Texas Hold ‘em Cake

Some friends of ours were having a summer picnic and a Texas Hold ‘em game, (yes I am slightly behind in my posts).  I was asked to bring a cake and decided to make a small poker table. 

I started with a round cake and cut the sides to make a six-sided table.  The cake was frosted with green buttercream frosting, and black fondant around the edges of the cake. I used square pillars with a Wilton cake plate under the cake and covered the pillars with black fondant to look like table legs.

The playing cards and poker chips are made of fondant and I used fine tip edible markers to draw the cards.   The fun part was deciding the how the hand was going to play out.  Even Doug got involved in helping with this part.  Can you tell which hand wins?

The not so fun part of this cake was the fact that it was WAY too hot for fondant.  I used a brand of fondant that didn’t hold up well in the heat and it was melting pretty bad.  Now I know some people don’t put their cakes in the refrigerator, but I always do and 99% of the time I don’t have a problem.  Plus with this soft fondant I wanted to try to firm it up a bit.  But it was so hot and humid that when I took the cake out it literally started dripping black liquid!  I set it up between two fans and dabbed off some of the moisture.  The texture you see on the black was from me dabbing with a paper towel.  The funny thing is, everyone kept asking “how did you make it look like leather?”  I just said “bake on a hot summer day!”

African Violet Cake

I had seen this cake on Pinterest and thought it was the cutest thing. So when Administrative Professional’s Day came up I immediately thought this would be a cute little cake to make. 

The cake was made using a 4” round cake pan, covered with fondant.  The “soil” was crushed Oreo's.  The flowers and leaves were simple fondant cut outs. 

Dinosaur Cake

Every year I donate a cake to a silent auction for our local food bank.  Last year’s winner wanted a dinosaur cake for her 3 year old son Ian who loves dinosaurs.

The dinosaurs were made from chocolate lollipop molds.  I used gumpaste to make large leaves for the trees, and when they were dry I attached them to pretzel rods with melted chocolate.  I actually found the large chocolate boulders at the grocery store a few months earlier and said to myself “I need to remember those, they look like real rocks!”  I think they look much better than if I had tried to make boulders from fondant.  Plus they’re chocolate!  Some chocolate covered bridge mix and buttercream leaves were the final touches.

Happy Birthday Ian!

Star Wars

A simple Star Wars cake.  Buttercream with fondant accents.