There it is! James' Blues Clues cake! I didn't think i was up to baking the cake itself, so I used a Betty Crocker instant mix (it still came out lopsided!) Then I made up some royal icing and iced away. Took me seven hours. Mad. I expect a really experienced person could have whipped this out in ... 2 hours? There were loads of holes, but these are cunningly hidden by my carefully angled, non-flash photo : ).
This time round, i thought I would try my hand at actually baking the thing from scratch - no more instant mix! A friend had recommended Baking Illustrated. So, no time to muck around with piping decorations - I was going to go with an icing topper. Sophie really loves Charlie and Lola, and. I trawled the net sighing over said cake toppers being sold on e-bay. Unfortunately, being ever last minute, I only had a week, and I was pretty sure nothing would make it here on time. Happily, I found out that Bake-It-Yourself will print out icing toppers of your own custom images -and they only need 3 working days! i filled out their template and e-mailed it off - horrer, they came back the next day to say their printer was down and sorry, they wouldn't be able to do it.
Yikes. How on earth was I going to pipe Charlie and Lola on a cake? If mainly-blue-Blues Clues took me 7 hours, i think Charlie and Lola would take me several days. So I remembered about fondant, which I had once played about with 15 years ago in school (Friday afternoon classes were given to all kinds of things - I did philosophy (in which my teacher mainly talked about Freud and sex), cake decorating, creative writing.. can't remember what else). Watched a few "how-to" videos on youtube, and plunged right in. So here are my building blocks...
Lola #2 - thinner and scarier looking than Lola #1, who was fat and friendly, but melted to death. Headless until just before the candles were lit. her skirt took ages!!!
Sizzles and a ladybug we call Sidney. Yes, I know, Sidney is a spider.
Hearts and butterflies in Charlie and Lola patterns - #1 and #3 were easy to do - just drew on rolled fondant with edible marker ink. The poppy pattern (#2) was more complicated - long tube of white wrapped round with red, sliced up and tiled, rolled flat, black dots using edible marker pen.
Text - someone tell me if there is an easier way, short of buying cookie cutters! I printed out the text on a piece of paper, laid it over rolled fondant (big enough for one letter), used a craft knife to poke the outline of the letter through the paper onto the fondant, took off the paper, used a cutting tool to cut out the letter. By which time the fondant was pretty dry, so I got lots of uneven edges and fiber-y bits. But I was really pleased with it anyway! Fonts used - American Typewriter and Bodiac.
The finished piece - taduh!
Can you see how slick Lola's sweater is?! I learnt my lesson after numerous casualties, and assembled the cake in an airconditioned room. Took it out to snap the photo - what, 3 minutes? - and already they were starting to ooze!
In the meantime, whilst I was mucking about with the fondant - buying two types - Wilton (not bad - didn't taste great, but like anyone was going to eat the fondant bits anyway - NO ONE in my family would- they peel off all extraneous sugar and scrape away the cream); Phoon Huat - freshly made, cheap, disaster! I rolled it out and couldn't lift it off my non-stick mat. Had to scrape it off with fork, leave mat under hot water, and scrape remainder off after - making one lot-> marshmallow fondant - worked better than the phoon huat stuff, but I think i added too little water. Plus I couldn't get any normal crisco and had to get a huge tin of "butter flavored" crisco, which is SHOCK HORRERS bright yellow. What am i supposed to do with the rest of it?! Anyway, as i said, in the meantime, Bake-It-Yourself had actually e-mailed me again, the same day they wrote to say they couldn't do it, to say they COULD. But over-excitable me, by then thoroughly obsessed with making the fondant stuff work, did not check my e-mails for another three days, by which time I was well invested in the fondant venture. But I still had to buy the cake topper.
So I made another cake.
Cake 2
The icing image turned out really well I thought! I was afraid the colours would come out too dark or smudged, but it came out great. So, it was good having to make this other cake - I tried out the chocolate layer cake recipe from Baking Illustrated, and decided to go with it instead of the yellow layer cake recipe.
About the baking - I finally invested in an oven thermometer and a digital scale, and that has made all the difference. So happy I've managed to bake something soft enough to cut and eat, vs first cake I made for hubby's birthday, which was like a rock, could be anchor for small boat. (but he valiantly ate 2 slices and said it was yummy, wasn't that sweet? We gave the rest away, and our nice friends didn't say anything at all). I forced myself to be super anal and meticulous following the recipes, and they turned out really really well.
Leftover Fondant
One week after, James suddenly begged me to "Please make Mr Men cupcakes". Don't know where that request came from, i suspect my helper must have been trying to distract him from something - this has happened a few times.
James: "i WANT to blow bubbles NOW - yes now, even though it is pouring rain and lightning is striking all around us and several trees have been blown over by gale force winds"
My helper:"Hey, wouldn't it be nice to make cupcakes? Do you want Charlie and Lola, Barney or Mr Men on your cupcakes?"
James:"I WANT to blow ... cupcakes? Mr Men! I WANT Mr Men cupcakes! Mummmmmmy...."
Smart way to head off a tantrum huh? I have to remember this tactic more often - because I will sometimes keep going back and forth with him "But it is raining and you will get struck by lightning" "i don't care, i want to blow bubbles now!" "but you'll get wet and sick and you won't be able to swim.." "I don't care, I want to blow bubbles now!", "we'll do it tomorrow, ok? if its sunny?" "I don't care... " etc. etc. etc.
So anyway, he was supposed to help, but he fell asleep and woke up only in time to stick the Mr Men ontop of the cupcakes. The icing is awful messy, but I was pressed for time : ) - we made them in an afternoon. Here they are:
Wanted to make 17 Mr Men for 17 cupcakes, but ran out of fondant. My marshmallow stuff didn't hold up well to being coloured and manipulated. Mr Noisy and Mr Happy are my favorites.
What happened to Lola:
James watched me model everything for a week, and somewhere along the way developed an obsession with "eating Sizzles' eye." So, he actually asked permission to "eat Sizzles please.", and bit off his nose. Usually he loves sugar, but he didn't finish the rest. Sizzles was made of the Wilton stuff, so maybe it really does taste unpleasant? I dunno, I thought it was ok.
