The Barbie Bride Cake

I made this cake for my niece's bridal shower. This was my first attempt at using fondant, and it wasn't too bad. I had purchased a box of premade fondant at Michael's - Wilton, I believe. Other than it tastes like crap, it made a beautiful cake. I have a recipe for marshmallow fondant and plan to try that whenever life allows a little more time.

I will note that the actual cake was horrible. I used a marble pound cake recipe to give it a little more support for the fondant, and due to the cooking time needed for the Pampered Chef pyrex mixing bowl, the cake was a little too done. I will stick with my old recipes from now on.

The "how to" on this one.
I made the pound cake in the Pampered Chef pyrex mixing bowl. It had to cook for almost 1.5 hours, plus cooling time which was a long time. I crumbcoated with store bought vanilla icing.

I rolled the fondant larger than needed and placed over the iced cake, draping the bottom to look like folds in the dress. I did have to cut some pieces at the bottom to make it lay better. I then used an apple corer to remove the center of the cake so that I could place the Barbie. I used a real Barbie because I lucked up and found an actual bride barbie. She was wrapped tightly in Saran wrap. She was sporting a bouquet and bling on her left hand. ;oP

I used a #106 flower tip with the store bought vanilla icing and made the flowers on the fondant. The centers of the flowers were pearlized sprinkles. I "painted" the dress in an iridescent pearl dust mixed with a little vodka. The flower centers were painted with a pink pearl dust mixed with vodka to give them a little punch. I also did a horrible job on the waistline on the cake. It was about 1 a.m. when I got to this part, so I got a little shotty with my work. I should have made it prettier, but I broke down and rolled strips of fondant and wrapped her waist in fondant. I then painted this fondant with the pink pearl dust as well.

The back of the cake (see pic on bottom) was a replica of the back of my niece's dress with the pearl "buttons" all the way down to the train.

All in all, it was a relatively simple cake to make. I personally think it turned out beautifully. I was very proud of myself. With the flowers on the cake board, it made for pretty pics too.

The Wine Box Cake

This was another cake I threw together. I will say a quick disclaimer that I truly hope that when my then 2 yo boy grows up a bit that I can spend more time on these cakes. He had to "help" with this one; hence the steak bottle appearance of the wine bottle. I used an actual wine bottle to carve the cake and had it rounded nicely like a bottle. My then 2 yo came up behind me, and pushed the bottle on the cake, squishing it to oblivion. I had no time or other option than to serve the wine bottle as a steak bottle looking thing! :)

Here's the powerpoint clip art rendition that I used to build the cake. Not too shabby when you compare to the real thing.


A view from the top. I used toasted coconut as the straw. I mixed chocolate and vanilla icing to make the wood grain look on the box.


The "nails" in the box were chocolate chips.


Very easy cake to make and decorate. For the box, I stacked two 9x13 cakes and cut out a recess in the top one. Crumbcoated the entire thing, then iced with the chocolate/vanilla mixture for the woodgrain look. The wine bottle was another 9x13 cake that was sculpted into the shape. Tinted chocolate icing with black to get the black bottle color, and used yellow to trim it up.