Cakes In The Beginning

In the beginning, I just wanted to be the cool mom that  made an awesome cake for their kid's birthday party. So, I started out small. The first cake was the horse cake. I looked for ideas online. I found several, but decided to go with this one from Parenting.com.
 

Ingredients:

• 1 (8-inch) round cake
• 1 (9-inch) square cake
• ½ can (1 cup) vanilla frosting
• 1 can (16 oz) chocolate frosting
• 1 black jelly bean
• 1 Junior Mint
• Chocolate sprinkles
• 1 roll red Fruit by the Foot
• 1 white Necco wafer
• 10 chocolate Twizzlers

What you'll need:

• A serving platter
• Scissors or kitchen shears
• 2 resealable sandwich-size plastic bags (Ziploc)

Trimming the cakes:

1. Cut a 1-inch-deep slice from 2 sides of the round cake (see template). Cut one of the trimmed pieces in half to use as the ears.
2. Trim the square cake as pictured in the diagram. Arrange the cakes on a serving platter as pictured in template.

Frosting the cake:

1. Spoon the vanilla frosting into a resealable plastic bag.
2. Spoon 2 Tbsp of the chocolate frosting into another resealable plastic bag.
3. Spread the remaining chocolate frosting over the top and sides of cake and make smooth.

To complete the decoration:

1. Snip a small corner from the bags with the vanilla and chocolate frosting.
2. Pipe vanilla frosting on the ears and the top of the nose.
3. Add the jelly bean as the nostril.
4. Pipe a 1 ½-inch white circle for the eye. Press the Junior Mint into the circle's center as the iris.
5. Pipe a chocolate-frosting eyelid above the white circle. Insert chocolate sprinkles upright around the eye as the eyelashes. Pipe a white dot onto the Junior Mint to add sparkle to the eye.
6. Add the red Fruit by the Foot and the Necco wafer as pictured for the harness.
7. Cut the chocolate Twizzlers into thin strands, each about 3 to 4 inches long. Arrange the cut chocolate Twizzlers down the back of the horse's head as the mane.

Cake Anatomy:

Cake Cutout:

You can still find this cake design available at http://www.parenting.com/article/how-to-make-a-horse-cake.

I always make alterations to the final designs with what I think will look the best. This cake was for my daughter and she wanted it pink. So, white icing and red food coloring, here we come. I wasn't even thinking about writing a blog in 2003, so I'm sorry I do not have any process photos for you. But, this is how it came out.

So, I substituted the chocolate licorice hair for fruit by the foot. I did not add a bridle and went a little crazy with the flower sprinkles. I still used the junior mint eye. Unfortunately, those are fake flowers. I was soooo not that good then.

Since the horse cake, I have only made one other. Well, it was a unicorn. But, a horse. A friend of mine asked me to make a unicorn cake for her daughter's second birthday. It was made pretty much the same cake. I just pulled the printout from Parenting.com out of my file cabinet and improvised a horn. I wanted to use fondant for the icing. However, no one I know really likes fondant. So, I made a simple confectioners sugar icing.

 

 

I actually preferred my first cake. But, the birthday girl and mom were happy; And that's all that really matters right?

 

So, this was my small transformation. Really the only difference between the two cakes was that I made my cake and icing from scratch, and the icing was a bit smoother on the second cake. The next cake I'll tell you about will be my pirate cakes. They took me to a new level of cake construction and a new fondant called marshmallow fondant.

 

Until then, have a day full of cake!