great to be 8!

my cousins turned 8 in march and my aunt so kindly asked me to make them a birthday cake!!! i was SOOO excited because i hadn't ever decorated a real cake for an event ever before! i did research starting like 3 weeks before and bought some books and tried out recipes and sketched designs! i had so much fun preparing to make them a cake!
their favorite colors are blue and orange and they love basketball, golf, poker (haha, i know, i know!), soccer, and playing wii! my aunt wanted to incorporate all these things into the cake. i knew i wanted to paint a mural on the bottom layer and also mold some things out of chocolate modelling clay! so i just started designing and came up with my final idea, which you will see below!

below are some chocolate modelling clay poker chips and some golf balls made with rice crispy treats and covered in modelling chocolate. the poker chips are just painted with lemon extract mixed with powder food color.

this part was super fun to do! i definately wanted to sculpt something and the wii remote was perfect cause it wasn't too complicated but still a little challenging. i used rice cripy treats to make the shape and then i covered them with the chocolate clay. i did get a bit frustrated with these because as you smooth out the chocolate it gets warm and melts on your fingers...so basically by trying to smooth it out you actually make it rougher! haha...but i eventually got them pretty smooth and just had to move on! i painted the details the same as i did the poker chips.

ok so before i move on with the process i have to tell a hilarious story.....basically for this cake i was focusing on the decorating and making it look decent. we didn't try to bake a homemade delicious cake or anything, just used a good ol' box! because seriously if you knew how many times you would have to double a normal cake recipe to fill my pans you would die. the bottom layer took us 4 chocolate cake mixes and the top one took us 3 vanilla mixes! these cakes were HUGE and extremely heavy! but back to the main story...we accidentally filled the vanilla cake too high and it overflowed in the oven!...it was a total flop so we had to bake a new one the next morning. well, we didn't even think about the fact that there was cake all over the bottom of the oven and when we preheated it in preparation to bake the new cake it STARTED ON FIRE! ha!!! we were screaming and jumpin around cause we didn't know what to do, but thankfully my uncle came to the rescue and put it out for us so we could just keep workin! : )

here are some pics leading up to the final cake! : )

rolling the fondant

starting the mural

painting a cake is hard because the food colors run and bleed! i got a lot of practice on this cake though because there were so many precise lines.

the bottom layer complete with its background color

a view of the other side of the mural

the final cake!...i love this picture because with my cousins' big birthday gift sacks behind it it looks so festive! haha

my super cute cousins hunter and jackson! : )

just some other views of the cake:

so...all in all i think the cake was a success! : ) i was really happy with how it turned out and i also had soooo much fun working on it! me, my aunt, and my cousins had some awesome adventures through this process and i would say we all learned at least on new thing about cake! i started the cake on a friday night and worked all day saturday for the most part and then i stayed up until 7 sunday morning. i probably couldn't have gotten through that night without my cousin Baylee who stayed up to keep me company or without the endless supply of dr. pepper my aunt and uncle so kindly provided! : ) at 7 me and Bay took a 2 hour nap and i finished up the cake from 9 until 1, an hour before the birthday party began! ha! i had so much fun on this cake! and seeing my cousins have so much fun eating the goodies and helping me make poker chips made it even better! i will be doing a cake for their baptism pretty soon and i cannot wait! : ) we are going to have so many more adventures.