes completes the look.

The first cake is a cupcake pull apart cake, a first for me, with a frozen buttercream transfer, another first - gotta love a challenge! and with a few of the fondant bricks scattered for good measure.

I was intending to take more photo's of each step but I got carried away and so all there is to show is the before and after. To get a true idea of how it all went add whatever sweary words you like and it'll be as though you were right in the kitchen with me. 




Before....

 

After



  

  


















The 2nd cake is a 10 inch square - I could have sworn I had a 10inch square pan but it turns out that I didn't (and still don't). I cut a 12 inch square down to 10 - cake pops coming later today with the leftovers = yummy! It's a rich chocolate cake with whipped(Madagascan) vanilla buttercream - the buttercream is whipped, not the Madagascans! Covered in white fondant before being decked out in the lego mat (hand made by yours truly), logo, name plaque and border bricks around the other 3 sides. The best bit about these cakes? Aiden loved them. His little face was a picture when I delivered them this morning. I had purposefully left off a few bricks so that he could size them up with the real McCoy but before he got close to doing that he'd eaten one and was ready for more. That was my cue to leave and let Mom manage that one :-)

Sophie's turning 8!

The end of the summer vacations are nigh. 11.5 weeks and we've all survived it unscathed, well except for my baking or rather lack of it. Temps of +100ºF have meant that I've been poolside for most of the summer. Honestly it's all a girl can do to keep cool in those temps without the oven adding to it, of course the cold beer helps too ;-)

The start of a new school term also means it's Sophie's birthday, this year it's the day before school so we had her sleepover party last night (Friday). 7 girls partied, 6 stayed over and had a blast. Who knew that after pizza, cookies, cake, candy, more fizzy than the World of Coca-cola, and 2 movies that there wouldn't be time for tattoos, nail painting and karaoke? Lights were out at midnight, lights back on again at 5 minute intervals there after until 12.55am and they were warned to sleep or they'd be separated - sometimes being a grumpy Scot. with wild hair has it's advantages, lol, but it did the trick. Silence fell until 8.45am and I was delighted. After a big breakfast of fruit, croissants, pan au chocolat and juice - okay not so much fruit but I did try, they went off to complete total destruction of the basement phase 2!

Sophie had asked for a lemon/blueberry pound cake with a buttercream finish, using light pink, dark pink and light purple. This is the same girl who 2 months ago tried to tell me she was a tomboy, yeah right! And that's what she got. The buttercream finish is worse than shoddy as I had next to no time left to actually ice the cake, all of the time went on the very fiddly but fun gumpaste popcorn box & popcorn, the pizza, the heads & hands (with painted fingernails), not so much on the sleeping bags, I did mention they were fiddly right? As usual, I was lastminute.com with the cake but it tasted good and that for me is the main thing.

Bottom tier of the cake before it was smothered in white chocolate buttercream and topped with 2 more layers of cake and cream = yummy!

A bird's eye view!

The whispering and gossiping of a slumber party!

"So she said, that I said that you said..."

"No way!"

Yesterday I played with beavers.....

That sounds so wrong on so many levels, but it is the truth! What's this got to do with cakes? well, everything the cake on order was a Beaver Dam birthday cake. So, I spent the morning making beavers out of chocolate marshmallow fondant (of course I made the choco-MMF the previous night) and then a gazillion sticks and logs too! This was a fab cake to do, not only because I'd never been asked to make one like this before but also there are not many images of beaver dam cakes out there so much of this was my own idea - believe me, 'google' beaver cake and see what hits you get.

***Disclaimer*** I take no responsibility for the content that the google hit will give on that search!

Whilst modelling the beaver heads out of fondant, I learned that I can actually do Pooh Bear, Arthur, cows, pigs and a big toe so a very successful morning! With the heads, bodies (with limbs) and big criss-cross tails complete I spent the next 4 hrs at the pool - well it's Georgia and 36ºC, kids are off school and going bananas in the house as I'm fiddling with fondant! I did give in and give them some to play with though. Sophie made an eye-pod (copied from a birthday card I bought but don't tell her I remember that!) and Jessica made beavers on their bellies swimming which look really good but .... bad mother alert... not good enough to put on a cake that someone's paying for! So, today we're (Jessica and I) making another cake for her to put her beavers on, thankfully it's father's day tomorrow.

Anyhoo, here's a pic, or 2 of the beaver dam cake.



It's a 10 inch marble cake filled with vanilla buttercream and iced in buttercream, piping gel for the water and chocolate marshmallow fondant for the beavers & logs.