Cakeb0t 2011 Highlights

For New Year’s Day, my only advice is to stock up on sparkler candles!

Sparklers are great for any celebration!

Thank YOU for a great year!

It’s been a great year for me, Anthony, and Cakeb0t!
Our thanks goes out to you, the readers, for joining us at the blog.
I enjoyed all of your emails, and your comments on the blog, YouTube, and Facebook.
Thanks for sharing what you know with ME! Your feedback is what keeps me going!

I’m inspired to make 2012 even better. I’ll share everything I know about cake decorating with even more videos! I hope you’ve taken away a little something from this blog in 2011: a new technique or some inspiration.

HAPPY NEW YEAR! ^_^

Here are some Cakeb0t highlights for you to enjoy:

Donating a cake to Nathen on his 6th birthday cake through Icing Smiles - one of the most inspiring and humbling moments. Learn more and follow Nathen on Facebook.
Donating cake pops through Frosting for the Cause, my first guest post - such a reflective, rewarding moment.
Finally putting myself in a video - that was a first!
Guest posting with my first guest video tutorial on the Amy Atlas blog with my Gift Bow Cupcake Topper - what fun!
Making super cute lemon cookies for my fellow bloggers through The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap.
Working with Patti Paige on her Yoga Cookie video, and just having a blast hanging out!

Pearl Cake …from Measuring Spoons!

By Cakeb0t 18 Comments

Decorating with found objects is always a pleasant surprise. I made this cake with a set of measuring spoons! I had to make a [last minute] cake (sense a pattern?) and I needed a cake decorating idea for an 80th birthday cake. I looked around… and voila!

Measuring spoons to the rescue!

Pretty neat, huh? I added some golden fondant swirls, which mimic piped swirls, painted in gold. This is a great option, especially if you don’t have a steady piping hand, or the time to wait for icing to dry.

Here’s a video on how I made the decorations for this cake!:

Well, I finally decided to put myself in the video! Yes, I’m a real person! What do you think? More of me in the vids? ~_^

Supplies:

Gumpaste, or Fondant mixed with Tylose Powder
Measuring spoons
Luster dust, pearl dust
Lemon extract
Paint brushes
Royal icing
Fondant-covered cake to decorate!

Super Cute Lemon Cookies

By Cakeb0t 24 Comments

I participated in The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap and made these SUPER CUTE Lemon Cookies!
They are sugar cookies coated with sweet and lemony icing. I have a history of vandalizing drawing faces on everyday objects. I just couldn’t resist the urge to give these cookies super kawaii faces!

Here’s the video on HOW I decorated these cookies. After the video, continue reading for the recipes and face printouts… then make your own!

Cookie faces!

I made stencils by cutting out these faces on acetate with an Xacto knife. Stencils made the process faster and the look of the cookies more consistent. Give stenciling a try! Here are the faces:

Recipes

I called on the help of my friend and cookie/royal icing expert Patti Paige, who actually made the lemon-shaped cookie cutter, just for me! Thank you Patti! <3 <3
I also used Patti’s sugar cookie recipe with my own lemony royal icing to top the cookies.

Patti Paige’s Sugar Cookies (Makes: 40-45 cookies)

Ingredients:
24 ounces all-purpose flour
1 ¼ teaspoons baking powder
¾ teaspoon salt
¾ pound butter, at room temperature
2 ¼ cups sugar
3 large eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla extract

Instructions:
Sift the flour, baking powder and salt together in a bowl and set aside.
Cream the butter and sugar together in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. Add the eggs and vanilla together in a container. With the mixer on low speed, pour out container one egg at time until incorporated. Scrape the bowl with a rubber spatula.

Add the dry ingredients to the mixture, about 1/4 at a time, scraping the bowl after each addition. Pour the dough on a sheet of plastic wrap. Wrap and chill the dough in the refrigerator for about an hour, or until firm.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Roll the dough to out to about 1/8 inch thickness on a floured surface.

If the dough is sticky, you can work in small sections of dough while leaving the rest in the refrigerator. Flour the top of the dough as you roll it out to prevent it from sticking to the rolling pin.

Cut the dough with a lemon-shaped cookie cutter. Cover a cookie sheet with parchment paper, and place the cookies on the sheet. Bake the cookies for about 10-12 minutes, until the edges of the cookies are golden brown. Let the cookies cool completely before decorating.

Lemony Royal Icing

Ingredients
2 egg whites
1 lb Confectioner’s sugar
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons lemon extract (Nielsen Massey Pure Lemon Extract is a fav.)
4 drops Electric Yellow or Lemon Yellow Food Coloring

Instructions:
Beat egg whites in a mixer for about 20 seconds, until they are liquid with some froth. With the mixer on low, slowly add all of the confectioner’s sugar, a cup at a time. Add the lemon juice and extract and continue mixing until smooth and incorporated.

Scoop out 1/2 cup of royal icing to color pink for the cheeks, and another 1/2 cup to color black for the face. Thin with lemon extract as needed. Color the rest of the royal icing with 4 drops of yellow food coloring, or more, as needed.

This recipe is good for lining the cookies, and piping faces. To thin the icing for “flood” icing, add up to 1/4 cup of lemon juice to the yellow royal icing until the icing is runny.

Follow the video above for supplies and decorating instructions. ^__^

The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap

The swap was super fun, because I sent out a dozen super cute lemon cookies to 3 different bloggers, and I received a dozen cookies from 3 different bloggers!

Thanks Melissa, Colleen, and Stephanie for my yummy yummy cookies! I’ll be posting the pics of those cookies on Facebook.

A BIG THANK YOU to our hosts, Julie and Lindsay who organized the whole shebang! Everything ran so smoothly because of you. <3

Learn more about next year’s swap and subscribe to receive The Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap notifications.

Cakeb0t Cake Tech: How to Use Lights in Your Cakes

By Cakeb0t 13 Comments

He blinded me with science!

In the Superhero Cake, we incorporated LED lights. A little tech move can push a cake over the edge into the Amazing Zone. And guess what? Adding lights doesn’t take a degree in electricity.

Read closely to find out how one of our tech team approaches lighting a cake from the inside!

———-

Awesome Star Wars AT-AT Cake with LED lights by Kate Sullivan at Cakepower!

Lights!

Lights are the perfect element to start working with when you want to add a little (or a lot) extra flare to your cakes. They are way easier to use than I thought - especially with the methods I’ll talk about in this post.

Where can you put the lights?

When you’re planning your cake, think about where you can work in some lights.

Here are a few ideas:

Point a spot light directly at a part of your cake to draw attention to an element. This makes for a nice effect with tall cakes, like “building” cakes or billboard-style cakes.
Use a light inside of the cake, behind a gumpaste or pastillage window, if it is a model of a car, house, building, or anything that would have an interior light. Interior lights can add a nice dose of realism and bring life to your design.
Make something glow with an internal light! You can have more fun with this technique because there aren’t any real rules to follow. Try making a hollow object out of thin gumpaste and place the light inside. The light will illuminate the object making it glow. Very cool!

We used a light in the recent superhero cake for Nathen. The Batman lantern on top of the building is a simple gumpaste cylinder with an LED Floralyte (read on to learn about these) placed inside to make it glow.

What are the best lights to use?

You could use pretty much any light in a cake, but here are a few things to keep in mind:

How big are the lights? Are they small enough to fit inside something if you need them to - while still being powerful enough?
How will you power the lights? Where will you put the batteries, and how will you connect the lights to the batteries?
Does the type of light you’re planning to use get hot?

Closeup of an individual LED bulb

LEDs!

You’re probably familiar with incandescent and fluorescent lights - these are the two popular types of bulbs that you most likely use in your home. Neither of these would work well in a cake because they are bulky and they get hot.

A third type of bulb, called an LED, is the best to use with a cake. They are tiny, bright, and they stay cool!

The easiest way to start working with lights is to buy small self contained, battery-powered LEDs. There is no wiring to do, and they are disposable.

You just stick them where you need them, and you’re done!

Floralytes

My favorite LEDs to work with are Floralytes. (Thanks Patti at Baked Ideas for turning us on to these!) I love these because they are super bright and last for 24 - 48 hours.

Balloon Lights

Floralytes are a tiny bit bulky for some applications though, so you may want to use balloon lights (aka mini party lights) if you’re don’t have much room to work with.

Balloon lights are smaller - not much larger than the bulb itself - but aren’t quite as bright and only last about 8 hours.

LED Spot Lights

These spot lights (and these) are also very easy to use. They have internal batteries and you just place them where you want them.

I think they have a cool industrial look, but they’re a little large, and the design may not work for every cake. Covering them in fondant, gumpaste, or modeling chocolate is a good way to change the look of these spot lights to match the theme of your cake.

LED String Lights

If you’re the adventurous cake decorator and don’t mind running a few wires, you can get a great effect from LED string lights. You’ll need to do a little planning to figure out where you can run the wires along your cake.

Like the other types of lights, they are battery powered, but there is a separate battery box that you’ll have to hide somewhere in your cake.

The lights on the string are tiny, and there is no battery attached to the individual bulbs, so they can be used in even tighter spaces. They would look great as “outdoor” holiday lights on a gingerbread house ^_^