Well Seasoned

My niece is a huge Threadless fan so when I saw the announcement for Threadcakes 2011, I suggested she pick her favorite t-shirt and we'd make it together for her birthday. That’s how we got to Well Seasoned as our cake.

First challenge, how to make a cake look like it has no support system with the biggest cake on top. Solution: a purchased Wilton stand that we could cover with black fondant and swap around the small top plate and the large bottom plate. We also made sure we had one of those science project display boards to use as our backdrop for final photos.

Second challenge, making a cake narrower on the bottom than the top has structural issues. Solution: rice krispie treats attached to the bottom of the cake plates with royal icing. We found glasses of the right diameter to mold the treats around so that they would be able to slide over the supports of the cake stand.

My niece got busy with fondant making all of the trees, buildings, ships, polar bears and sea monster for each cake. We made the clouds from gumpaste to ensure they would be firm enough to stick out from the mountain without support. We deliberately chose to make those things appear as two dimensional as possible since we wanted the end result to look as close to the original design as possible. We named the sea monster Ogopogo since we were in British Columbia. Bamboo skewers or toothpicks gave structure for tree trunks and ship masts so that they could sail down waterfalls during the final assembly.

I lost count on how many batches of my niece’s favorite Applesauce Spice Cake (it was for her birthday so there was no discussion on cake flavor), rice krispie treats and vanilla buttercream icing I made. It’s somewhere between 8 and 10 of each of those. Depending on what we were creating/covering we used some homemade marshmallow fondant and some purchased Duff fondant (thankfully you can purchase black fondant, otherwise we’d have been coloring fondant forever!)

After carving the ice shapes for the winter cake, we decided that while yummy, my niece’s favorite cake was not the best choice for making the mountains and hills on the summer and fall cakes. The texture was too soft. Rice krispie treats to the rescue. We covered them with a combination of fondant and buttercream in order to give the right look and texture. The hills on the fall cake are actually covered in fondant first and then some buttercream added on top. The mountains on the summer cake are iced in buttercream, but have white fondant snow caps. Who said you can’t use them in the opposite order if it gives you the right look?

One final challenge, making the waterfalls out of buttercream frosting. Our original plan has been to use fondant for the waterfalls, but since we’d achieved the look we wanted using buttercream on almost everything else, we decided we needed to use buttercream in order to keep a consistent look and texture. Victoria, BC has had a fairly cool summer, but the night of our final assembly was warmer than anticipated. To deal with our temperature issues, we piped our buttercream onto strips of plastic wrap that could then be attached to give our waterfalls the right look and stability.