Posted on December 8, 2008
Filed Under Birthday cakes
Lexi turned 6 yesterday. The big 6. She’s got a loose tooth and she starts Kindergarten in March, then 1st grade next Fall. Life is pretty exciting for her right now.
See?…
Actually, what she’s exclaiming about here is the mini kitchen set that she got from her cousin Krista. I think we’ll have a kid’s cooking post coming up soon… she’s anxious to try it out. It IS really cute.
And here is her birthday cake:
It was an attempt to match her hat, gloves, scarf, and boots. She gets all excited every time it snows, even though we haven’t had much yet. The colors didn’t exactly match, but it was obvious at what I was trying for.
Especially because I had her put on her snow stuff for the picture:
The base is an ice cream cake, covered with Cool Whip. I was trying to copy the cakes that Dairy Queen makes, you know, with vanilla ice cream and chocolate ice cream layered on either side of that to-die-for fudgy layer. If I’d do it over, I’d get regular vanilla instead of French vanilla because I think it’s whiter.
I lined a 9×13 pan with plastic wrap (so it would turn out onto a tray easier), then put a 1/2 gallon of vanilla ice cream in, then a layer of crushed Oreos, then about 2 jars of Smuckers hot fudge topping, then a 1/2 gallon of chocolate ice cream, then froze it for awhile, then turned it out onto a tray, then covered the top and sides with Cool Whip.
And now for the fun part! ????
The things on top are just carved out of a baked 9×13 chocolate cake, then covered with fondant (a roll-out icing). The gloves got carved to about half that size… they wouldn’t have fit on the cake being that big.
The scarf shows the fondant process the best. To make stripes, the fondant (which is pure white) is tinted different colors, then rolled into ‘sticks’, lined up against each other, and rolled out flat…
The fondant is soft and pliable, but dries out pretty fast, so it was pretty easy to get a the-scarf-was-just-thrown-over-there look by lifting up one edge and putting a ball of tin foil under it and then flipping the other end over. Then, instead of covering it, I let it out to dry and it hardened in that shape. The fringes were piped on later.
Here is a progress picture and then the finished product. It was fun to make and I learned alot about using fondant! One main thing is that it you need to keep it tightly covered because as soon as it dries out even a little, it breaks instead of bends. I do think I’ll use it more often though. It’s fun! 
The only other time I used it was 5 years ago to cover the building blocks on Lexi’s 1st birthday cake. But that time I bought it and just let it white, no tinting it.
If you see that jar of jelly in the foreground, they say fondant holds to the cake better if you spread jelly on the cake first.
Oh, one thing I forgot to mention was the snowflakes… I melted white chips and then piped snowflakes onto plastic wrap on a cookie sheet and chilled them till they were hard, then placed them on the cake. They were fun for the kids to pick off and pop into their mouths.
Enjoy the snow if you have some! We’ve got a little bit on the ground here.
Comments
19 Responses to “Let it Snow! – Happy 6th Birthday, Lexi!”
YOU, my lady, are absolutely unreal!! Want to start a business? My girls are just in awe of this cake and I agree, it is just completely cute!!
You are completely totally amazing and I am standing in complete awe!!! Wow! I agree with Shannon- you really should start a business.
You are so much more a better mother than me! I don’t think I would have had the patience for that. You did an amazing job!!! Pat yourself on the back. I would have had to framed the cake…ba haaaaa….NO TOUCHY!!!
It’s ever so cute!
wow. that is really neat!
Impressive! Really really cute.
WOW! looks cute, May I ask how long it took you??
That is a beautiful cake and Lexi should certainly appreciate the time and effort that went into it…although she probably won’t appreciate it fully till her little girl wants her to make a cake that is so tough. I can guarantee you this…if I had tried it, it wouldn’t look 1/2 that nice. Great job!
Brooklyn wants a cake like that for her 5th B-day. There you have your fisrt order!
It is beautiful!! Btw, her b-day is in March
You did a great job. I am not a decorator at all, so it looks extra hard, I do love to bake.
Wow! great job on the cake, it is so cool!
Neat cake! You are one creative Mom! I love spending a little extra time to make special cakes too. That fondant looks a little complicated, but maybe I should try it sometime. Can you still eat it after it hardens? Why does it look shiny? And HOW did you make the pom pom on the hat?
I’m going to answer some questions on here, and thanks for all your nice comments.
Shannon, no, I don’t want to start a business, I’d have to charge too much to make it pay. ????
Charlene, I didn’t time how long it took (thankfully!), but at least 5 hours, I’d say. *gasp* Oh well, I won’t start justifying it. At least it’s fun.
Sharon, yeah, the fondant is a bit complicated, BUT yeah, you should try it sometime. ???? Yeah, you can eat it, it doesn’t get rock hard. It’s made out of egg whites, light corn syrup, and powdered sugar (I guess I didn’t post the recipe). Mixing in the color takes FOREVER, but with kneading it so much, it gets soft and pliable (that’s how you mix the food coloring in, by kneading it). The shiny part was because of a mistake on my part… I found out that fondant and freezing does not mix! After I took it out of the freezer at partytime, it got shiny, then the colors started running! Ack! But it had to be frozen because the base was ice cream. So, I will never put fondant and ice cream cake together again. For the pom-pom, I put a chocolate covered cherry on top of the hat (you can see it on the one progress picture before it’s covered), then piped little dots all over it. Should’ve made all the dots pink, not sure what I was thinking because Lexi’s pom-pom has no brown in it!
WOW! how cool. You are amazing. I have only made a few cakes for my kids. The ice cream cake i made for our oldest looked a lot like yours, but i only put cool whip right on top and put a space shuttle candle and space candles on it. Very easy compared to yours. I would love to play around with the fondant, i may need to come up with a idea to use it. I love your cooking ideas.
Glad I could personally see and taste the cake. Thanks for the snack. Lexi looks so happy. We thought about her on Sunday.
GREAT cake! I would not attempt something like that. Looks great. What a great mom!
Very, very cool cake!
Wow! you went to a lot of work. Your Lexi better appreciate you. That is absolutely adorable! Bet it was positively yummy too. There’s that word again ‘yummy’ lol
That’s an adorable idea!!! The fondant looks like so much fun. I’ve wanted to play with it, but just haven’t done it, yet.