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How To Make Ollie the Octopus

Oliver

I was recently asked how to make Ollie the Octopus. Actually, it wasn’t that recently, I just fell off the face of the earth for a little while. I hope it’s not too late!

ball_cake
Ollie actually isn’t too hard to make. The secret is having the right pan. I rarely use shaped pans, but my exception is that I bought the Wilton Ball Pan and it in fact has come in quite handy. Basically you just bake up each half of the ball pan, throw a little icing in between, slap them together, and give it a nice once over with the frosting.I also cut a little off the bottom to create a flat surface for the cake to sit on.

fondant_ball

I then used a light blue, slightly marbled fondant to cover the ball. My fondant is marbled partially because it looks cool and partially because I got tired of kneading in color. And just in case you were wondering, the ball part becomes the head.

round_cake

fondant_covered

The base of the cake is what Ollie sits on. For this particular cake, it’s just a round, two layer, 9″ diameter cake. It’s frosted the same way as the ball.

support

Then, it’s just a matter of putting the two cakes together. I use plastic straws to support the ball cake so it doesn’t sink into the round cake. A wooden dowel just ensures it all stays together. And this is when I stopped taking pictures of every step…

tentacles

The eight legs of the octopus are just large pieces of fondant, rolled to a tapered end and stuck to the cake using water. The little suction cups are just small pieces of different colored fondant rolled into discs with an imprint in the center made using a dowel.

bowtie

Since Ollie was going to Christmas dinner, I figured I should dress him up a bit. He got a fondant bow tie and a little Santa hat. His eyes and mouth are also just made of rolled fondant.

And that’s it! Ollie is cute and festive and enjoying the holiday seasons. He’s actually not all that complicated to make. Hope this helps!

Guitar Cake

guitar_cake

Sorry about the delay in posting. But now we’re currently buried under like a foot and half of snow and since there’s nowhere to go, might as well finally get off my lazy butt and write this up.

So. Guitar cake. It’s rockin’. For real. This cake plays music. In fact, it plays “Freebird”. Check it out.

I started by baking two 9×13 vanilla cakes. I found a profile of a Gibson Les Paul which I cut out to make a template for the body of the cake. Using that I traced out the right shape.

stencil

cut_out

I had to use some of judgment to get the entire shape correct. I sort of guesstimated on the shape of the head and the length of the neck.

cake_shape

After I cut out the shape, I went about adding the electrical components that make the cake play music. Just like the boxing gloves cake, I used a musical greeting card for the music.

card

I wired up the musical insert of the card to a switch. This time the switch was embedded in the cake though, so I had to make a little box for it to sit in. I used a straw as a conduit for the wiring.

switch_box

After I got all of the wiring hooked up, I put on a layer of vanilla buttercreme icing. Then I forgot to continue taking pictures through the rest of the decorating.

iced

I used red fondant to cover the body of the cake and black fondant for the neck. The accents were all done using fondant pieces and the gold parts were painted with an edible gold glaze. I spent a long time trying to figure out how to do the strings, but I ended up using this silver, elastic, thread from the craft store.

neck

The gigantic rocker switch is what makes the music play.

body

And that’s about it! Easy-peasy…

Boxing Gloves Cake

finished_product

Cake. Haven’t made one in a while. So it was a real treat when I was asked to make some boxing gloves for a birthday cake. This cake was made for a little boy’s second birthday. He’s a big fan of boxing. And Rocky. I mean, who isn’t? I actually love Rocky. I love Rocky so much that I watched all 5 (before there was that 6th one) in row. Like in one sitting. Ok, to be fair, I was on a bus from Haverhill to Washington D.C. and it wasn’t so much a choice as the result of lobbying by a bus full of boys, but by the end I was hooked.

This cake has a little something special though. It plays music! Yup, see that bell up there? When you press the center button, “Gonna Fly Now” (the theme from Rocky) plays. It’s pretty sweet. And I’m going to show you how I do it.

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Pumpkin Cupcakes

cupcakes_with_pumpkins

It’s pumpkin season! Pumpkin pie, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin lattes (if you like that sorta thing)!

Turns out these cupcakes aren’t pumpkin flavored, just pumpkin looking. I made them for Kathryn Hill’s son’s birthday. It was awesome. Pumpkin painting, giant apples, and the Not So Chilly Hilly Chili. I can’t say I’ve been to a 2-year old’s birthday party in a while, but I had a darn good time. Also, nothing beats watching a 2-year old shove an entire cupcake into her mouth at once. I almost fell out of my seat at the sight of that.

Also, full disclosure, these pumpkin cupcakes were Kathryn’s idea too. I just implemented them. They came out cute as can be and made my kitchen a lovely orange sight. And I LOVE orange!

sugar

These cupcakes aren’t too difficult to make. If you use enough sugar, it’ll cover a lot of your mistakes. Easy peasy.

I first just whipped up my favorite cupcake recipe and icing. Whatever works for you should be fine. A little bit sturdier icing will help when making the leaves for the pumpkins though. I used orange gel food coloring to make orange icing. I set a small bowl of icing aside before dyeing it orange to dye green for the leaves.

After your cupcakes have cooled (make sure they have cooled! Hot cupcakes + icing = big mess), top the cupcakes with icing. It doesn’t have to be neat, it doesn’t have to be pretty, it just has to be sufficient.

jimmies

Once your cupcakes are covered, pour out some jimmies, sanding sugar, sugar crystals, sugar pumpkins…whatever floats your boat into a small bowl. Dip each cupcake, icing side down into the sugar until it is sufficiently covered. I went a little crazy and picked up pretty much every orange sugar topping I could find and made a variety of different cupcakes.

pretzels

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Daisy Cake

DSCN1305

So it may seem as though I’ve fallen off the face of the earth. I didn’t. I just fell off the face off this blog. It’s been a busy few weeks which I may or may not have mentioned a whole bunch before. Honestly, I’ve just been too tired to bake. But, I’m back! And I’ve baked!

I’ve made this delightfully season-inappropriate cake for our our admin at work. She’s the best. She makes everything work around here. And it’s her birthday! Actually, her birthday was on Saturday, but none of us realized until Friday, so we’re a bit belated.

The cake is a bit spring-y, even though we’re rounding the corner to fall in these parts, but it’s a concept I’ve been wanting to try for a while. I think it came out pretty well if I do say so myself and wasn’t terribly complicated to make.

daisy

I started out making some gumpaste daisies. Basically, you just have to roll out the gumpaste really thin and use a daisy shaped cutter. I got bought one of these gumpaste flower kits which shows you how to make a variety of different ones. I roll out my gum paste on a silpat mat.

rolling_out

The flowers are pretty small though, so you use a little wooden stick to sort of flatten out the blossoms a bit. The kit comes with a piece of foam to do it on which allows you to do this without the gum paste sticking to the surface. Each daisy is made up of two flower cutouts plus a little yellow circle for the center.

daisies

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Cookie Monster Cupcakes

So…I have a friend from college. He has a friend in New York. That friend in New York is dating this girl. Turns out I went to high school with that girl. What a small world.

Of course, you are probably wondering why you should care that a friend of a friend is dating another friend. Well, you probably shouldn’t. But what you should care about is that the friend of a friend wanted some Cookie Monster cupcakes. Which means, I can show you lovely people just how easy they are to make.

First, bake up your favorite batch of cupcakes.

cupcakes

Whip up some icing. I generally use some sort of variation on the Wilton Buttercreme recipe. The friend of the friend really wanted chocolate icing, so I added some cocoa powder and was ready to go. Pipe the icing onto the cupcakes generously. It doesn’t matter how pretty it looks because you are going to cover up your icing job.

icing

Next you’re just going to dip the iced cupcakes into a bowl of blue jimmies (yeah, I’m from MA, sprinkles, whatever). You could either get the multi-colored sprinkles and siphon out the colors you want (don’t do that), or you could stop by your local cake store and pick out the specific colors you want.

jimmies

The last step is how to make our blue cupcakes into Cookie Monster. Using some white icing, pipe on two circles for eyes. Then, either using black icing, candy, dragees, or something else, give him some eyeballs. The final step is just pushing in a small cookie where his mouth should be. I use Mini Chips Ahoy cookies, because I’m generally too pressed for time to make my own. But nothing’s stopping ya.

cookie_monster

Voila! Now you have a fun, easy, and tasty version of Cookie Monster (who I hear nowadays eats vegetables on Sesame Street, something seems wrong about that…).

How to Make a Crab Cake…But Not a Crab Cake

shiny_crab no_crab

If you’re looking for that savory, Maryland crab cake, you’re in the wrong place. It’s confusing, I know. But I honestly can’t think of another good way to describe this cake. It’s a cake. That looks like a crab. It’s a crab cake. Oh, I guess I could say, “cake that looks like a crab”, but really, that’s just too many words.

Ok…onto the cake making. People usually wonder how I make my shaped cakes. Do I have special pans? Do I use templates? Do I make a 3D computer model of it before I make the cake?

Well, the answer to those questions is no, no, and no, but I’ll show you the method to my madness.

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How To Make Ollie the Octopus

Guitar Cake

Boxing Gloves Cake

Pumpkin Cupcakes

Daisy Cake

How to Make a Crab Cake…But Not a Crab Cake

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