Recently I made a cake for George's Cub Scout End of the Year Lunch and Cake Auction Fundraiser.
Hm. No wonder they didn't make signs advertising that. That's a long name.
When I asked Mr. CuriousG what kind of cake he thought I should make, he said "something with an American flag." ( *smile* Making his father proud EVERY DAY. Kong's big on patriotism.)
A little Google search got me so Cub/Boy Scout logos, with one that was flag-esque, and when I asked George what he thought he said, "OH YEEEAAAAHHH!. That's AWESOME!" So, winner winner chicken dinner... I had a fairly simple design. But, I couldn't stop there. Going with a red, white and blue theme, I decided to make red/white/blue layers.
And let me just apologize in advance for the AWFUL pics. I did try to fix them sorta. The tone is so off. This happens with my snappy camera when I'm at my table, no natural light, only those crappy CFL's (which I loathe), a flash and being close up. I probably could have adjusted the white balance or something, but I was skipping church, tending a sick baby, and racing the clock. So forgive me. Your eyes will recover.
Here's the cake put together.
After having used all my (and my friend's) red coloring for a Hello Kitty cake I made a few days prior, I decided to color the cake portion with red koolaid. Yep. Fruit punch. I just added the dry (Fit and Active from Aldi's to be exact) koolaid powder right to the batter (which gave it quite the fruit punch flavor). For the frosting, I just went to my local grocery store bakery where they sell their butter cream frosting for $3.99 / lb. It's pretty hard to get red and blue to be vibrant and truly red or blue without using ten tons of coloring. Black's another color that's worthy of just buying. The white I made myself. What you can't see (and I didn't get to see it either, would love to have had a pic of the cake when cut) is in between the red and white layers is blue frosting, and between the white and blue layer is red frosting. (So once cut, is should be red, blue, white, red, blue.)
A trick I learned just recently so that the colors don't bleed into the outer frosting, is to pipe a line around the edge of the cake with your outside frosting before you put your layer on, then frost the middle with whatever you want. Also helpful if you are using a jelly filling or something. Another thing that's awesome is that it helps fill in the cracks. :D
Here's the cake with the crumb coat and the design.
I printed it out to the size I wanted and then cut the design out, laid it on the fully frosted cake, and traced it with a toothpick. I thought I could just pipe around the stars, in a "relief" style, but that didn't work so well, so I went back and free-hand frosted them in white, using a writing tip, probably a 2. The rest was piped with a 16 (star tip).
Finished product:
I don't often pipe borders, but this was definitely my first time piping a double border in 2 colors. (I also used two different size star tips for that.) Turned out great, I think.
There it is. In all of it's horribly photographed glory. lol Now, most of the cakes were made by the boys themselves, and I'm all about letting the kids do their own stuff, but this is one thing that's my thing, and since it was for a fundraiser, I wanted to help try raise as much money as possible.
Ok, so the cake is MY trophy. hehe. But I enjoy cake decorating, it's the closest thing I have to a hobby besides late night binging, and so sue me, I like to show off my work a little. We all need something we can be proud of, and mine certainly isn't my housecleaning skills. :P (still working on that. 5 kids aren't helping.)
While the auction wasn't a great success, I have gotten a lot of compliments and questions, so I may unofficially dabble in a cake baking side business. Very, very unofficially.
So if you need a cake, Call Me. :D
