A Dad making cakes

This was a fun experience. A friend was completing his medical specialist training and his wife wanted to make him a special cake. She made the cake at home and brought it over to decorate. It was a very yummy caramel mud cake, delicious! We started with a crumb coat, into the fridge and smoothed out the surface. Then added some pink to the neck area, laid blue fondant over the whole cake and cut out some of the blue fondant to reveal the 'skin'. Then for fun we made a surgical mask and let it set over a balloon. And finally to make the various medical items on the cake. This was fun as well.   It was the first time I was able to make a fondant cake with someone and very exciting to see someones confidence grow over a short window :)

Finally one of my children asked for a Starwars cake! I nearly had a Storm Trooper request a few years ago but he changed his mind. He asked for a truck cake then a Star Wars cake and finally settled on a transport cake from Star Wars, the legendary Millennium Falcon. Once again used the go-to choc mud cake recipe. It's great for carving.  https://dadmakingcakes.blogspot.com/2019/07/chocolate-mud-cake-super-easy-yummy-and.html Found schematics/plans online and resized them on my computer until they fit the cake tins I was using. Decided to make one circular cake and one square cake. For a change I wouldn't use baking strips ( https://dadmakingcakes.blogspot.com/2017/08/how-to-bake-cake-with-flat-top.html ) on the circle pan as I wanted the cake to dome like the Millenium Falcon does. Let the cake cool then cut the pieces using the template Once I was happy with the measurements it was time to stick all the pieces together using icing and crumb coat the...

Water colour cake with crazy topper I still owed my wife a decent birthday cake. You can read about the backstory to this comment and the epic fail in this post:  https://dadmakingcakes.blogspot.com/2017/07/frankenstein-cake-aka-how-not-to-make.html 2 years on and I've picked up a few new tricks so hopefully it's a much better cake this time. My wife looked around for cake pictures she liked and settled on a tall cylindrical water colour cake. I hadn't made a water colour cake before so it's new territory for me. To be honest I started with the cake topper as this intrigued me the most but lets get the cake out of the way first. CAKE Once again I used this fantastic recipe ( https://dadmakingcakes.blogspot.com/2019/07/chocolate-mud-cake-super-easy-yummy-and.html ) but the downside to this delicious gooey cake is that it takes nearly 2 hours to make each cake after allowing time for the cake to cool, etc. And I only have 1 small circular cake tin so...

Peppa Pig Cake The years have flown by and our youngest is turning 3 already! With this monkey we are celebrating the fact that we've managed to keep her alive for 3 years. She's an active monkey and keen to prove to her older brothers how tough she is. The other morning I found her stuck hanging off a set of cupboards. She wanted to read a book from the cupboard so took a running jump off some furniture and only managed to latch onto the cupboard. I walked into the room: Dad: What are you doing? L: Trying to get a book. Dad: Are you stuck? L: Um, yes. The Peppa Pig cake is fairly easy. Step 1 : Find an image on the internet. Step 2 : Being an accountant I use Excel as my go to program for just about anything. Somehow I even edit photos for a photobook in Excel. Probably better tools to use but this is my go-to program. I paste the image of Peppa Pig into Excel and print it. Take the print out and compare it to the cake tin to see if the image needs ...

Smooth icing on cakes, how? Once again, I'm self taught and most of the time have no idea just making it up as I go along. I've seen a few videos where the cake decorator effortlessly smoothed out the fluffiest icing ever and magically the cake has razor sharp sides. I have no idea what magic they are using but my icing is never like this! My icing tends to be a bit stickier so my attempts at smoothing in the past resulted in lumps and lines. It even clumps up and pulls chunks of icing out the cake when I'm trying to smooth it. It's super annoying especially when the video's look so easy. I suspect my kitchen is too cold when I'm icing (like really late at night once all the kids are in bed during our winter season which is when all the birthdays are) so the icing is freezing up. Microwaving the icing makes it easier to work with BUT it splits the icing making it look a bit yuck. My solution for the moment is to boil the kettle and place hot water ...

Chocolate Mud Cake - Super easy, yummy and fail safe! Below is a recipe from a lovely lady called Jodie. It's super easy and very yummy. Takes a little bit longer to cook than other cakes but the result is worth waiting for! Remember to keep the temperate down a little so the cake is nice and 'gooey'. At the lower temperate the cake should be reasonably flat but if you are struggling with bulging/dome cakes then try out my tip re baking strips:  https://dadmakingcakes.blogspot.com/2017/08/how-to-bake-cake-with-flat-top.html