Birthday cake for little G

My friend “D” and I have signed up to take a cake decorating class, one which both of us could use. Unfortunately, the class doesn’t begin until October and D’s son little G needed a birthday cake this weekend. Now, I would have made a simple cake with borders, maybe some purchased decorations, some candles and called it good. D, however is much more ambitious than I (I love that about her) and she optimistically proposed that we make an Elmo cake. You know, the furry red guy from Sesame Street fame? For those of you (like me) who never watched Sesame Street since it when it began airing, I was well beyond it’s charms age-wise. Meet Elmo:





















Now an Elmo cake presents challenges; do we rent a cake pan shaped like Elmo or do we try to recreate the furry red puppet on our own? Again, D has much more optimism than I do, so she joyfully proclaimed that we could do this!  Keep in mind, she’s the mom of a one year old, plus a wife trying to keep it all together in a foreign country with no family and few good pals around to help out. This is why she inspires me - I’m in the same boat, only without the child and I have a hard enough time! Anyway, I caught the optimism bug and set out to search for some ideas online. Now trust me on this; there are a lot of really crappy looking Elmo cake pics to be found online so I was getting even more nervous since my piping skills are limited at best.

We started with a 9” double layer red velvet cake (D insisted since she’s from the deep south where red velvet is a must have) though I questioned red cake and red icing! We mixed up some stabilized buttercream (1/2 butter and 1/2 shortening) and tried to make a vibrant red icing. My hands are still red as I type this.

We started with icing the cake in plain white (we used clear vanilla extract to maintain the white color)



































Then of course, we realized that I was out of black food coloring so off we went to bulk barn (after a failed attempt to make black by mixing red, blue and yellow). The trip to bulk barn turned out to be a great idea, since we picked up the cake round and some already prepared black icing. I admit it, I was daunted by the task of making true black as opposed to a muddy gray, so I seized the opportunity and used the store-bought version. Don’t judge me, Elmo was daunting enough.

Next I printed a gray-scale version of Elmo’s face and cut out the mouth. I then traced around the mouth on top of the cake and D outlined it in black icing with a number 3 round tip. We then filled it in with a leaf tip and smoothed it out using a dab of water on a finger!



































Then we outlined it in red using a small star tip and D decorated the mouth with some black sugar crystals that she found at Bulk Barn. Told you that trip was a good one - the sparkle it added really punched it up!  After that, we just covered the cake with red icing using a large star tip, and plenty of icing so we could give it that furry look, which we did by dabbing a flat wooden appetizer pick against the stars and just lifting, pulling the icing away with it.




































To finish off the face, I had rolled out some fondant and used a cookie cutter to make eyes and simply molded the nose by hand after kneading in some orange gel color.  We put black stars on the eyes and smoothed it out with the damp finger method again, and simply popped them into place!



































I think he came out pretty well - especially for two complete amateurs at cake decorating!  What you can’t see in the pic is that we took some fondant and cut out stars and different sizes of circles in pale blue and green and decorated the sides with them. This was D’s idea and it really gave a finished look to the cake!  Sorry about the quality of the pics, they were from D’s iPhone, I was not about to get out my Nikon, covered in red icing as I was!  I can only imagine the red teeth of the kids at the party when they sink their teeth into this creation!

So a huge thanks to D, I had a fun afternoon, playing with colors and feeling downright creative (a rarity for me). It was also fun to hang with a fellow American for an afternoon. Big hugs to D and a HUGE Happy first birthday to little-man G!!