Archive for the ‘Cooking and Baking’ Category

Back-to-School Pencil Cake

Wednesday, August 31st, 2016

back-to-school-pencil-cake

Why not make this fun back-to-school pencil cake? It’s super easy to make, and eating cake will make the beginning of the school year all the sweeter.

First you will want to bake a rectangular cake. We made ours chocolate, and we used a boxed cake mix. You will want three vanilla icing containers. (We used two, but it would have been easier with three.)

Dump two icing containers into a larger bowl and stir yellow food coloring into it until you get the right color of yellow. You might want to grab a pencil and place it next to your icing so you can compare the shade of yellow to the real pencil.

Divide the third icing container into three bowls: one will be pink, one tan, and one gray. You can buy black food coloring in a cake aisle of a craft store. Create the gray color by adding black food coloring to white frosting. The pink can be created with red food coloring. What I did for the tan was to place some chocolate icing into the white icing, since I had left-over chocolate frosting from a different project. If you don’t, you can use any food coloring until you get the right shade of tan.

pencil-eraser-cake

We cut the rectangle cake in half, and those halves in half. If the cake is horizontal, make your cuts vertical. (You are cutting short pieces, not the long way.)

Lay your pieces of cake on some cardboard lined with foil. (I used packing tape to connect two pieces of cardboard on the back.) Make a point on one end of your pencil cake by making one end look like a triangle.

sharpened-pencil-cake

Now you are ready to frost the cake. I stared with the back of the pencil. I frosted the eraser pink. Then I frosted the metal part of the pencil gray. The remainder of the pencil is yellow, except for the tip, which is tan. I used a Hershey’s chocolate kiss for the point of the pencil.

back-to-school-cake

Your pencil cake is complete! Have fun celebrating at a back-to-school party!

Shield Cake

Monday, April 11th, 2016

shield-cake

Instead of cooking a medieval feast as a culminating activity for a medieval unit study, why not bake this simple shield cake? You can have fun creating a coat of arms with candy on the top of the cake.

Begin by baking a rectangular cake, preferably chocolate. Cut one end of the cake into a triangular point. Then tape some foil to a piece of cardboard that is larger than the cake. Upend the cake onto the prepared foil.

Grab two tubs of white frosting, and tint one of them to be the background color for the shield. You can choose any color you want. Frost the entire cake, including the sides.

decorating-shield-cake

Now comes the fun part. Divide the second tub of frosting into different bowls, tinting them whatever colors you want to create your coat of arms, dragon, cross, or any other shape. Place the tinted frosting in a plastic Ziplock bag and snip off the corner. Draw whatever you want with the tinted frosting.

We used white frosting to frame the outline of the shield. We also outlined a Peppermint Patty and drew a cross in the center of it. You can now use whatever candy you want to embellish your shield cake. We used colorful M&M’s to go around the entire cake.

Now enjoy eating your medieval shield cake!

Star Wars Cake

Monday, December 14th, 2015

star-wars-cake

For my son Stephen’s 14th birthday, I made him a Star Wars cake–or to be more precise, a Darth Vader cake! I started with a simple rectangular cake. I baked it the previous day and cooled it overnight in the refrigerator.

I googled “Darth Vader” and tried to find a simple silhouette of his head so that I could cut out the shape with a knife. I cut the cake little by little until it was the perfect shape of Darth Vader’s head.

I found a piece of cardboard in the recycle bin in my garage, and I cut it slightly larger than the cake. I taped foil to the cardboard to make a base for the Darth Vader cake.

Next I grabbed the chocolate frosting. Since I didn’t want a black cake, I thought brown would be fine. I opened the frosting container and frosted the entire cake, including the sides.

Finally, I used a tube of black frosting to outline the details of Darth Vader’s face. First I outlined the outside of the cake. Then I did the forehead and eyes. Last, I did the mouth. My husband proclaimed that this Star Wars cake was one of my best cakes of all time!

princess-leia

We decorated the dining room table by throwing a dark blue sheet over it. Next we crossed two toy light sabers in the middle of the table. Last, we scattered star confetti and Star Wars paper chain links that we got at a party supply store.

While watching a movie marathon of Star Wars movies on DVD, I braided my daughter’s hair like Princess Leia. She looks so cute, don’t you think?

Alien Spaceship Cake

Monday, May 12th, 2014

alien-spaceship-cakeMy 8-year-old son invented this alien spaceship cake for a Cub Scout cake contest years ago. He won first place! Here is the story of how this cake was made:

My son wanted to make a cake in the shape of the planet Saturn. We brainstormed how we could possibly do this, when I thought of baking half the cake in a glass Pyrex bowl. This would be the round top part of the planet, and a round cake would be the rings of Saturn. We baked the cakes and placed them into the fridge overnight before frosting.

The next day when we opened the fridge, my son saw the cake and thought it looked like an alien spaceship! So he decided to make an alien spaceship cake instead of the planet Saturn.

He frosted the bottom cake purple and the top part yellow. He made a light blue front window, which he outlined with black icing gel. Then he went to town adding candy embellishments. We used gum drops, Life Savers, M&M’s, and other random candy. My son wanted a piece of green licorice to outline the top of the ship. He outlined several lines on the bottom part of the ship with black icing gel. He stuck in pretzels, and he shoved gum drops on the top of each pretzel. Two chocolate cookies were placed at the back, where the motor would be. His work of art was finished.

No wonder he won first place! This alien spaceship cake turned out fabulous!