The first cake I made for the course was Jake's birthday cake. Now, before I share a picture, let me just defend myself by saying that first of all, I really wanted to incorporate everything we had learned so far into making the cake, and also, it was very close to Easter, and spring, so I was in a very pastel-y mood.
Paige, my roommate, immediately started laughing, and making fun of me, saying it looked like a baby shower cake someone would have given Jake's mother 19-and-a-half years ago, and that she could not believe I made that cake for him.
However, once Jake cut the cake, and everyone had a slice and determined it was delicious, they got over it.
Meanwhile, look at all the different techniques! Tip 5
Anyway, what I want to talk about here is a technique called pattern transfer. It involves finding an image or pattern that you want to use, tracing it with clear piping gel from a decorating bag on parchment paper, then inverting the parchment paper with piping gel onto an iced cake, causing the piping gel pattern to appear on the cake.
So, one day in April, I decided that I wanted to make a ninja cake. A cake with a ninja on it, because what would be more epic than that? I started by looking for a ninja picture on the internet, and then printed it out.
After that, I baked and iced my cake with buttercream frosting (I used the recipe given to be from my cake decorating instructor, which can also be found on the Wilton website). Then, I fitted a plastic decorating bag
Then I used a decorating bag, filled with black icing and fitted with a coupler and star tip
Then, using the star tip, I filled in the ninja outline. And then I used a tip 1 and orange buttercream icing to outline the sword so it looked like it was glowing. What kind of ninja wouldn't have a glowing sword?
At this point, it was very late at night. Between baking and icing the original cake, making the black frosting (where I started with chocolate, then painstakingly mixed in black black gel icing color until it finally turned black), and my usual ADD, I had already spent a few hours on this cake, and it was almost 1 AM. Anyway, it was at this point I was going to "color in" the ninja's face
Of course I had to label it "zombie ninja," because otherwise, I'm pretty sure no one else would have any idea what it was supposed to be.
I also added a blue shell border around the bottom of the cake, and then decided I had leftover green icing and that the obvious solution to using this up was to play with my new leaf tip
In that last picture, he actually looks a lot like a zombie in scuba gear, don't you think? Scuba-diving zombie? I'm guessing the ocean blue icing and the random plants help that image.
I have a Ninjacake album uploaded on facebook, if you're interested in seeing more pictures, captions included.
Mira