My very first cake order!!

So one of my friends asked me to make a cake for her sons 9th birthday (yeah yeah I know it's not a real 'order' if it's coming from a friend - but I'm ignoring that fact lol!!). Apparently he's obsessed with Pokemon so naturally the cake was a Pokemon themed cake. His favorite character is Arceus, but after looking at how detailed Arceus is I decided to make life easier on myself by ordering an edible image to put on the side of the cake.

 The Pokeball was surprisingly easy to make. I ordered the Fat Daddio's 5" hemisphere pan. I was a little apprehensive about using it, when I looked online there were a lot of mixed reviews about it being difficult to use and the cake not cooking properly etc.
I took all the reviews on board and this is how I made the ball: First I used my chocolate cake recipe as a tester. I sprayed the pan well with cooking spray then used my silicone pastry brush to make sure the entire pan was evenly covered, then I also floured the pan. The pan has a rounded bottom which a lot of people had a lot of trouble with - I just sat the pan inside one of my oven-safe ramekins and had no problems!
The chocolate cake recipe says to bake at 175 for about 35 minutes, instead I reduced the temperature to 160C and baked for about 50 minutes. I also placed a pan of water in the bottom of the oven.
I found I needed to fill the pan nearly to the top - there was probably only about 1cm gap between the batter and the top of the pan but the cake didn't overflow, it rose just above the edge of the pan and was perfect for leveling once it had cooled.
I found it easiest to put the two halves together, ganache the entire ball and then cover each half in fondant seperately (I cut a small bit off the bottom of the ball so it had a flat base to sit on). I covered the white side first by placing the ganached ball upside down in a bowl and cutting off the fondant at the half way mark (that was easy enough to measure out since I knew the ball was 5" tall). I then cut a circle out where the cardboard base was on the ball (yes, initially I covered the cardboard base up - I found this worked easiest!). I then turned back the right way around and did the same with the red fondant. The seam where the two fondants met was covered by the black ribbon.

I did the Pokemon logo by printing it out on my computer, cutting each letter out and sticking to my fondant with shortening, then tracing out with my Xacto knife. I used the same technique for the Happy Birthday message on the bottom and the lightning bolts.

For the lightning bolts I used 22guage floral wire so that they looked like they were shooting out from the cake. I let the lightning bolts dry for a couple of days before I heated up the wires and inserted them into the lightning bolts.

I used a dowel+cardboard base support system so the weight of the Pokeball wouldnt squash the cake and covered a masonite cake board in fondant for the first time.

I was extremely happy with how this cake turned out and looking forward to a couple more orders I've received as a result!!

Baby Z's 1st Birthday Cake

So I thought I'd do a little post on the cake I made for Baby Z's birthday party. At first I was contemplating doing another fondant covered cake, maybe a ruffle cake like this:

Beautiful ruffle cake by It's A Cake Thing

But then I decided I wanted to make a smash cake to go along with the main birthday cake. I'm sure you've all seen the adorable photos of babies with their own little smash cakes, well I wanted to join the craze, BUT I had this crazy idea in my head of incorporating the smash cake into the main cake as the top tier. I hadn't really seen this before, most smash cakes I've seen are separate cakes next to the main cake.

Well this complicated the logistics for making the cake somewhat. In order to create the best effect and 'photo op', smash cakes should be covered just in buttercream, not fondant. If I was going to use the smash cake as the top tier then the entire cake really needed to be buttercream, otherwise it wouldn't look right (well, I couldn't think of two designs I wanted to do that would work together, there are a lot of other people out there who have successfully incorporated the two styles though!). Then I decided that I needed more practice doing buttercream covered cakes anyway and this would be a perfect opportunity.

So then I was looking at these gorgeous rosette cakes:

This gorgeous Rosette cake is actually a fake cake for sale on Etsy!! Isn't that bizarre?! Lol

BUT then I didn't like any of the two tier examples I saw AND couldn't get other the fact that it looked much prettier in pink :(
So then I came across this beautiful pastel swirl cake from one of my bloggy idols, Sweetapolita, and fell in love...

Aww isn't it so sweet??!

I also used my fail-safe eggless chocolate cake for no reason other than the fact that I was craving chocolate and thought it would look pretty layered with the buttercream once smashed all over the floor hehe.

So there you have it, Baby Z's 1st Birthday cake: