Paw Patrol Cake!

I looooove this Paw Patrol Cake! 

I found it too busy at first- with everything looking cramped but in the end I think it made for a dramatic cake that the birthday boy loved.

I started off making the dogs in advance. I had to make 4 shades of brown for 4 particular dogs- it was not easy! I worked from the bottom up, starting with the bodies and front and back legs. I learned quite a few things from making these dogs, like dont attach the neck until the head is ready to go on. Because the necks had dried hard, and when they heads were ready to attach they were hard too, there was a bit of a gap between the neck and the head, which didn't look good at all. So I took off the necks with my exacto knife, and made new necks. Because they necks were still soft, the heads were pushed down a bit onto the necks and so there were no gaps this time. I had made the hats, badges and their special backpacks in advance, so I just glued them on. 

This is the sketch I drew that was approved by my customer.

Here is a photo of the tower after it was ganached.

Here is the tower, decorated after it was stacked on to the bottom tier. The legs of the tower were added after the tower was stacked.

The trickiest part of the tower was the slide that went around the tower. It took me two attempts to get it right. The first time I just used modelling paste. that just wouldn't work. The second time I decided to use gumpaste/flower paste. 

I rolled the gumpaste to a thickness of about 2mm and cut strips of about 1". I placed each strip onto a fat straw to dry into a U-shape. To stop the straws moving about I stuck it onto a tray with sticky tape. When they were halfway through drying (holding its shape but still flexible), and after fumbling about and 2 attempts later, it occured to me that it was best to cut it into lengths that fit each section of the tower: the sides, front and back. It got easier with this method but I still had a hard time trying to get them to go round each corner. I attached each piece of slide onto the tower, starting at the top and working my way down, using toothpicks to keep each piece in place. Here it is, all toothpicked up!!

I used the yellow strips to cover the joins between each piece of slide. Good thing it was part of the design anyway. The toothpicks left holes in the tower, so I covered them with white royal icing. Yay for royal icing!

The rest of the tower was made in advance. I used 4" and 5" cake drums for the underside of the viewing room. They were covered in sugarpaste in stages. I used a very thin cake card for the bottom part of the roof and covered it with sugarpaste on all sides. The top part of the roof and the telescope is all sugarpaste.

The only thing I would change (and I will, because I've got another order for this cake in two weeks!) is not to use Rice Krispie treats for the viewing tower as it was really heavy. I will also make the central dowel (a threaded rod) go all the way up to the viewing tower. In this cake, the threaded rod stopped just before the top of the body of the tower, so there was little support for the viewing tower and roof. 

Next post- My White Wedding Cake Promotion!

Lots of Cakes!

So it's been a busy few weeks in the Cake Jeanie studio! I'm loving the last few cakes that I've made.The Porsche cake was particularly challenging. I found it just a bit tricky to make a Porsche out of a whole block of sugarpaste, molding and shaping as I went along. My customer was pretty happy with the result. I even added a personalised number plate for hte birthday boy which they were pleased about! The Porsche logo was also fiddly but looked really good when done.

I added red, black and yellow ribbon on the side of the cake because it looked a bit bare when left white.

The gaelic football cake had a tricky goalpost. I first made the net out of piped cake lace. I left it overnight to dry on parchment paper and it peeled off the next day. Next time I will make the cake lace much thicker to get thinner and a more net-like effect but what I got wasn't bad at all! 

I also made the frame of the goal post in advance- the frame that sat behind the plastic goal posts that were made out of cake dowels. When everything was dry and ready to go on the cake, I first placed the plastic cake dowels into the cake, using a template to get the distance right. I then cut a cake dowel to a length that would span the distance between teh two, and measured the height (the height of the D shaped frame), then attached this piece of dowel with white florist tape. This was quite difficult because I was trying not to move the dowels in the cake.Then I placed the D shaped frame behind the dowels, using royal icing to glue it on. Once the frame was in place and the royal icing was dry, I cut pieces of net, using templates to get the right size, and glued on with royal icing. 

The kitten cake was my daughter's request. She wanted to be surprised, but because she's only 7, couldn't resist continually coming into the kitchen to have a peek. I just about managed to keep her from seeing it until her birthday. The kitten cake was almost straightforward. The design is from a book by Debbie Brown. I had lost my large circle attachment for my sugar gun, so I had to use my semi circle. There are lots of semi circular strands of sugar on this cake! The kitten was pretty easy to make, and so was the cake board wood effect, which I've done quite a few times. I just cover the board with sugarpaste, use a ruler to make a row of long lines (using the ruler as a guide for the width), and using the short end of the ruler to make smaller lines perpendicular to the long lines. Then I use the dresden tool to score the planks of wood, then paint with a mixture of ivory and brown.

George Pig and Shopkins were fun to make too. They both looked very cute in the end. The name of the birthday girl on the Shopkins cake was made based on the Shopkins logo, and handpainted (except for the name itself) onto the sugarpaste. 

Next up, the Paw Patrol Cake!