Monday, December 12, 2011

5 is 'Dino'mite!

A few months ago, someone contacted me through my husband's facebook page. They wanted to get ideas for their son's birthday party that was still 3 months away. I sent over an idea I had seen and soon a business relationship was formed.
This was the cake we picked out:


Originally we had planned on only doing one dinosaur but I think her guest count kept getting larger so eventually we went with this exact cake. It was to be on a 16" cake base. I don't have a 16" pan! Not really a big problem because I had plenty of time to run to Michael's and buy one. But I'm frugal when I can be so I try not to make any high dollar purchase without one of their awesome 40% off coupons. So I kept putting it off because I didn't have the coupon or, as the story of the past two months goes, my truck wasn't running. Soon it was time to start baking and I still had no pan. I was a little worried as I now didn't have time to run to Michael's...which isn't in our city and the one in the city over is very limited on what they have. BUT, I did have a 16" square pan so I decided I could use that and just cut out my circle. It worked out great! So then I set to decorating.
Originally, my sister-in-law (a.k.a. my assistant) was supposed to come over and help me because this weekend was a busy one: The dinosaur cake, Christmas cupcakes for my sister, and the cookie swap to all get done in one day. I could blame the feeling of being overwhelmed on my procrastination habits but honestly, I just don't like to bake something more than 24 hours before it's to be consumed. I know technically I could get away with it and nobody would probably be able to tell but I just don't like to do that. Maybe when my schedule gets crazy busy and I don't have any other option but for now, fresh baked is what you get.
So the first thing I had to do on Friday was make my sister's cupcakes. They were for a Christmas party so I thought I'd focus more on Christmas decorations as opposed to gourmet flavors. I spent Thursday night making the fondant toppers then called my sister Friday morning telling her that she was getting plain vanilla and chocolate cupcakes with the Christmas toppers. She didn't like that idea. So at the last minute, we adjusted the cupcakes to slightly gourmet flavors: Mint Chocolate, Peanut Butter Chocolate, Fudge-filled Chocolate, etc. Flavors that I could still use a plain cake as base and just adjust the filling and top with just butter cream (as opposed to say, the Samoa cupcake with shredded coconut, caramel sauce, and fudge drizzled on top).
Here are her cupcakes:

Then I started decorating the dinosaur cake. At first, I had people asking what it was supposed to be; confused by the random, in-progress, pictures I was sending. But I think the final product came out looking great and pretty darn close to the original:




And finally:

Not to bad, if I do say so myself. Especially considering that I have no special training in this area: I am not good at molding items (should probably take an art class or something) and I have NO special tools that would make this easier. It was all done with my hands, I used a knife to add in some small wrinkles in the legs (that you can't really see with these pictures) and I used a Christmas cookie cutter to help get the shape of the yellow spikes (but they still required some fine tuning to get the right shape).

So, what do you think?

1 comment:

  1. beautiful work..very proffesional, and you sound like someone who really loves baking..and should have a store front if possible, you will do awesome, just with your personality,don't let it overwhelm you and take your spirit
    Bakery owner

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