How do I make these cakes for a 2yo's birthday?
April 20, 2011 2:01 AM Subscribe
On my daughter's second birthday, I'd like to make cakes like her favourite toy - but edible. Please help me!
She loves her toy tea set, and I'd like to replicate, slightly larger, the three cakes in it.
I have never done the decorative cake thing before. I've done cakes a lot, but they've always just looked like cakes.
We're not having a big party, though, so I don't want to make three full-sized cakes, and I'd like to avoid the wast of making a square/round cake and cutting it to the triangle shape if I can avoid it.
My ideal would be to have a single base batter that I could split into three and safely add flavourings (lemon, chocolate and ... I guess a different coloured chocolate?) without screwing up the texture (and, of course, knowing how that affects cooking time). Then there's the question of getting a triangular cake tin...
The, of course, there's the question of icing.
She loves her toy tea set, and I'd like to replicate, slightly larger, the three cakes in it.
I have never done the decorative cake thing before. I've done cakes a lot, but they've always just looked like cakes.
We're not having a big party, though, so I don't want to make three full-sized cakes, and I'd like to avoid the wast of making a square/round cake and cutting it to the triangle shape if I can avoid it.
My ideal would be to have a single base batter that I could split into three and safely add flavourings (lemon, chocolate and ... I guess a different coloured chocolate?) without screwing up the texture (and, of course, knowing how that affects cooking time). Then there's the question of getting a triangular cake tin...
The, of course, there's the question of icing.
The "triangle" appears to be a 1/6th slice of a round cake. Make a cake with a radius equal to the length of each straight side of the desired slice, then cut the cake into sixths.
That's the simplest solution, I think.
posted by Sys Rq at 3:01 AM on April 20, 2011
That's the simplest solution, I think.
posted by Sys Rq at 3:01 AM on April 20, 2011
As an alternative, you could make small/standard versions of them instead and let people choose what they want to have for dessert. This would mean three different types of batter though. It's what I would do because it seems easier than using one batter and doing all the cutting and shaping...but maybe I'm nuts. For example, I might do the following and arrange them all nicely on a large platter covered in pink paper to match the pic:
-a pan of brownies for the choc one, then cut into squares.
-muffins--banana or just a plain yellow cake. Once baked, the crust will look beige/golden. Maybe a buttercream frosting (it's simple!)
-a lemon cake (mmm, definitely lemon cake! delicious!) pre-cut into slices, with just whipped cream and sprinkled lemon zest on top.
Anyway, I love this idea! It's so cute. :)
posted by methroach at 5:57 AM on April 20, 2011
-a pan of brownies for the choc one, then cut into squares.
-muffins--banana or just a plain yellow cake. Once baked, the crust will look beige/golden. Maybe a buttercream frosting (it's simple!)
-a lemon cake (mmm, definitely lemon cake! delicious!) pre-cut into slices, with just whipped cream and sprinkled lemon zest on top.
Anyway, I love this idea! It's so cute. :)
posted by methroach at 5:57 AM on April 20, 2011
Scone pans are triangle shaped. Use cupcake tins for the round ones (you can level the tops if you want them flat) and brownies for the square. Any cake batter can be turned into cupcakes, you'd probably want to halve/third/quarter the recipes, depending on how many people you expect. Cupcakes cook faster than whole cakes.
I'd say that vanilla/butter for the light one, banana for the medium (carrot, zucchini), chocolate for the dark one.
To frost them, I'd just make a buttercream -- the easy kind, with just butter and icing sugar and cocoa powder or food colouring, depending.
posted by jeather at 6:20 AM on April 20, 2011
I'd say that vanilla/butter for the light one, banana for the medium (carrot, zucchini), chocolate for the dark one.
To frost them, I'd just make a buttercream -- the easy kind, with just butter and icing sugar and cocoa powder or food colouring, depending.
posted by jeather at 6:20 AM on April 20, 2011
Oh, that middle tan color looks like a perfect opportunity to make a caramel cake.
I won't 100% guarantee that this will work, but this is what I'd try to do if I were doing this in my own kitchen, and accept the risk of partial failure.
1 box of yellow cake mix, preferably a brand that requires 3 eggs, divided between 3 bowls.
So, say the instructions on the box say 3 eggs, 1/3 cup cooking oil, 1+1/3 cup of water.
Divide the cake mix equally, and put one egg and 2 TBsp oil in each.
plain: 1/2 cup minus 1 Tbsp milk.
chocolate: 1/4 cup cocoa powder, 1/2 cup minus 1 Tbsp milk
caramel: 2 Tbsp molasses in a cup measure, add milk to make a scant 1/2 cup
Bake the caramel in a large can (well-greased, floured, and line the bottom with a circle of wax paper) - not tomato, it's got that plastic lining, but usually chickpeas, etc can come in that 4-5" diameter.
Bake the chocolate batter in a 6" square casserole dish or 5x8 loaf pan, and be prepared to trim the sides off it to square it up.
The triangle is most challenging. If you have a giant tin can (the #10 size, 8" diameter) you can cut both ends out and squish it into a triangle shape, then tape aluminum foil over hte bottom on the outside and line it with foil on the inside. If you have or buy aluminum foil pans, say a cheap 8" pie plate, just bend the sides up until you've got a triangle. If you've got scrap wood and a saw, cut three 5-6" lengths of thin plank and arrange/wedge into an 8" round cake pan to make a traingular hollow, then line with aluminum foil. (and yes, grease/flour always!!)
Best frosting recipes for shaped cakes are the cooked kind that set up pretty quickly, so you just slap it on and don't have to fuss with any raw edges making a billion crumbs. Then you can take a cup of hot water and a knife, and smooth the surface out to a nice sleek texture.
These are whole-cake recipes, you could halve them and still have plenty.
good caramel frosting
good chocolate frosting: 1 cup granulated sugar
5 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup milk
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
In small saucepan, combine sugar, milk and margarine. Bring to a boil. Boil 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat; stir in chocolate chips until smooth. Pour and spread over warm bars. Cool 1 1/4 hours or until completely cooled. Cut into bars.
Cut yourself some slack and just buy a can of white frosting.
Set aside about 1/4-1/3 the container in a bowl, then add yellow food coloring (and a bit of lemon juice if you want) to frost the plain cake.
Take a ziplock bag, reinforce one corner with scotch tape, and put the white frosting into the bag. Snip the very tip of hte the corner off to make a little hole (1/4" or less, you can always make it bigger but it's easy to go too big too fast). Now you can squeeze the white frosting out in a decorative way and make little swirly fluffy white top on the yellow cake.
Next, put a drop of red food coloring (1 drop!) into the bag and squish it up to make it pink, and decorate the top of the caramel cake. Or do the mixing in the bowl and use another bag, your call.
Anyway, those are kind of detailed instructions that should probably work. It's not a difficult project you've picked, it's just got a lot of steps and a lot of opportunities to have to apply a creative solution. With luck, no more than one of them will make you swear. :)
In any case, I'm sure your daughter will love it!! Have fun!
posted by aimedwander at 7:13 AM on April 20, 2011 [1 favorite]
I won't 100% guarantee that this will work, but this is what I'd try to do if I were doing this in my own kitchen, and accept the risk of partial failure.
1 box of yellow cake mix, preferably a brand that requires 3 eggs, divided between 3 bowls.
So, say the instructions on the box say 3 eggs, 1/3 cup cooking oil, 1+1/3 cup of water.
Divide the cake mix equally, and put one egg and 2 TBsp oil in each.
plain: 1/2 cup minus 1 Tbsp milk.
chocolate: 1/4 cup cocoa powder, 1/2 cup minus 1 Tbsp milk
caramel: 2 Tbsp molasses in a cup measure, add milk to make a scant 1/2 cup
Bake the caramel in a large can (well-greased, floured, and line the bottom with a circle of wax paper) - not tomato, it's got that plastic lining, but usually chickpeas, etc can come in that 4-5" diameter.
Bake the chocolate batter in a 6" square casserole dish or 5x8 loaf pan, and be prepared to trim the sides off it to square it up.
The triangle is most challenging. If you have a giant tin can (the #10 size, 8" diameter) you can cut both ends out and squish it into a triangle shape, then tape aluminum foil over hte bottom on the outside and line it with foil on the inside. If you have or buy aluminum foil pans, say a cheap 8" pie plate, just bend the sides up until you've got a triangle. If you've got scrap wood and a saw, cut three 5-6" lengths of thin plank and arrange/wedge into an 8" round cake pan to make a traingular hollow, then line with aluminum foil. (and yes, grease/flour always!!)
Best frosting recipes for shaped cakes are the cooked kind that set up pretty quickly, so you just slap it on and don't have to fuss with any raw edges making a billion crumbs. Then you can take a cup of hot water and a knife, and smooth the surface out to a nice sleek texture.
These are whole-cake recipes, you could halve them and still have plenty.
good caramel frosting
good chocolate frosting: 1 cup granulated sugar
5 tablespoons butter
1/3 cup milk
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
In small saucepan, combine sugar, milk and margarine. Bring to a boil. Boil 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat; stir in chocolate chips until smooth. Pour and spread over warm bars. Cool 1 1/4 hours or until completely cooled. Cut into bars.
Cut yourself some slack and just buy a can of white frosting.
Set aside about 1/4-1/3 the container in a bowl, then add yellow food coloring (and a bit of lemon juice if you want) to frost the plain cake.
Take a ziplock bag, reinforce one corner with scotch tape, and put the white frosting into the bag. Snip the very tip of hte the corner off to make a little hole (1/4" or less, you can always make it bigger but it's easy to go too big too fast). Now you can squeeze the white frosting out in a decorative way and make little swirly fluffy white top on the yellow cake.
Next, put a drop of red food coloring (1 drop!) into the bag and squish it up to make it pink, and decorate the top of the caramel cake. Or do the mixing in the bowl and use another bag, your call.
Anyway, those are kind of detailed instructions that should probably work. It's not a difficult project you've picked, it's just got a lot of steps and a lot of opportunities to have to apply a creative solution. With luck, no more than one of them will make you swear. :)
In any case, I'm sure your daughter will love it!! Have fun!
posted by aimedwander at 7:13 AM on April 20, 2011 [1 favorite]
I'm sure you'll come up with a perfect solution from answers you get here - but in case you do end up making a larger cake or two and cutting out shapes, it doesn't need to be a waste. Cake freezes really well and thaws out very quickly on the counter. Frost and freeze anything left over and you have a quick and easy (if oddly shaped) small cake for a treat later.
Also, my toddler has and loves that tea set as well. I hear the teapot all the time and think someone is talking or pouring water somewhere. Drives me nuts.
posted by Dojie at 7:54 AM on April 20, 2011
Also, my toddler has and loves that tea set as well. I hear the teapot all the time and think someone is talking or pouring water somewhere. Drives me nuts.
posted by Dojie at 7:54 AM on April 20, 2011
Hmm. I think that there's a way to "make one big cake and cut thing" without wasting anything, if you're willing to get creative with the frosting. To wit:
1. Make one rectangular sheet cake. This is your "raw material."
2. Make three different colors of frosting.
3. Get some jam or something similar for the "filling" -- you'll see what to do with it in a moment.
4. Cut the basic square, triangle, and circle shapes from the sheet cake. Set them aside.
5. You will have scraps. Using the scraps, figure out how to cut/piece together the second layer of each cake (i.e., "these two bits here can make up the top layer of the square, and if I trim that bit there that can make the circle").
6. Once you've figured that out, use jam to "glue" the second layer on top of the first layer (spread jam on top of the bottom layer, put the top layer pieces on top).
7. If you have even smaller scraps, tuck them into gaps, or make them into crumbs and use them as "sprinkles" for the finished product.
8. Frost all three cakes, each in a different color, generously. That way no one sees that you patched the top layer together, and by the time you cut the cake, they probably won't care anyway because, yum, cake!
9. Decorate as you like.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:56 AM on April 20, 2011 [1 favorite]
1. Make one rectangular sheet cake. This is your "raw material."
2. Make three different colors of frosting.
3. Get some jam or something similar for the "filling" -- you'll see what to do with it in a moment.
4. Cut the basic square, triangle, and circle shapes from the sheet cake. Set them aside.
5. You will have scraps. Using the scraps, figure out how to cut/piece together the second layer of each cake (i.e., "these two bits here can make up the top layer of the square, and if I trim that bit there that can make the circle").
6. Once you've figured that out, use jam to "glue" the second layer on top of the first layer (spread jam on top of the bottom layer, put the top layer pieces on top).
7. If you have even smaller scraps, tuck them into gaps, or make them into crumbs and use them as "sprinkles" for the finished product.
8. Frost all three cakes, each in a different color, generously. That way no one sees that you patched the top layer together, and by the time you cut the cake, they probably won't care anyway because, yum, cake!
9. Decorate as you like.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:56 AM on April 20, 2011 [1 favorite]
Teapot cake.
Many teapot cakes. Click on the photos for more instructions.
This teapot cake used a ball cake mold.
Other good tips.
posted by barnone at 12:42 PM on April 20, 2011
Many teapot cakes. Click on the photos for more instructions.
This teapot cake used a ball cake mold.
Other good tips.
posted by barnone at 12:42 PM on April 20, 2011
Wilton makes square and triangle cupcake liners, in silicone. I've seen them at Michael's and AC Moore, in their cake decorating aisle.
Make up a batch of cupcakes and trim away. Nice thing is that then you can share with her class/your coworkers etc and they don't look so weird if you don't decorate them to match the tea set cakes.
posted by Hwin at 1:06 PM on April 20, 2011
Make up a batch of cupcakes and trim away. Nice thing is that then you can share with her class/your coworkers etc and they don't look so weird if you don't decorate them to match the tea set cakes.
posted by Hwin at 1:06 PM on April 20, 2011
As an additional, the cupcake molds I mention are sometimes sold to tesselate together. You can also pull a bit of jiggery-pokery and just set the cupcakes together closely- ie, four squares assembled into a bigger square, et al.
The only hitch there would be the round cake, but they do make very small round cake pans, sold in the same aisles as the cupcake molds.
posted by Hwin at 1:10 PM on April 20, 2011
The only hitch there would be the round cake, but they do make very small round cake pans, sold in the same aisles as the cupcake molds.
posted by Hwin at 1:10 PM on April 20, 2011
Okay. This might sound kinda weird, but I think it'll make three smallish, more or less equally-sized cakes. It does involve a bit of creative cutting, but the scraps should be pretty minimal.
Triangular cake: bake a round cake like Sys Rq recommended. I'm thinkin' an 8 inch round cut into thirds, which can then be stacked together to make a three layer triangular cake.
For the rectangular/square and round cakes: bake a 9x13 cake. Cut into sixths which will be about 4.5ish inches square(ish). Use three of them to make the rectangular/square cake. For the last cake, trim the other three into rounds which are approximately circle-shaped. Wonky edges can be hidden with frosting.
This way seems most efficient to me (uses common pans, hardly wastes any cake) but I'm not sure how you'd feel about all that cutting and trimming. Also: without frosting, two of the cakes would be the same flavor.
(Speaking of flavors: I vote for chocolate, lemon or vanilla, and caramel or some sort of molasses/spice thing. Maybe carrot cake?)
posted by junques at 11:24 PM on April 20, 2011
Triangular cake: bake a round cake like Sys Rq recommended. I'm thinkin' an 8 inch round cut into thirds, which can then be stacked together to make a three layer triangular cake.
For the rectangular/square and round cakes: bake a 9x13 cake. Cut into sixths which will be about 4.5ish inches square(ish). Use three of them to make the rectangular/square cake. For the last cake, trim the other three into rounds which are approximately circle-shaped. Wonky edges can be hidden with frosting.
This way seems most efficient to me (uses common pans, hardly wastes any cake) but I'm not sure how you'd feel about all that cutting and trimming. Also: without frosting, two of the cakes would be the same flavor.
(Speaking of flavors: I vote for chocolate, lemon or vanilla, and caramel or some sort of molasses/spice thing. Maybe carrot cake?)
posted by junques at 11:24 PM on April 20, 2011
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Firstly, I think you're going to need to make these cakes in layers, in order to get the necessary depth. That ought to be fine, although you might want to consider using smallish tins (8 inches or less) so that your cakes don't turn out huge.
Secondly, shapes. Squares and circles are pretty straightforward. The triangle you could probably do by making a cardboard triangle (with no bottom) to fit inside a round tin. Cover the cardboard in two or three layers of foil and you're all sorted. Provided you're cooking at a normal 'cake temperature' (150 - 170C) the cardboard won't be a problem.
For the two beige-looking cakes you could maybe just keep things simple and not ice the sides. Otherwise, just get some packet icing and a couple of different natural colourings (yellow, red, green are the usual ones, although you can get brown and other colours in craft or cake decorating supply shops) and knead tiny amounts of the colours into the icing until you get the desired effect. Roll out the icing, brush the tops and sides of the cakes with melted apricot jam, cover with the icing and trim off the excess. The white and pink on the tops of the circle and triangle cakes would probably suit butter icing, which is very simple to make. I'm not sure I'd put butter icing on top of the other icing though; I'd probably cut away the icing from the tops of the cakes and then fill in with butter icing.
Personally I'd bake a proper chocolate cake for the square one. Chocolate flavouring is awful. At the very least, just substitute a couple of tablespoons of cocoa powder for flour in your standard batter. Better still, make this recipe, which will give you a rich, fudge-like cake, then serve that one to the adults. The ganache in the recipe would make a perfect icing/filling for the chocolate cake even if you don't use the rest of the recipe.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 2:36 AM on April 20, 2011