TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLE BIRTHDAY CAKE
For my son's seventh birthday he wanted a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles party. Well, I used to LOVE the TMNT when I was a kid (we will kindly skip the part about just how long ago that was!!!). The interesting thing is that the TMNT are making a comeback. Unfortunately, the comeback is in the early stages and what that means for me is very, very limited party decor. Story of my life!! Both of my children have always wanted themed parties for which there are no theme products available in stores....so I'm used to improvising!
Today is all about the cake.....
First, I ALWAYS use a box cake mix. Why? Because it costs, on average, $1 and will always taste more delicious and be more moist than any recipe I can make myself. For one buck, it's a bargain in a box! My personal favorites are Duncan Hines and Betty Crocker and whatever brand it is you can get at Save-A-Lot. Unless I have a fancy recipe that is going to spruce up the boxed cake mix, I always follow the diretions to a tee! For today's recipe, I used a Betty Crocker Super Moist White cake mix and divided it between two square pans. (I just wanted to use the square pan to be different!-two round would work just as well for the face of this cake, too.)
Notice how flat the cakes are??? That can be attributed to the quality of the pans I used (which I touched on in my first blog.)
After thoroughly cooling the cakes I colored my frosting to the right shade of green.
Now put icing all over. Make sure you put an even layer and smooth out. This might take you some time and you might feel like you smooth and smooth and smooth but the icing isn't getting perfectly smooth. That's ok...it won't get PERFECTLY smooth. Just get it as smooth as you can. Remember, we're going to put some decorative piping around and decorate the top, so most of it will end up covered up anyway!
MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THIS PROCESS: Have a picture to look at as your guide when decorating your cake. I printed some pictures from the Internet and then used them as a guide and free-handed all my designs on the cake itself.
Now, get your icing bag ready. I put mine in a cup and fold the bag down over the cup to make filling my bag much easier and less messy. You won't need much icing because we're only piping the turtle mask and it takes very little.
BEFORE I piped the icing onto the cake, I used a toothpick to draw out the mask. This makes it sooo much easier to pipe icing on when you have a pattern to follow. Outline it first and go slowly if you're nervous.
**TIP: If you're new to icing with a bag/tip combo, try it on a sheet of wax paper first. This allows you to get comfortable with handling your bag and moving your hands so that the icing comes out smooth. The plus side....once you've practiced, scoop icing off the wax paper and re-use!!
Once you've completed the outline, it's really up to you how you would like to fill it. For this one, I continued to outline inside until it was filled up completely. Then I went back and smoothed the top with a knife to get ride of piping lines.
I again used a toothpick to outline the mouth, then used white icing to pipe in the mouth. I also went up to the mask and filled in the eye holes with white. Easy, slow, keep it simple.
With black icing and a much finer tip, I went back through VERY slowly and traced the mask, the eye holes, added pupils (I went around in small circles and left some white in the very center), traced the mouth, added teeth, outlined the nose, and other distinguishing "turtle" marks.
Your turtle face is done. BUT, we want to make it PRETTIER and we can do that very simply by using color (in this case, all the TMNT colors) and a wide star tip.
I had trouble convincing people that I made this cake because I put it in cake container from my last bakery purchase!!
Baking the cake....Simple.
Putting green icing all over...Simple.
Adding the "Turtle" face.....just a few Simple steps.
Hope this has been very helpful.
Remember....K.I.S.S. (Keep It Super Simple!)
No comments:
Post a Comment