3D
Under My Bed
by Gayathri Marasinghe @austincitybakes · submitted Aug 6, 2009 · 2009 contest
1 / 12
Description
This is really the first time I've ever attempted to make a cake like this at home and certainly a labor of love. I just recently moved to a new state and unfortunately decided not to bring my kitchenaid mixer right away (It'll arrive in a couple months). In fact I had only a few of the tools with me I needed to make and decorate a cake. So despite being on a very tight budget, I bought a cake pan, some food coloring, and ingredients and made everything by hand. I made the whole thing over a span of about 2 and a half days.
The first day, I made a basic white cake recipe which I flavored with cinnamon. I had to whip the egg whites by hand with a whisk which was enough to make me not want to whip whites again. The idea of an Italian buttercream was out of the question! Originally I wanted to make a two-tiered cake, but time and money being scarce, I decided to just do a smaller cake (see picture of cake next to hand for an idea of how big it was) and try for some height so that it gave the illusion of a tower of monsters. I had only one 6 inch cake pan and so had to bake the first cake and hope that by the time I could bake the second, the batter wasn't totally flat. It worked fine thankfully. I also made marshmallow fondant for the first time for the the decorations. I found that in the end I prefer to work with regular fondant, but this was cheap and tasted a lot better!
The second day, I made a simple American-style buttercream frosting and assembled the cakes. Our apartment was so hot that the frosting just kept melting! I quickly put them together, stuck a straw down the middle (which I removed later) and stuck it in the refrigerator to sturdy up. All the little monsters I made individually and put them all together before actually sticking them to the cake. This really was the most time consuming thing and it took the rest of that day and the next morning to finish. I thought about painting them with food color but I didn't have any brushes and so figured I'd just give modeling each one by hand a whirl. Time-consuming! The bedposts were the hardest part. First, I tried tempering some chocolate and then piping it onto a template I drew. But again, the heat just kind of melted them pretty quickly once I tried to get them on the cake. By this point I just wanted to be done so I grabbed an apple from the fridge and carved a couple bedposts. I snapped a couple photos and dug in before the apples got too brown! Fun project and I'd love to do another one if I have time! Next time though, I'm getting a hand-mixer and more pans!
The first day, I made a basic white cake recipe which I flavored with cinnamon. I had to whip the egg whites by hand with a whisk which was enough to make me not want to whip whites again. The idea of an Italian buttercream was out of the question! Originally I wanted to make a two-tiered cake, but time and money being scarce, I decided to just do a smaller cake (see picture of cake next to hand for an idea of how big it was) and try for some height so that it gave the illusion of a tower of monsters. I had only one 6 inch cake pan and so had to bake the first cake and hope that by the time I could bake the second, the batter wasn't totally flat. It worked fine thankfully. I also made marshmallow fondant for the first time for the the decorations. I found that in the end I prefer to work with regular fondant, but this was cheap and tasted a lot better!
The second day, I made a simple American-style buttercream frosting and assembled the cakes. Our apartment was so hot that the frosting just kept melting! I quickly put them together, stuck a straw down the middle (which I removed later) and stuck it in the refrigerator to sturdy up. All the little monsters I made individually and put them all together before actually sticking them to the cake. This really was the most time consuming thing and it took the rest of that day and the next morning to finish. I thought about painting them with food color but I didn't have any brushes and so figured I'd just give modeling each one by hand a whirl. Time-consuming! The bedposts were the hardest part. First, I tried tempering some chocolate and then piping it onto a template I drew. But again, the heat just kind of melted them pretty quickly once I tried to get them on the cake. By this point I just wanted to be done so I grabbed an apple from the fridge and carved a couple bedposts. I snapped a couple photos and dug in before the apples got too brown! Fun project and I'd love to do another one if I have time! Next time though, I'm getting a hand-mixer and more pans!
