Narwhal Cake Tutorial

This tutorial has been a long time coming, but here it is! I had so many pictures to edit on top of emergency dog surgeries, out of state visitors, and getting ready for a week long vacation, it was crazy. But I finally found some time to put this together! This is going to be a long post with LOTS of pictures, so let's get started, shall we?

Let me start off by saying that I had originally wanted the narwhal's flukes to be in the air like this...

...but they were heavier than I expected, so they didn't stay in the air, even after they were secured three times over. So I laid them on the board and I think it looks just as good that way. Because I had wanted to have his flukes in the air, I shaped the end of his tail upwards. If the flukes are going to be laid on the board, you can just shape the tail as a straight slope. I will show you what I mean in a little bit.

As for ingredients and some supplies, you will need:

- 2 sphere cake halves (I used the Wilton sports ball pan...my favorite!)
- Rice Krispie Treats (RKT), store bought or homemade. I believe I used 1 recipe's worth
- 1 recipe of your favorite buttercream
- Fondant
- Candy melts
- One dowel rod
- Toothpicks
- Black icing color
- Ivory icing color
- 1 cake drum (mine was 14 inches)
- Rolling pin
- Fondant mat
- A stiff bristled paint brush
- Viva brand paper towels
- A Microplane grater 

Ok, so to get started you will need to cut off a little of the dome from one of the layers to create a flat base for the cake.

Spread a little buttercream on the board where you would like to place the cake. Take the layer that you just trimmed and position it on top of the buttercream, trimmed side down. Spread a thin layer of buttercream on the layer and position the other half on top. Roughly cover the cake in a thin layer of buttercream. It is easiest to frost a sphere cake by piling the buttercream on top of the cake and spreading it down towards the bottom.
To make things a little bit more interesting, I made a fun little gif. :)

Alright, so once you have your sphere cake crumb coated it's time to bring out the RKT. If you are using homemade, it is easier to do these next few steps when they are still slightly warm. If you are using store bought, work them until they are pliable and easy to mold.
Take a few handfuls of RKT and mold them into the shape that you would like for the tail. This is where I had decided to flip the tail up at the end for the flukes to be in the air. Like I mentioned before, that didn't work, so feel free to shape the tail however you would like. Lay the tail on the board behind the cake and fill in the gaps between the cake and the tail with pieces of RKT. Make sure it is a straight slope from the cake down to the tail. You don't want to be able to tell where the cake and RKT meet.
 

Next up is shaping the flukes, fins, and tusk. Take some more RKT and shape four curved tear drop shapes. Make two of them larger than the other two. The larger ones will be the flukes and the smaller ones will be the fins. Shape a cone for the tusk. You want to make sure that it is skinnier than you want the finished tusk to be. A layer of chocolate and fondant is going to be added over the RKT, so it will end up being about a half inch thicker in the end. I would have liked mine to have been a bit thinner, but oh well.
Once you have the tusk shaped, insert a dowel rod as far as possible into the tusk, being careful not to push it out through the sides or the other end. Once the dowel rod is inserted, take four toothpicks and insert them halfway into the tusk, evenly spaced around the dowel rod. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of this, but I think the tusk might be hiding in the background of some pictures coming up.

Once you have shaped your fins, flukes, and tusk, melt some candy melts. Cover all the pieces in the candy melts and stick them in the freezer.
While the pieces are in the freezer, cover the whole body in buttercream.

Using a Viva paper towel, smooth the buttercream so that there are no lumps and bumps, especially on the RKT tail. You don't want bumps from the RKT to show through the fondant.   

(These next few pictures coming up are going to be extremely blurry. I apologize. I was snapping the pictures from the side of the camera, so I didn't realize it wasn't focused.)

Tint some fondant a light gray color and roll it out. Honestly, I can't remember how much I used, but I think I used almost a whole box of the Wilton Decorator Preferred fondant.
Once your fondant is rolled out, drape it over your cake and start smoothing it against the cake, starting at the top and working your way down. Trim the excess with a pizza cutter. The bottom edges don't have to be perfect, you can just cover them with "water" later. As you can see, mine were far from perfect. I have such a hard time covering spheres with fondant!

Now it is time to bring your pieces out of the freezer. While they are still cold, start grating the chocolate down until it is a smooth surface.

Brush them with water and cover the flukes and fins with the same gray fondant. For the tusk, tint a some fondant a light shade of ivory. Cover the tusk and, using a toothpick or a veining tool, draw a spiral around the tusk. Brush it with gold pearl dust if you would like to (who wouldn't want to?).

Lay the flukes and fins on the board against the cake where you would like them placed and set the tusk to the side. To the way far away side. This next step will show you why.

In a small bowl, mix a bit of black food coloring with some vodka or flavored extract (I just used vanilla extract). Dip your stiff bristled brush into the mixture and start splattering the color over the cake by running your finger across the bristles. You may want to wear a glove, or have some kind of protection between your finger and the brush. I didn't and my finger was purple for days.

I thought I got a picture of the process, but apparently my hand wasn't in the frame. SweetAmbs has a great tutorial for the splattering here. You want to have some bigger spots and some smaller ones.

When you are done with the spots, it's time to make the eyes and mouth. Make these however you would like. Give your narwhal whatever expression you feel like! Add some blue buttercream around the narwhal on the cake board for water. I also added some spots of white buttercream for little ice chunks since narwhals live in the Arctic waters.

Add the tusk and this little guy is done!!

Well, that's it for the tutorial! I hope that it was easy enough to follow. If you decide to make this cake, please share a picture with me. I would love to see it!

Before I go, since narwhals are so fascinating, I will leave you with a few narwhal facts. (Why not?)

- Narwhal tusks are actually enlarged teeth that grow through their faces
- Narwhal tusks have up to 10 million nerve endings inside
- Narwhal tusks can grow up to 10 feet in length
- Narwhals can dive 1 1/2 miles deep in the ocean
- As they age, narwhals change color. Old narwhals are almost all white.

Wall-e Cake

I recently had an order at work for a Wall-e cake for a little boy who was turning five. When he and his mother came to pick up the cake, he was so excited. I was really happy when he saw the cake and his face lit up!

(I'm trying out different watermarks on my photos, so bear with me until I find one that I like.)

Wall-e is made out of fondant and the details are drawn on with Wilton food markers. To make him look rusty and dirty like he does in the movie, I brushed him with some cocoa powder. 
This cake was so fun to make. I'm really glad that Andrew liked it! 

Jane Austen Teapot Cake

My sister, Rachel, is a huge fan of Jane Austen. She has read almost all of her books twice; some of them three times. She loves practically anything related to the Regency era. She has said several times that she was born in the wrong time period. She also enjoys having tea parties.

Teapot cakes have always fascinated me. There are so many different ways they can be done. Since I knew how much Rachel liked teapots and Jane Austen, and since I got a couple of comments mentioning Jane Austen on my Brush Embroidery post, I decided to combine the two and make it a surprise.

The cake is covered in marshmallow fondant, and the piped beads are royal icing. For Miss Austen's silhouette, I printed off a picture and placed it on the fondant. Using a toothpick, I traced the outline of the picture, leaving an indentation in the fondant. Then, I cut out the silhouette with a knife.

I originally wanted the background of the cameo to be a light pink, but I read that Jane Austen's favorite color was blue (I wonder if that's true?). I'm glad I went with the blue.

And for those of you who may by skeptical that this is really cake....I have some proof. :)

Mmm....chocolate.

This is by far my favorite cake that I have decorated yet.

Things I've Learned

There are so many things that I have learned about decorating cakes and cakes in general since I started decorating them almost 2 years ago now. Most, if not all, of the things that I have learned have been learned through trial and error.
No, luckily I haven't dropped a cake yet. Every time someone asks me if I have, I wince a little when I tell them no, knowing that my turn is going to have to come. It is bound to happen eventually. I don't think any cake decorator can avoid such a disaster.
But anyway, here is a list of some of the things I have learned since I got into decorating cakes:

1. Always make more buttercream than you think you will need.  I have run out of buttercream so many times because I thought I had made enough. And once you get the buttercream a certain color, it is hard to match that color with the next batch you have to make. So, even if you think you are making enough buttercream, make more. Make more until you KNOW that it is going to be enough to cover and decorate that cake. Seriously, did leftover buttercream hurt anyone? I didn't think so.

2. Dry your hands on a paper towel, not a towel, when you are going to be working with fondant. Why? Because the seemingly invisible fuzzies from the towel will stick to your wet hands and they won't be visible until they are stuck to the fondant. Everything sticks to fondant, and once fuzzies are stuck, they don't want to come out.

3. Bring more decorating tools to an event than you think you will need. If space allows, bring it. If you think you probably won't need that decorating tip or a certain spatula, but there is the slightest possibility that you will? Bring it. If you end up not bringing something, you're going to end up needing it once you get there. That's just how it works.

4. Get used to people watching you. Chances are, when you are setting up a cake at an event, you aren't going to have a space all to yourself. People are going to be walking in and out and doing their own thing. But at some point or another, people will watch you. Whether out of fascination or boredom, people will watch you. You have to get used to this fact and not do something stupid out of nervousness.

5. You learn a lot of birthdays you didn't know before. When you bring a pretty cake somewhere, for some odd reason people start telling you their birthdays? Hmmm..I wonder why that is. ;)

Harry Potter Snitch Cake

My friend Katie turns 18 in a couple of days. She had a party yesterday and I got to make the cake. :) The party was Harry Potter themed, so after a couple of ideas thrown around we decided a snitch cake would be good. Katie thought of everything for the party; she had butterbeer, Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, homemade chocolate frogs with boxes and wizard cards that she put together by hand. It was amazing and a lot of fun!

I debated on how to make the wings for the cake for days, and after searching the internet many times (CakeCentral is amazing by the way) I decided to make them out of a 50/50 mix of gumpaste and fondant.

I formed the ends around dowel rods and let them dry in a flower former and brushed them with gold pearl dust. The cake itself was covered in gold buttercream that I also brushed with gold pearl dust after chilling it.

Before the pearl dust

After the pearl dust

Transporting it was a bit of a nightmare, but I managed to get it there safely. There were no major problems, and everybody liked it!

The Birthday Girl!

I'm really happy with how it turned out! 

Mischievous Kitten Cake

I got to put my Sports Ball pan that I won from the Wilton contest to use!

Isn't he cute?!

This cake turned into a two day project for me. It was very time consuming making all of the yarn strands, plus the fact that I would get annoyed at it for various reasons and take breaks. But I had really wanted to make it ever since I saw it in a decorating book and I'm glad I finally made it.

It is just a simple yellow cake and the yarn and kitten are fondant. I drew his pupils and mouth with a black edible marker. I had originally wanted to make him black so he would be like my cat, but the grey was easier to make and I think the pink and grey look good together anyway, so it all worked out.

He likes you :)

My Wilton Goodies

Wow, it seems that I have been MIA for quite some time. I started my first full time college semester in August and unfortunately it took up almost all of my time until now. I am on winter break and finally have some free time!

Anyway, on to the exciting stuff. A little while back, Wilton held a Pin it and Win Scavenger Hunt Sweepstakes on Pinterest. The prize was $200 worth of any products from Wilton's website store. I entered the contest and was contacted a little while later and told that I was a winner! I had never been so exited to shop for things on the internet, and definitely never been so anxious waiting for a package to be delivered.

Here's a picture of the goodies that arrived!

I got 4 books: Wilton Wedding Style, Uses of Decorating Tips, Wilton Wedding Cakes - A Romantic Portfolio, and The Wilton School - Decorating Cakes. I also got a cake caddy, an icing comb set, a sports ball pan, a cake marker, a lady bug pan, a Princess Ariel pan, a tart/quiche pan, 2 fondant and gum paste molds (Baroque and Sea Life), FoodWriter edible markers, and Edible Accents pink hearts.

 And I wasn't the only one who was excited about the delivery. My cat, Milo, enjoyed what he got out of it, too. :)

 Many thanks to Wilton!

Snowman Cake

We haven't had any snow yet this winter and this past weekend we had miserable freezing rain, so I made this cake to help brighten the mood.

His body is buttercream and his buttons, nose, scarf, and mouth are fondant. For his arms I stripped the flowers and leaves off of silk flowers and used the remaining branches. I was going to give him a hat, but I didn't have time. I'm really excited with how he turned out though!

P.S. This was my first 3 tiered cake! :)

The Winner

Alright, so I finally got around to decorating the cake that won the poll, which was...(drum roll, please!)...the Masquerade Ball cake! I learned several things while decorating this cake, among which are:
I'm really bad at draping fondant to make it look like a tablecloth
Fondant 1/4 inch thick takes a long time to dry. A really long time to dry. 
How not to get fondant a nice red color
And how to make fondant taste like a cherry Tootsie Pop while trying to make it red. Seriously, exactly like it.

Originally I wanted the fondant to be a deep red color, like the jewel on the mask, but it just wasn't going to happen, so I had to settle for the mauve-y color it ended up being.

 The rose is a black fondant ribbon rose.

I hope this meets everyone who voted for the Masquerade Ball cake's approval. :)

Fondant Ribbon

Here are a couple pictures of my latest project, a fondant ribbon. I put together the white fondant ribbon, but it looked too plain, so I wanted to add something to it to make it a bit prettier. I think the orange flowers are a good compliment to it. I can't wait to make more and come up with creative ways to make them elegant and eye catching!