3D
Instant Pool Party
by Charlene Miller @Char · submitted Aug 3, 2009 · 2009 contest
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Description
I've been baking for friends and family all of my life, but I had never decorated a cake until I went back to school a couple of years ago and now, at 48, I'm hooked on this artistic side of baking! I read about the contest while enjoying my daily dose of Cake Wrecks, moseyed over to the Threadcakes site, saw the Instant Pool Party t-shirt and knew I had to attempt it. This is my first contest so I hope my cake meets with your approval. I know that entering a cake in your contest won't affect my grades in school (straight "A" so far), but maybe it will help me find an internship so that I can graduate next May!
Making this cake seemed to take forever, but that's only because I was making pieces and parts around real life things such as final exams and term papers for summer school and goodie orders for paying customers (yes, I bake out of my tiny kitchen for money) such as pound cake, peanut butter pie, and a really pretty wedding cake. I started with a good old fashioned pound cake with lots of butter & cream cheese. I brushed strawberry simple syrup between the layers and added vanilla buttercream. II knew I could cover it with fondant, but wanted to practice my buttercream so I colored some blue and iced the outside. Smoothing the buttercream just so was one of the most difficult parts of making the cake! There were no toothpicks or any other non-food support used on this cake. I did use spaghetti to stand up my party people and you wouldn't want to eat the pastillage, but it is technically food. I made the Polaroid camera out of Rice Krispie treats, covered it with fondant, and then painted the final touches on. All of my party people, my slide, my beach ball, and my dinosaur floaty are fashioned out of gumpaste. I made the frames for the Polaroid photos out of pastillage, let the dry for days, and sanded them down nice and smooth. Then I laid them flat and filled them royal icing. The slide photo was tricky, since the slide came out both sides, but I made it work. When I was finished with the assembly and photos I cut a piece out of the back and enjoyed the fruits of my labor with a big glass of milk! The rest of it was given to and devoured by my friends.
Making this cake seemed to take forever, but that's only because I was making pieces and parts around real life things such as final exams and term papers for summer school and goodie orders for paying customers (yes, I bake out of my tiny kitchen for money) such as pound cake, peanut butter pie, and a really pretty wedding cake. I started with a good old fashioned pound cake with lots of butter & cream cheese. I brushed strawberry simple syrup between the layers and added vanilla buttercream. II knew I could cover it with fondant, but wanted to practice my buttercream so I colored some blue and iced the outside. Smoothing the buttercream just so was one of the most difficult parts of making the cake! There were no toothpicks or any other non-food support used on this cake. I did use spaghetti to stand up my party people and you wouldn't want to eat the pastillage, but it is technically food. I made the Polaroid camera out of Rice Krispie treats, covered it with fondant, and then painted the final touches on. All of my party people, my slide, my beach ball, and my dinosaur floaty are fashioned out of gumpaste. I made the frames for the Polaroid photos out of pastillage, let the dry for days, and sanded them down nice and smooth. Then I laid them flat and filled them royal icing. The slide photo was tricky, since the slide came out both sides, but I made it work. When I was finished with the assembly and photos I cut a piece out of the back and enjoyed the fruits of my labor with a big glass of milk! The rest of it was given to and devoured by my friends.
