There are over a dozen free events on our calendar this week. Let us know about yours at craftyliving@jg.net.I’m a queen of sugar. Cookies, candies, ice cream. I love to make them.
So when my friend asked me to bake the cake for her baby shower, I wasn’t surprised.
I was nervous.
As confident as I am in my baking skills, I have little faith in my ability to decorate a cake. I consider a cake successfully iced when it appears to be even, and I successfully hide any filling that squished out of the layers. Any decoration, say a few chocolate shavings, merely hides the imperfections.
I couldn’t say no, though. I wanted her to have great-tasting cake, and I would find a way to make it look good. I asked my friend whether the shower planner had any themes in mind, and she said no.
I could do whatever I thought would be great to celebrate the birth of her son. I began to think of all things boy: trucks, Legos, cars. I wandered the baby and toy aisles of a department store seeking inspiration when I stumbled upon one of my favorite childhood toys: the Candy Land game.
I picked up the box and looked at the game board. There were the colorful squares and the candies – lollipops, gumdrops, peppermint sticks, licorice. The more I looked at the board, the more I realized that I could use the game as my baby shower-cake inspiration.
The first thing I wanted to do was re-create the colored rectangles on the board. I found ready-to-use colored fondant at a craft store, and it seemed foolproof enough. I also picked up brightly colored gum balls and giant lollipops to use for the cake.
The cake was two-tier white chocolate with buttercream frosting. I used dowels and cake circles to stabilize the cake before I began decorating.
The first step to make the plain cake look like a Candy Land game was to roll the fondant into a thin sheet. I used red, purple, yellow, orange, green and blue fondant.
After it was rolled, I used a standard ruler and a pastry cutter to cut long strips of equal width. The strips were then cut into individual rectangles. After all of the rectangles were cut, I brushed the back of each with a bit of water and applied them to the cake.
I made a basic border in the middle of each tier, but you could wind the pieces around the cake to make it look more like the game.
A hint: The color in the fondant can – and will – bleed if you use too much water. I recommend applying the water, which is necessary for the pieces to stick, to the center of each rectangle.
The next step was to place the gum balls around the base of each tier where an icing border is normally piped. You could also use licorice ropes or gumdrops as a border.
To top off the cake, I used three giant lollipops and sprinkled more gum balls. I added a blue game piece that I found on eBay for a dollar, and the cake was finished.
I delivered the confection to my friend’s baby shower with some apprehension. I could see where the cake was iced unevenly and where the fondant color had bled. To my surprise, everyone’s reaction was positive and even more so when they bit into the white chocolate layers.
