Hurry Up, Cakes! » Fan Cakes

Dr. Horrible Party Cakes

Pfoinkle — Tue, 19 May 2009 00:20:16 +0000

The Doctor Horrible's Sing-Along Blog Party Cakes.

ahhhhh-ha-ha-ha. So that’s, you know, coming along.

If you know me (yeah, you do), you knew this was bound to happen. Afterall, I love Joss. I love Neil. I love Nathan. I love Felicia…

I love cake.

And I knew there had to be a way to bring all this love together in one (or nine) sugary tributes to Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. I’ve been working on these cakes for longer than I care to admit… there were mistakes. And accidents. A surprising amount of profanity and something about a city ordinance that really…

Right. Cakes.

Dr. Horrible's goggles rendered in fondant.

Ph.D. in Horribleness

I knew that for the goggles (and there had to be goggles) I would have to venture into the world of fondant. It was a scary journey, but past experience working with polymer clay got me through. It’s not an easy cake if you’re unfamiliar with fondant, but I found the cakey evil worth the brain pounding headache(s). Learn more about this cake…

Captain Hammer logo cake.

Cheesy on the Outside

Let me be clear. There’s no cheese on (or in) this cake. It’s three layers of yellow and chocolate cake with a dark chocolate buttercream frosting with simple fondant accents. Definitely the easiest of the three major cakes. Learn more about this cake…

Food-shaped cake, always a fave.

What a Crazy Random Happenstance

Of all the cakes I designed, I thought this one would be the easiest to create. I was wrong. Terribly. Horribly. Wrong. Learn from my mistakes. Learn more about this cake…

The groupies and the Bad Horse chorus cakes.

It’s Not a Perfect Metaphor

I knew I had to do cakes for both the groupies and the Bad Horse chorus and I chose mini-cakes and cupcakes because I also knew these cakes couldn’t steal the show from the leading cakes, but they had to be just as flawless, just as tasty, just as… Learn more about this cake…

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Ph.D in Horribleness (Dr. Horrible’s Cake)

Pfoinkle — Tue, 19 May 2009 00:18:48 +0000

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Cheesy on the Outside (Captain Hammer’s Cake)

Pfoinkle — Tue, 19 May 2009 00:17:51 +0000

Captain Hammer Logo Cake with buttercream frosting and fondant accents.

Let me be clear. There’s no cheese on (or in) this cake. And it’s not pie. I know Captain Hammer’s cake should be a pie, but this is a blog about cakes.

I don’t know how to make pie.

Captain Hammer Cake Supplies

3 Cake Layers, two yellow, one chocolate
Buttercream Frosting
Fondant
Gel Food Coloring (Brown, Yellow, Black)
Wilton’s Silver Pearl Dust

And sometimes there's a third, even deeper level.

Yellow cake seemed an excellent choice for Captain Hammer (you know, because of his logo), but I didn’t want just a yellow cake. The top layer is yellow cake, the second (middle layer) is chocolate, and the bottom layer is yellow cake.

And sometimes there’s a third even deeper level and that one’s the same as the top surface level.

Frost the cake with chocolate buttercream frosting and use the paper towel method to smoothe the buttercream.

Making the fondant Captain Hammer Logo

The logo on the top is made from fondant. Download theCaptain Hammer Logo pattern and cut the circle out of yellow fondant, the hammer haft out of brown fondant, and the hammer head out of grey fondant.

Dry brush Silver Pearl Dust on the grey fondant hammer head. Attach the hammer to the circle my lightly moistening the back of the pieces and placing them on the circle.

Pressing the fondant logo into the buttercream.

Allow the fondant logo to “rest” for 10-15 minutes and then place it on top of the buttercream frosted cake. Gently press the logo edges down into the buttercream.

The Captain Hammer cake before adding trim.

At this stage, I thought I was finished with the cake. But it needed more, something to pull it together.

Something to make it look less like a big chocolate ball.

The manly cake ruffle.

I thought about piping a buttercream border around the base, but dismissed the idea as “too feminine”. Imagine my chagrin when I ended up making a fondant ruffle for the base of the cake. When I realized what I had done, I considered removing the border. But Mr. Pfoinkle walked in and as I was bemoaning the ruffleness of it all, he stared at the cake. And then he said,

“Lacy, gently wafting curtains.”

I married well.

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A Crazy Random Happenstance (Penny’s Cake)

Pfoinkle — Tue, 19 May 2009 00:16:11 +0000

Penny's Frozen Yogurt Cake

Ah, sweet Penny. Finding the perfect cakey icon for Penny was not easy. Red hair? Nobody wants hair cake. A laundry basket? Too mundane. A copy of The Toy Collector? Too obscure. A chunk of shrapnel?

Hey, that’s not funny.

Alrighty then, frozen yogurt it is. Penny loves it and considering the container, it’s even a little cake-shaped.

What a crazy random happenstance.

Be forewarned. I made the “Penny Cake” three times. The first two times were complete and utter failures. I very much wanted the cake to be buttercream frosting (not fondant), but the buttercream cake… it did not look good — there was cracking. There was oozing. There was cake looking like…

It’s too horrible to mention. And not “horrible” in a good way.

This final version is much easier than what I tried previously, but know that getting the “yogurt” portion of the cake to look good is… more challenging than you may think.

If you want an easy cake, go for Captain Hammer’s Cake. But if you’re committed to having a “Penny Cake”, read on.

Supplies for Penny’s Cake

2 – 8″ inch round layers of any flavor cake
White buttercream frosting
Royal Icing
Whipped Frosting (see notes below)
Gel Food Coloring: Pink, Burgundy, Golden Yellow, and Leaf Green
Pastry Bag (or any food safe plastic bag with corner cut off)
Small piping tip (#1, 2, or 3)
Wax Paper
Fondant
Spork Pattern
Large Serving Spoon

Carve the sides of the stacked layers at a slight angle.

Stack two unfrosted cake layers and carve the sides at a slight angle (the shape of a styrofoam cup). If the top layer is domed, don’t worry about it — this is one time it’s good to have the dome as it will reduce the swirling mound of frosting the top of this cake needs.

Once you’re satisfied with the shape, it’s time to add support.

Normally, a two layer cake doesn’t require stacking supports, but you just reduced the size of the supporting layer — to avoid the bitter disappointment of a collapsing cake, follow Pix’s stacking tips and frost the cake with a light coat of buttercream.

Once you have the cake coated in buttercream, roll out white fondant long enough to wrap around the cake in a width approximately 1/2″ more than the height of the cake. Wrap the fondant around the cake.

Martha Stewart's Whipped Frosting

Now here’s the tough part, the “frozen yogurt”. It’s frosting, but that much buttercream would be… too much buttercream. There, I said it. There can be too much buttercream. The best answer to this dilemma is a very light whipped frosting.

Which is something I don’t normally make. So I hit Google and found this recipe on the Martha Stewart site. There were negative comments about the recipe, but it looked perfect to me.

Other than needing two batches, I had no problems with the recipe and it is wonderfully light. Perhaps too light for a general frosting, but perfect to replicate a mountain of frozen yogurt. One caution: no way I would attempt to whip this by hand. It took my stand mixer (with the whisk attachment) cranked to “8″ to make it form stiff peaks.

And one other caution: if you use this frosting, don’t expect it to survive a summer picnic. As well as this frosting works, it will melt in heat. More so than buttercream.

Whatever frosting you use, put it in a piping bag (or large plastic bag) and cut off the tip (or a corner) so that you leave an opening of about 1.5″. Pipe the frosting into a towering spiral.

Piping the label with colored Royal Icing.

If you’ve watched the show closely (very closely), you know that the styrofoam cups of “frozen yogurt” come with a crooked “Berri Good” label. For this cake, the label is made from Royal Icing affixed to a strip of fondant.

Now you know that I’m all about providing patterns to download — but “Berri Good!” is a corporate trademark. And I don’t know how they feel about fan cakes, so you’ll need to Google the name and get your own pattern of the logo.

Print out the logo. Place a piece of wax paper over the logo and pipe Royal Icing onto the wax paper. If you’re like me (and don’t do a lot of piping of Royal Icing), pipe multiple copies. This way you can pick and choose the best letters and replace any letters that break when you’re applying them to the fondant.

And there will be breakage.

Allow the piped letters to dry for up to 24 hours and then peel them off of the wax paper.

Use thinned Royal Icing to attach letters to fondant.

Attach the letters to the strip of fondant by using a toothpick or paintbrush to apply thinned royal icing to the back of the letters and then placing them on the fondant.

Royal Icing Letters Fail

Once you’ve attached all the letters of the logo onto the strip of fondant, allow it to dry for 10-15 minutes before attempting to attach the fondant to the cake. Otherwise, you end up with letters falling off and having to replace them.

Once the label has dried for 10-15 minutes, lightly moisten the back of the label and place it on the cake. Apply light pressure for 30 seconds.

Download the spork pattern in PDF format.

Download the spork pattern. Roll out white fondant to a thickness ~1/8″. Use the pattern to cut a spork from the fondant.

Supplies for making the Spork

Use shortening or butter to grease the serving spoon. Mold the fondant spork to the serving spoon. Once the fondant has dried, remove it from the spoon.

And be very very careful with your fondant spork. I broke three of them. The weak point is the bend in the spork — fondant isn’t strong enough to bear the weight of the spoon bowl.

So don’t go waving your spork about.

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It’s Not a Perfect Metaphor (Groupies and Bad Horse Chorus Cakes)

Pfoinkle — Tue, 19 May 2009 00:15:30 +0000

Captain Hammer's Groupies and the Bad Horse Chorus

Okay right, I wasn’t about to make six more full-sized cakes.

Supplies

Cupcakes
Buttercream Frosting
Fondant
Gel food coloring (Red, Blue, Yellow, Brown, Black)
Wilton’s Silver Pearl Dust
Cowboy Hat Candy Mold
Captain Hammer Logo Pattern
Lolly Sticks

Stacked cupcakes with lolly stick support.

At this stage, I should have known I had a problem. You see, I wanted cupcakes for the Bad Horse Chorus, but stacked cakes for the groupies — so I could make them stand in a group and have the difference in heights… it seemed funny at the time. I thought it wouldn’t be a problem stacking the cupcakes.

I was wrong. Oh, it worked okay, but it made the groupies… well, lumpy. And for that I apologize to the non-lumpy actors. If you want to avoid lumpy groupies, I recommend dividing your batter in half. Use half for the Bad Horse Chorus cupcakes and half to bake an 8″ cake layer that you can cut up with a biscuit or cookie cutter. Stacking uniform cake circles would be… un-lumpy.

Once you have your cupcakes and stacked cakes (use the lolly sticks to keep the stacked cakes stacked), coat them in buttercream and wrap them in colored fondant. For the Bad Horse Chorus, use browns and black. For the groupies, match their primary t-shirt colors: red, blue, and black.

Download the Captain Hammer Logo Pattern in PDF format.

Once the stacked cakes are wrapped in colored fondant, it’s time to make the Captain Hammer Logo in fondant. Download the Captain Hammer Logo pattern. The pattern includes the logo in several sizes, choose the one closest to the diameter of your cakes. For these small hammers, I cut a circle of yellow fondant and the full hammer shape in brown fondant. Then I used a paint brush to dry brush Silver Pearl Dust on the head of the hammer.

Moisten the back of the hammer to attach it to the yellow circle. Affix the completed logo to the top of the stacked cakes.

Candy mold used to create fondant cowboy hats.

The Bad Horse Chorus cupcakes are decorated with fondant cowboy hats and bandanas. For the cowboy hats, I used a cowboy hat candy mold from Candyland Crafts (mold #K-80).

For the bandana, simply cut a square of fondant, and loosely fold it over into a triangle.To attach a bandana to a cupcake, lightly moisten the corners of the bandana and place it on the cupcake. Apply light pressure for 30 seconds. Top off with a fondant cowboy hat.

To get “Attention to Detail” points, sneak in a silver hat band on the black hat. Just mix some of the Silver Pearl Dust with water and use a paintbrush to apply.

And make one of the hats a bowler. See there, I did know that one of them should be a bowler.

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Hurry Up, Cakes! » Fan Cakes

Dr. Horrible Party Cakes

Ph.D. in Horribleness

Cheesy on the Outside

What a Crazy Random Happenstance

It’s Not a Perfect Metaphor

Ph.D in Horribleness (Dr. Horrible’s Cake)

Cheesy on the Outside (Captain Hammer’s Cake)

Captain Hammer Cake Supplies

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A Crazy Random Happenstance (Penny’s Cake)

Supplies for Penny’s Cake

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It’s Not a Perfect Metaphor (Groupies and Bad Horse Chorus Cakes)

Supplies

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