Maura's Birthday Castle

Maura turned five last week. And every little girl deserves a castle on her birthday. I love making castle cakes. They're actually quite simple. This one was three 9 inch layers covered in fondant "blocks" with matching buttercream piped between the fondant. The towers were made out of rice crispy treats. I made these the night before so they would have time to set up before I coated them in a thin layer of buttercream and wrapped them in fondant. The tops if the towers are the standard upside down ice cream cones that I decorated with fondant. The final touch was the flower vines, loved them on the Dragon Castle and I love them on this one too. Hope you like it!

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Lego my Legos Cake

**I have gotten several hits from a reader in the United Kingdom on this particular posting. I can only assume you are planning on recreating this cake. If you would like any help from me you are welcome to email me at cakesbyamybeth@aol.com. I'd be happy to give you some pointers. Have a great day. Amy**






My son, Wil (previously mentioned in the "Luau" post) turned six in August. I can't remember a time when Wil didn't love taking things apart and putting them back together. Puzzels, train sets, forts constructed out of kitchen chairs and blankets, and of course the childhood staple...Legos.

Give my boy a box of the tiny plastic blocks (sorry, I have a horrible habit of unintentional rhyming when I talk, it apparently translates into blogging too. I'm gonna have to watch that). Anyway, let's just say Wil can spend hours playing with Legos. So I wasn't the least bit surprised when he told me he wanted a Lego birthday cake.

The cake is pretty easy to construct. I made two half sheet cakes. And using templates I made out of card board, I cut three different sized blocks with at least two of each size. The individual blocks can be of varying lengths but it is very important to make certain they are all the same height.

Once the "blocks" are covered with fondant you might want to give them a chance to set up then stack them any way you want. I made the "dots" out of fondant using a small round cutter.

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Luau!

I love this cake. It is one of my favorites. Often when I'm trying to determine a design concept for a cake I'll take inspiration from pictures of other peoples' cakes. However, as I'm sure you can imagine, when you Google "pinapple cake" you only get picures of pinapple upside down cakes. With the exception of the occasional Spongbob cake I believe I may be the only person to ever make a pinapple shaped cake.

It all started when I began planning my kids' birthday party. Gracie (turning 7 at the time) and Wil (turning 5) were both born in August. Wil the second and Gracie the twenty-eighth. So my plan that year was to have a joint birthday luau in the middle of the month. Because I didn't want to bake two different cakes (been there, done that) I was trying to come up with a gender nutural tropical cake idea and when "pineapple" came to mind I couldn't not give it a try. The cake itself was pretty simple. Four layers carves into the general shape of a rather large pinapple. When I had the shape right I put light green buttercream on one side of a piping bag and yellow/orange on the other side. I then piped the individual "squares." Once the buttercream had set up I went back with a soft paint brush I painted between the squares with brown food coloring.

Now, on to the hard part. The leaves. It was a nightmare trying to figure out how to get them to stand up. In the end after much trial and error my sister, Thilia and I found a way to hang the leaves upside down and flair them out so they could harden. It was worth every frustrating minute. This was the second time I was completely satisfied with how the cake turned out.




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Becca Recca Crew

My little sister, Becca, is one of my favorite people in the whole world. She starts each and every day with no anger, no disappointment, no bitterness. Every day is fresh and full of possibilities.

To some in this world the only thing they see when they look at my sister is that she was born with a genetic defect. She has Down Syndrome.

Personally, I think she is what the rest of us should aspire to be. She gets mad, but she doesn't stay mad. Holding a grudge is a concept she doesn't understand. Becca has to work so much harder than the rest of us to make even small accomplishments, but it doesn't occur to her to give up. She just keeps on trying.

Last year Becca Recca Crew (my pet name for her and every time I call her that she says, "Amy, I'm Rebecca Lynn" as though I never knew her name and we haven't had the same conversation five hundred times) turned fifteen. When I asked her what kind of cake she would like she told me she wanted a mermaid cake. I can't say that I was surprised. Becca, myself and our sister, Boo, all share a love of Disney's "The Little Mermaid." If you see the three of us together chances are that we have been, or soon will be singing "look at this trough, treasures untold, how many wonders can one cavern hold?" At the end of that song Ariel is singing on a rock with waves crashing all around her.

It's an iconic scene from the movie. And one of our favorite parts of "The Little Mermaid." So I recreated it in cake. It's one of my favs. Obviously Ariel is a doll, but each of the scales were individually applied by hand. The rock and waves are iced in buttercream. The white caps were made using royal icing at a slightly runny consistancy and applied with a soft paint brush.





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Princess Dragon

Our niece, Hannah, will soon be celebrating her fifth birthday. Later this month, for the third year in a row, I will hijack (I say "hijack" because I don't really give Kerrie and Ryan a choice in the matter) the priviledge of designing and creating this precious little girl's birthday cake. As the day of her party approaches I've been trying to figure out how I'm going to improve upon last year's cake specimen.

The Princess Dragon's Castle cake had been in the back of my mind for months prior to Hannah's birthday. I couldn't wait to make it come to life, so to speak. I about drove myself and my very patient husband crazy trying to figure out how I was going to make the castle's torrents. I finally decided to line soup cans with parchment paper and bake the cake batter in them. And it worked. Mostly. Unfortunately, they didn't bake as evenly as I would have liked. Each one ended up being just cone shaped enough that they required adjusting. This ment I would have to cut each one in half and bake four more so I could stack them on top of eachother. After cutting of the corners of the cake to fit the shape of the torrents the fun part started [it's a dang shame sarcasm doesn't easily show through in the typed word]. I cut each and every one of the "bricks" by hand (except for the four or five Ben [my ever supportive spouse] turned out for me. It took me longer to apply the bricks than I would have liked. My original plan called for the roof of the castle to be covered in the fondant tiles, just like the sides. The more work I did on it the less I liked. So I turned it into a rooftop garden. I don't regret the choice.

The best part of the cake, in my opinion (and Hannah's), was the sparkling pink dragon. The picture doesn't do the sparkles justice. She, I think pink definitly says "I'm a girl dragon," was hand shaped out of fondant several days before the cake. This allowed the fondant to firm up.

At the party my husband's eighty-something year old grandmother was admiring the cake (did I mention that I love this woman). She looks over at me and asks, "So, did you bake a sheet cake and use a biscuit cutter to make the round corners? You are so smart and talented. " Oh My Stars! Are you kidding me? You could have knocked me down with a feather. I spent hours working on those stupid things, HOW DID I NOT THINK OF THAT?! Naturally, I just smiled and thanked her.





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Better Late Than Never

Obviously I have been seriously neglecting my blog. Yes, Again. I wish I could claim that my life is so busy, and interesting that I haven't had the time, but that would be misleading. Actually, that would be a flat out lie. My life has been blessedly dull, I just keep puttin' off writing. However, since I can post from my phone, maybe I will do better. Now, on to the cakes.

In case you've been living in a cave you know that football season is upon us. Apparently, at least for me, that means a lot of football themed cakes.





















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Savannah!

Our dearest friends, the Hallock family, drove all the from Kansas to spend a few days with us in central Alabama. I had been promising Savannah that I would make her a cake. Apparently, getting a "Cake by AmyBeth" was a big deal to this precocious little girl. Naturally, I had to oblige. I originally intended to cover the cake in white fondant, rather than buttercream, but due to time constraints I eighty-sixed that idea. In the end only the flowers, stems and leaves, and "dots" are made of MM fondant. The best part for me was that Savannah got to help make the decorations for her cake. Personally, I think she's a natural and I can't wait until her family moves to the Heart of Dixie so I can recruit Vannah to be my sous chef!