birthdays | | Page 3

April 24, 2015
by Jennifer Lori 4 Comments

Charlie and Lola cake

Instead of cakes, or knitting, the projects I’ve been working on lately have been for the upcoming show I’m a part of. I’ve joined the Becket Players this year, and we are getting right down to the crunch before the show starts. (Literally… “Hell Week” starts tonight).

Actually, come to think of it I did make cookies, and knit something for the show, but that’s not the point. I’ve been taking step-by-step pics of the props so I can make tutorial posts, but I want to wait to post them after the show has finished the run. Not for EVERY prop I made, however… today I made some fake money for one scene and somehow I don’t think it’s a good idea to post a tutorial on “How To Print Money” 😛

So since I can’t show you that stuff yet, I’m going to continue posting cakes and projects from the past. Today it’s the Charlie and Lola cake.

When I was asked to make this cake for Quentin’s birthday, all the way back in November 2013, I had no idea who Charlie and Lola were. Actually, I still don’t, beyond that link. So I went online and found this image to use as a reference:

Nailed it! 😀

About a week before the cake was due I cut out the letters for the name from yellow fondant, and set them aside to dry. I also cut out the figures from ivory fondant, tracing the images I’d printed off the internet, as I discuss here. I also set those aside to dry, and discovered that larger shapes take longer to dry. I knew that already with sculpted pieces, but was surprised that after 2 days of sitting out at room temperature these figures were still floppy. I tried moving them downstairs and had them spend the night on the washing machine, in front of the dehumidifier, but they still slowly sagged when I held only one end. Shoot.

A baker friend suggested submerging them in a bed of cornstarch to draw out moisture. Great- except I had none. So I set them for 24 hours in a bed of icing sugar instead. They weren’t as dry as I’d like, nowhere near the “ready-to-snap” aridity of the Jake figures, but dry enough to risk painting.

Overall, I’m happy with how these came out…mostly. I think they look like who they’re supposed to be, but there are some flaws that bug me when I look closely.

Not bad, right? Good from far but…

So much bothers me with this technique, and is the reason why I’ve switched to painting with icing instead of straight gels. The visible “skin tone” of the figures is the ivory fondant. The “paint” used was Wilton gel colors thinned with water, and a drop of Wilton White White to help it be opaque. On very small items, like the Jake figures, it covered well, dried fast, and was manageable. But these figures were almost the size of a 9×11″ cake, and it took a lot more “paint” to cover them.

The first day, as I painted, they looked good. The yellow hair was brighter, and the white shirt seemed solid. The next day is when the flaws started to come out. The hair dried patchy, in some of the spots the gel color almost seemed to separate from the water. The painted areas were still glossy and tacky 2 days later, the longest I could wait to do the outlining and details, as it was the day of the party. As you can see, especially on the right eye and the shirt, the white was still not dry enough in the centers, and cracked and bled when I drew on it with my edible ink pen.

I was MUCH happier with the lower half. For his jeans, I painted the pants first with blue, then pounced/dry brushed blue, blue/black mix and straight black icing gels. The cuffs were scribbled just like the source drawing, and I really like the way they, the shoes and pants came out.

I had the same issues with Lola. I was quite happy with how her dress came out, not as much with the hair/eyes, mainly because of the color drying/bleeding.

The dress was a lot of fun to do. I put a base layer of white, then took advantage of the bleeding attributes to dot in the flowers (groupings of 4 or 5 dots). Once they’d had a chance to set up a bit I added the flower centers, and finally the leaves. If I’d been painting with real paint, or working with icing, I’d have started with the leaves, and built up, but that wouldn’t have worked here.

A little outlining at the end gave the finishing touch.

The cake itself was a chocolate 2-layer cake, iced and filled with vanilla icing. While the icing was still wet I put a row of purple Smarties around the base. The day of the party I attached the figures to the top with a little bit of icing, and added the name.

April 23, 2015
by Jennifer Lori 8 Comments

Jake & the Neverland Pirates cake

Yesterday I mentioned a few cakes that I haven’t actually ever posted. This Jake & The Neverland Pirates cake is one of them.

Way back in 2013 Jake & the gang were favorites around here, both the toys and the show. “Aw, coconuts!” was a common complaint, and the Sharkey & Bones cd was on constant loop in my car. I can still sing them in my sleep.

Anyhoo… in 2013 Henri turned 4, so of course he wanted a Jake cake.

Now back then I wasn’t really thinking of the cakes in relation to the blog, because I wasn’t thinking of the blog much. And I didn’t think anyone on my Facebook page would care about step-by-step pics… so I didn’t take any. But I can tell you what I did.

The figures were the first ones I ever hand-painted. I’d been traumatized by my horrible sculpting of the Dora and Diego figures in Henri’s cake the previous year (I can sculpt, not that that cake would show it), and there was no way I was going to start modelling all the Jake gang’s tiny details. So I decided to try painting.

I cut printed images to the scale I wanted and cut them out on ivory fondant (the visible skin tone) the same way you can see here. For painting I used a toothpick and Wilton food gels loosened with a bit of water, and a drop of White White to get the opacity. These figures are small… as you can tell by the toothpicks inside them. If you try it, don’t get stressed if they don’t look ‘right’. Finishing details, like the whites of the eyes and jewelry/touches really make a difference, and they can only often be added once the base layer is dry. Also, no matter how I think they look at 3am when I’ve finally finished… I’m ALWAYS pleasantly surprised the next morning when I look at them again.

The cake was another case of “I don’t know what I want to do so I’ll bake the cakes and figure it out later”. I started by baking 3 cakes, a vanilla round and chocolate 9×11 and 8×8.

I used this toy ^ as a model for Bucky. Easy enough, since we own it and I could have it on the table next to me.

The sand and sea is the vanilla round, torted with buttercream, the ship was made from the chocolate cakes and store-bought chocolate icing.

The accents are all rolled fondant, bought white and tinted to the colors I needed.

I did the “sand” first. After crumbcoating the round I put some fresh vanilla icing over half the cake and quickly covered it with crushed graham crackers. For the sea I covered the other half with a thick layer of blue icing, stopping just shy of the white border. I waited for the icing to crust a bit then chopped up where the white and blue met, for sea froth. (Similar to the top of the Betty Boop cake’s hot tub).The sails are paper flags I made in Excel (for the stripes) and topped with a graphic of a gold doubloon. The crow’s nest is a cupcake/muffin liner. The mast is a straw covered with brown fondant, with some wooden skewers down the center and through the cakes. There’s a disk of fondant under the crow’s nest and a smaller one inside it, to hold it in place.

The cannon is made from gray fondant and also stuck on a toothpick/pressed into the cake for support. There are also toothpicks in the outer 2 legs of each of the 4 railings, and I allowed them to dry for a day before standing them in the cake, so they wouldn’t risk sagging. Finally there was the …what’s that called? Captain’s area? (lol). If you notice in the above pics, that’s the one piece that’s not in place elsewhere. That’s because that solid plaque of fondant was so darn heavy that when I set it in place it made the whole back of the ship start to slide back. I only ended up adding it at the party, RIGHT before serving… and even with that delay I still had to have my hand hovering behind it as I brought it out, so it wouldn’t fall.

I also waited until serving to insert the figures, but that was mostly because I was worried they’d break.

And of course, the birthday boy and his brother at the party, right before the best part- digging in!

(And you can see my hand supporting the large fondant piece).

By the way- this technique for the figures is really practical if you need to make items in advance. This party was 2 years ago (!) and I had the figures in a tupperware in the back of my fridge until a few months ago, and they looked just as good as they did that day. (I probably wouldn’t EAT them, though…)

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Throwing your own pirate party? Try these easy pirate craft ideas as party activities or loot bag stuffers!

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Henri’s other birthday treats

April 22, 2015
by Jennifer Lori 10 Comments

How to Make Minecraft Cake/Cupcake Toppers

So last post I showed you the Minecraft lootbags (inventory chests). Today I’ll show you how I made the toppers for the Minecraft birthday cake.

I wasn’t sure what I was going to do for the cake itself, but I knew I wanted to have a bunch of Minecraft mobs scattered about. I didn’t feel like having to prepare enough fondant in the assorted colors, nor did I really want to start sculpting, so I turned to my current favorite technique- hand-painted toppers.

I’ve used this on a number of cakes, which I’ll link to once I post them. With one exception, Nick’s Star Wars cookies, I always painted with thinned-down color gels, and had great results… (especially the Jake & the Neverland Pirates figures) but there were some flaws. The painted pieces too much longer to dry, making it more difficult to do finishing touches, the “paint” was often very wet, which could cause the fondant base to soften and/or get slimy, and sometimes the piece would crack as it dried (like in the Charlie & Lola cake).

For some reason I switched techniques when making Sean’s last Goalie cake, I tossed in some icing sugar to give my white coloring some opaqueness, and then I recalled painting with icing on the Star Wars cookies. It was a duh moment, and I’ve stuck with that ever since. It’s easier (for me), faster (for me), and it dries quicker, so I can add eyes or other details MUCH faster. Plus, because icing is thicker than water, I can play with layers and build up dimensions, if I want, similar to decorating cookies with royal icing.

My first step is to cut out the topper shapes from fondant (or if you’re painting on cookies, bake them and let them cool until there is no heat left inside, I’d wait overnight if possible). You can use cookie cutters or freehand it, I am not above tracing. I’d printed out the mobs (it stands for mobiles for those of you who don’t play… all the moving characters in the game) I wanted to use and scaled them all to the rough sizes I wanted.

I rolled out some scrap teal fondant left over from Jakob’s 2nd Adventure Time cake, the B-MO & Gunter cakes. The thickness of the fondant depends on the intended use of the piece. In my case I needed something thick enough to stand up, and also be thicker than a toothpick. For something that will be laying flat on a cake you can go thinner, and if it was meant to be a plaque that would stand upright or lean at a diagonal I’d go thicker, so there would be a solid base.

Lay the paper templates out on the fondant and cut it up into manageable sizes, then use a knife or your preferred cutter to trace around the templates. In the pic above you can see I’ve almost finished cutting out Diamond Steve. Keep your fondant scraps and store them properly for next time.

Here are all the mobs cut out. I slid a toothpick into most of them while the fondant was still soft, and reinforced where necessary with more fondant. I wasn’t worried about the smaller fondant blobs showing because I knew I’d be painting with icing, which is thick, but if you’re painting with straight color gels you’d rather have a flat surface.

The next step is to let the pieces dry. I mean really dry. At least a day. Two is better. The longer you can wait, the more in-advance you can get them cut and set them aside, the better, because fondant will wilt and melt when it gets wet, and there is a lot of moisture in the icing. Also, larger pieces will take longer to dry through than smaller ones. The Jake & the Neverland Pirates gang were dry enough to paint after 2 days left exposed to the air. I hadn’t given myself enough time with the Charlie & Lola toppers, they were so big and still flexible after 2 days. Or maybe my house was more humid at the time. Either way, they ended up spending 24 hours in a bed of icing sugar to draw out as much moisture as I could get.

Once the pieces are firm, not floppy, they’re ready to paint.

I didn’t take any in-progress painting shots. You can use whatever you like as a palette as long as it’s food-safe and not used for any non-food purpose. (I also keep my cake stuff away from peanut and nut products because I make 3 nut-free cakes every year). I mostly paint with toothpicks but I have some food-only paint brushes I’ll use from time to time, and I use repurposed apple sauce cups for extra water and icing sugar. There are a bunch of tricks I use, like using a medicine dropper to add water to thin the icing if necessary vs a spoon, so I have more control over how much I add, and using those sewing pins (in the tracing pic) to help mark out any details on the fondant cut-outs, in addition to “drawing” on them before I paint.

These are the non-hostiles- a sheep, Diamond Steve, regular Steve and a pig. I chose some of my kids’ favorite characters, leaving out only the Mooshroom because I knew I already had plenty to cover the cake. Plus if I’d kept going they also wanted an ocelot, and a dog, and a bat, and a spider jockey, and zombies, and…

I didn’t plan too far ahead on each piece, though I do try to work in a way that makes sense. Whenever possible I work backwards in color, to minimize icing waste. For example, I didn’t want to have to re-mix black, so planned to work with it last, and do any details if necessary then, at the end. I started with the Steves, and mixed up their skin color (though now they look like Zombie Steves), then added a touch more brown and used the same icing for the sheep’s face and the lighter areas on his hooves. A touch more brown and it was used for the darker areas of the hooves and Steve’s hair.

The same blue used for Steve was also used for the squid’s face, then darkened for his body, and eventually darkened further for the black.

Just like when painting with real paints, when I mix colors I don’t always blend it all in, so if I’m adding more pink to do some shading on the pig, I only mix it into half of the icing, so I still have some light pink to play with.

The hostile mobs- the Ender Dragon, a spider, a creeper, an Enderman and a squid (who probably isn’t technically ‘hostile’). I don’t know why the Enderman’s eyes don’t look purple, I think the light washed it out ‘cus in person they did. The splotches on the spider were made by mixing in some white while the black was still wet, and most of the details on the Ender Dragon were dry-brushed for shading, since I didn’t have to actually paint him black to start.

The final touch was to make a wooden sign and then the gang was all done, ready to set aside somewhere safe to dry (and avoid being eaten) until the party.

For more from the party:

Minecraft Loot Bags

Minecraft Birthday Cake

Throwing a Minecraft Party

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More Minecraft fun:

How to make Minecraft Steve and Creeper heads

April 21, 2015
by Jennifer Lori 5 Comments

How to Make Minecraft Lootbags

With Jakob’s 8th birthday coming up, and likely another Minecraft-themed event, I realized I never posted any of the pics I took from Henri’s 6th birthday, also Minecraft-themed, back in January. I hadn’t returned to blogging then, so they obviously weren’t here, but I also never posted them on my Facebook, Instagram or Twitter accounts, which all link to each other.

I figured it would be fitting for an inaugural post to break in the ‘new’ blog, as well as officially link everything all together.

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So. When Henri had told me he wanted a Minecraft party I a) wasn’t surprised, because my house is ALL about Minecraft (I play too, my mansion has a giant working waterslide, thankyouverymuch), and b) wanted to go a little beyond just making a cake. I generally try to tie in the invitations and the lootbags, for example, a pirate-themed party had eye patches and gold hoop earrings and spyglasses. So I went looking around online.

I wasn’t completely sure what I wanted to do for the cake yet, and Henri kept wavering on if he wanted a giant Creeper, or an Ender Dragon, or a giant Creeper covered in smaller Creepers… so I put the cake off until it got closer to actually having to bake it. I decided to start with the loot bags and get them ready and set aside.

There are a LOT of great ideas online. I took a look at them, and went to a few stores to see what was available to me. I ended up getting stuff at my local Dollarama, a grocery store, and Papillon (a Bulk Barn-type store), because 2 of those 3 are in the same mall and I had limited time/desire to run around. I found graphics of the Minecraft inventory items online and knocked them together in Word, putting a frame around them only so I would cut them all out the same size. I have included the graphics at the end of this post, feel free to download them and use them for your own projects!

Putting everything together, here’s what I came up with:

The lava buckets had me running around to a few stores. My local Dollarama had a mixed-pack of mini Jell-O knock-offs, but only half the pack was orange or red. I was really hoping to find red/orange (for lava buckets) and blue raspberry (for water buckets… which I had printed and managed to salvage at a later point). In the end I found Jell-O cups at my grocery store, and used those.

The small plastic zip-top bags that the rest of the treats are in are craft bags from the dollar store too, and even the tape used to affix the images was from there. Gotta love when you can find supplies as inexpensively as possible! 😀

The melon slices are sour gummies from the bulk store.

The fish gummies are also from the bulk store. For all the inexpensive candies I just grabbed a few handfuls and portioned them out evenly once I got home.

The ‘gold bars’ are Hershey’s Gold Nuggets. They’re a little more expensive so I counted those out. (Plus, um, 2 for quality control… in my mouth).

The sticks are pretzel sticks. Surprisingly my dollar store didn’t have any, so I bought them at the bulk place and eyeballed ‘even’ amounts.

I’d been planning to get the cookies at the bulk store, they have the Voortman’s ones that you can buy individually, but I found a pack of chocolate chip cookies at the dollar store so that turned out to be cheaper, and each kid got 2 (only because there weren’t enough for each to get 3 in the pack).Initially I wasn’t certain how to package everything together. Then I remembered these boxes we’d had laying around at work. They’re supposed to open the other way- the short ends. So I ripped the glued sides open and re-taped them up with packing tape (ALSO from the dollar store) so they opened like a chest would. If I’d planned that in advance I’d have made the chest graphic large enough to cover the whole side, and printed the word “chest” for the top. But, in a pinch, this worked.

Everything fit nicely inside and I heard the kids loved their “inventory packs”. If you try this yourself and can’t get ahold of boxes, brown paper lunch bags would be fine, or if you wanted to go EXTRA fancy you could get each child their own actual chest from the dollar store.

You can download and print the above images to make your own. I copy/pasted a bunch onto an Excel spreadsheet so I could fit as many to a page as I needed. The bag graphics were sized at 2″ tall by 1.75″ wide, and the chests were 2.25″ by 3.25″.

yesterday

I turned 35 yesterday.

January 15, 2012
by Jennifer Lori 7 Comments

betty boop cake

Remember back in October I showed a pic of my mom’s birthday cake? And said how I would post more on it later? It’s later!

bettyboopcake

(Today was actually a pretty fun and busy day. I stayed home while Yannick took the kids to swimming, and started cooking the food/making dip/etc for Henri’s 3rd bday party tonight. Once again I only used my camera, not cell phone camera, and don’t have it handy or the pics uploaded. At least this post is about another birthday, and another sweet treat.)

This is the cake my sister Laura and I made for Mom’s 60th birthday.

I made the cake part, then Laura helped to decorate. First I baked 2 (9″?) round cakes, both vanilla but one tinted red. I wanted them a bit more dense than a regular box mix, so while I did use Betty Crocker mixes, I doctored them with less oil and added instant pudding mix. That was on the Thursday before the party (Sunday). On Friday I made a batch of buttercream, leveled the cakes, torted them (sliced them in half widthwise) and iced in between, stacking them, from the bottom up, red, icing, white, icing, red, icing, white. I wanted a white layer as the top so none of the red would show or seep through the top layer of icing, just in case. I then gave a quick crumb-coat over the whole cake.

I had more time that afternoon, so I started decorating. First I took some of my leftover icing and tinted it a pale blue, then set it aside. I rolled out white fondant until I had it almost long enough to go around the cake. It took me 2 strips to go around the width, but I made the seams look like seams in the wood, so you can’t tell.

I dabbed the back of the fondant lightly with a q-tip in water, and pressed onto the sides of the cake, smoothing well to remove any air bubbles. I put the cake in the fridge for a bit to set up.

Once the icing had crusted over I went back over it with the blue icing, mixing the two with my knife as I went, and chopping it up a bit so it looked frothy and bubbly. Then I sat down to do the wood grain.

First I went around the cake, using a sharp knife to score the fondant lightly to look like the individual wood slats. I went around the top edge and made little cuts as if the wood was weathered and beat up. I went around the cake again with a black edible ink marker, randomly making little lines and drawing knots in the wood. Then I used a food-only paintbrush, some water, and some brown icing gel and covered the sides and top completely. First I’d use almost a 100% concentration of gel to go over the score marks, then I’d blend it out with the water, and some gel-tinted water. I made sure to have it darker in some areas, lighter in others, and tried to make it look old and used. The way the water reacts with the fondant leaves it glossy, so it looked like it has been shellacked.

Two black fondant “bars” with silver “nails” finished up the hot tub, and then I used some green icing in a squeeze bottle-thing to individually pipe each and every blade of grass to decorate my dollar-store platter.

Laura came over late that night once she got home from work, and she made Betty Boop’s head while I made the legs, arms and accessories.

The bikini and flip-flops were planned, but the boobs were a last-minute addition ‘cus she didn’t look properly “settled” in the tub without them. 🙂

And that was Mom’s cake. We had made it secretly and Yannick delivered it to the brunch her friends were throwing, and she had no idea it would be there. I heard it was a big surprise, and a big hit. They were almost against cutting into it, but they did, and they ate it, and even saved me a nice, tall slice.

January 13, 2012
by Jennifer Lori 2 Comments

another knitless day

What weather we had today! Freezing rain and snow…luckily after bringing Henri to his 3 year checkup I was able to get him to school and then come home, and not need to drive into town for work. That was a relief! (Plus my belly’s been sore and it gets worse after driving from the push/pull of my leg on the pedals, so any chance to not have to drive was welcome).

Henri’s appointment went great, and he’s still 90th percentile for height and weight, meaning he hasn’t slowed down his growth since…birth? 3 months old? I don’t remember, but he’s been almost off the charts since the beginning. I assume he’ll slow down and meet up with the average standards at some point, but it’s not happening yet! He’s only about 1/2 a pound and 1/2 an inch apart from Jakob, and everyone usually assumes they’re twins, especially since they beg to dress alike.

I spent the day working on fondant decorations for his cake for Sunday, so they’d have a chance to dry out a bit and be more stable by the party. I also made a batch of buttercream icing (so easy and tastes so much better than store-bought!!) and dirty-iced the cake to catch any crumbs before the final decorating tomorrow. Unfortunately I accidentally made the fondant pieces too big for my original plan, but it’s too late to change the cake so I’ll have to come up with a way to make it work.

No pics today ‘cus I have no knitting or weaving progress, I didn’t take any new photos of the kids today, and I’m keeping the cake a surprise until after the party. I’d show you my nails but I’m redoing those tomorrow too.

Hope you had a great Friday the 13th! Ooh- remember the movie Freaky Friday? I just got a flashback of the original one, with Jodie Foster. I must have seen it in the 80’s sometime. I don’t know why it’s reminding me of this, but does anyone but me remember the TV show…what was it called….Rags to Riches? About a guy who adopts like 7 girls, and they’re always singing, like when the blonde one likes a guy she’s mooning at him through a chain-link fence at a park and singing “I Will Follow Him”? I used to love that show!

January 8, 2012
by Jennifer Lori 2 Comments

happy birthday Henri!!

I won’t have time until tomorrow to do the annual chair pics, cus we’ve got our exam in an hour and the boys slept at my parents’. But in the meantime:

Happy 3rd Birthday to one of the cutest, funniest, smartest and most delicious kids around. He’s an amazing son and the best, most caring brother, and every day does something to bring a smile to my face and make me happy to be his mom. I love you Kookooboo.

May 26, 2009
by Jennifer Lori 5 Comments

18, 19, birthday too! plus – pirate fondant cupcake & cake tutorial

Mommy with Henri at 18 weeks old.

Week 18 brought Jakob’s birthday and a fun little party at his school, then a fun little party at my parents’ house since they would be out of town on the day of, then a fun little party (with a trip to the pet store to look at the animals) on his actual birthday. I miss such celebrations for MY birthday! Thanks to Daycare Disease we were all sick around here, and those of you with husbands know there’s nothing more pitiful than a hubby who is sick. When Mommy is sick the world doesn’t stop turning, and every little sniffle isn’t cause to down a bottle of Advil Cold & Sinus…I’m just sayin’. Anyhoo…the colds eased up and just in time, ‘cus week 19 was crazyness around here!

I was busy knitting non-stop for the 2 weeks, but couldn’t show any photos ‘cus my swatches were for submissions to the Winter Twist Collective. I don’t know if I’ll get accepted, but keep your fingers crossed for me!

Once the submissions were in I got down to work on the plans for Jakob’s party this past weekend. We were doing a party for his friends (ok, our friends and family with kids the same age) at a local play area, followed by lunch and dessert here at our place for our close family. That way those without young kids didn’t have to hang around at the kids’ playground, bored.

I whipped up a batch of cupcakes and debated how to decorate them. We’d sent out pirate invitations for Jakob’s party, and my mom had found similarly-themed table cloths, napkins, plates, etc. I knew I wanted to do pirate cupcakes and for a long time the plan was to ice the cupcakes then put some white icing in a bag and pipe a skull & crossbones onto each one. Thank god I talked to my friend Jessa who quickly extolled to me the joys and wonders of working with fondant. I am now a convert!

I picked up some supplies at our local bulk/baking store: 1 box of Wilton’s pure white rolled fondant, 1 box of Wilton’s bright colored rolled fondant (contains a pack each of red, yellow, blue and green), some black gel icing tubes, and a tube of sparkly-yellow gel icing. I took it easy for my first time and stuck with simple techniques.

What do you think?

Pirate Fondant Cupcakes

First I baked the cupcakes and let them cool, then did a crumb coat of thin icing
I iced them properly with chocolate frosting (store bought)
I rolled out some white fondant and cut the circles with a cookie cutter. I placed a white “face” onto each cupcake and smoothed it in place
next I cut green circles with the same cookie cutter, and cut them in half. Using a Q-Tip and a glass of water, I put a bit of water on the back of the green semi-circle and stuck it in place for the bandana. I used the green scraps to make little twists for the bandana ties, held in place with another little dab of water.
the face was drawn freehand with the black gel icing, followed by a quick dot of the sparkle yellow for an earring.

I made 42 of them, and they seemed to be a big hit at the party.

Jakob really enjoyed chowing down on his first of many desserts that day! He blew out his candle by himself and polished off the entire cupcake before getting into the other desserts and fruit.

Henri couldn’t have any dessert so he spent the time hanging out with his uncle Mike. I love this outfit on him- doesn’t he look like he just got back from a round of golf? I swear, he does NOT look like a 4-month-old!

Not our best shot, but here’s one of our little gang.

Mommy with Henri at 19 weeks old.

I’m a few days late for that photo, but we’ll pretend it was taken on Thursday, m’kay?

After the playground we came back to the house to prepare for the onslaught of family (and I mean that in a good way!). There was much (more) food and laughter and meowing from Sam who was locked in the basement. When it was time for dessert (again!) I brought out Jakob’s cake.

I’m so proud of this one! My first official fondant cake, and I LOVE how it came out! It was so much fun and so easy to do! Here’s what I did:

Pirate Fondant Cake

I baked the cake and let it cool, then did a thin crumbcoat. I actually left it in the fridge overnight at this point because I did the cupcakes that night (Friday night). I only decorated the cake on Saturday night (his party was Sunday morning). Before putting it in the fridge I lifted the edge of the cake (I had baked it in a springform pan, so the bottom pan was still under the cake) and put a big dab of icing. When I put the cake back down and pressed lightly the icing acted as a glue to hold the cake in the center of the yellow platter. Once it had been cooled in the fridge over night the cake was going nowhere!
I re-iced the cake giving it a generous coat and making it as smooth as possible. I even used a piece of carton at one point as a smoother.
While the icing set (firmed up a bit) I rolled out a big chunk of the white fondant. My cake was about 9″ in diameter plus 2″ high, so since 9+2+2=13, I rolled out a circle-ish shape about 15″ in each direction. I centered it on the cake and went around slowly, smoothing it into place and easing it gently around the edges.

Next, with a sharp knife, I cut away the excess. Everything I read online said to use a serrated knife, but I used a regular flat one (like a sharp butterknife) and had no problems.

To make the bandana, I did the same think as for the white face, only at just under half the height. I cut a straight edge with the knife then placed it on the cake, dabbing a few edges with the wet Q-Tip to “glue” it in place. Once I had it smoothed nicely I cut away the excess.
Once I knew where the face would go I used a small ball of white fondant to make the nose by squishing it with my fingers into a triangular shape. I glued it in place with some water. I used 2 balls to make the ears and glued them with the water, but since they were raised from the surface of the platter I stuck a small ball of fondant under each ear to support it.
I didn’t have any black fondant and didn’t want to use my gel icing to draw a face on. I ended up making some black fondant by squirting a big dollop of store-bought black icing from a tube into a little ball of white fondant. I kneaded it a lot to mix it all together. Ugh- it was the right color, but incredibly gloppy and slimy. When you work with fondant you use icing sugar instead of flour to flour your surface and rolling pin, so I kept mixing some icing sugar into my black fondant mess until it was a workable texture. Luckily the icing sugar didn’t cause the black to get pale.
I used a cookie cutter for the eyepatch, squashing the top of the circle somewhat to make it flat. I put it in place first, gluing with water. Then I rolled out a long, skinny snake and glued that into place for the band.

I used the same cookie cutter as for the cupcake faces to cut circles from my leftover green and glued them down with water to decorate the bandana. The small circles were cut out with a drinking straw.

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I rolled out a thick rope of the red fondant and made an actual knot with it, then glued it to the side of the bandana, over the ear. I stuck on a few random bits of green so it would look like an actual fabric.
I rolled a thick snake of the yellow fondant and glued it in place around the other ear for an earring. Once it had set I took some of the sparkle gel icing and smoothed it over the earring to add a sparkly, shiny sheen. It took a long time to dry and always remained tacky, so I wouldn’t do that on an area that needed more work.

Small bits of the black and white were used for the face.

I thought I was done, but last-minute I decided to add a skull & crossbones to the eyepatch. I made 2 small white snakes and used the knife to make a cut in the end of each. I pushed the cut open and pinched the middle of each “bone” so they could overlap eachother without having a lot of bulk in the center.
The skull is just a small ball of white formed with my fingers. I indented the eye sockets with the dry end of the Q-Tip I was using to “glue”.

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Finally I decorated 4 cupcakes to go around the cake. I didn’t want to stick a candle in the pirate’s face so I made the cupcakes to say “Happy”, “birthday” and “Jakob”, and added a “nd” next to the “2” candle I stuck in the 3rd cupcake. So all together they said “Happy 2nd birthday Jakob”.

And that’s it! It took me about 2-3 hours from the second coat of icing on the cake to “gluing” the 4 cupcakes onto the platter with dabs of leftover frosting. It was totally easy and a very rewarding experience. Plus a little fondant goes a LONG way, and I have a bunch left over so I am already planning to make more cakes!

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I couldn’t believe Jakob polished off another cupcake, and some fruit, plus a cookie, all after having lunch when we got home after the first party where he’d ALREADY eaten an early lunch and had dessert. No wonder the kid never napped that day! He was wound up on a sugar high and exhausted, but we were so proud of both he and Henri. They were both so well behaved at both parties! Even though there were over 40 adults and 25 kids running around, neither one freaked out or had a meltdown. Jakob was polite and didn’t grab at the food or the toys, and even when sleepy later he just lay on the couch next to us commenting excitedly about his new stuff as we opened his gifts with him. They truly are great kids (ok, I’m biased) and they made us really proud.

Jakob’s other birthday cakes

Jakob’s 1st birthday – printed cake
Jakob’s 2nd birthday – Pirate cake and pirate cupcakes (this post)
Jakob’s 3rd birthday #1 – Smarties Number 3 cake
Jakob’s 3rd birthday #2 – Dinosaur cake
Jakob’s 4th birthday – Pixar’s CARS cake
Jakob’s 6th birthday – Adventure Time cake
Jakob’s 7th birthday #1 – Gunter cupcakes
Jakob’s 7th birthday #2 – Adventure Time Gunter & BMO cakes
Jakob’s 8th birthday – Minecraft Creeper checkerboard cake
Jakob’s 9th birthday #1 – Super Smash Bros Brawl – Ike cake

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