Mysterious Creatures Birthday Cake

What do you get when you combine an alien, Sasquatch and the Loch Ness Monster?  A mysterious creature cake, of course!  

I asked my son what he wanted to do this year for his birthday.  My husband and I offered a variety of ideas and what he really wanted was an at-home family and family friend party.  Nothing fancy.  We could do that!

For weeks I asked him what he wanted his cake to be.  He had some very lofty ideas that I wasn't sure I could pull off.  His number one suggestion was the Himalayan mountains.  Seriously?  I told him to think of something else.  A bit defeated, I think, he asked for repeat cakes, like a nature cake or perhaps a Minecraft cake again.  I told him we could do the nature cake if he really wanted to, but I knew he wasn't very excited.

So, the morning before his party I got up early, as I always do, and after a coffee and some quiet time adjusting to the new day, I got on Pinterest.  I had to find something he really liked.  Not finding any great ideas initially, I stopped, closed my eyes and listed in my mind all the things he really likes. Mysterious creatures!  That was it!  Now I had an idea. 

I wasn't sure if I would find any actual cakes but I typed a few different things in the search bar, hopeful.  Lo and behold there was something.  One thing to be exact.  And I knew he would like it!

Usually I leave my son alone in the morning to wake up slowly, but this morning I asked him right away if he would come and see the new cake idea.  He was excited and this is the result!

You can find the original design here.  I made it close to the original with a few adjustments.  And I am not sure who the original designer was because there is only a link to a picture.

I used two boxes of cake mix to make this cake.  The bottom layer I made in a spring form pan using one whole chocolate cake mix.  This time I used Betty Crocker, but any cake mix or homemade cake will do.  The top two layers are Betty Crocker yellow cake.

After cooling the cakes on the rack and trimming off any uneven bits, I put down the chocolate layer and covered it in green frosting.  I got this color with a mix of leaf green and moss green gel food coloring by Wilton.  I then outlined the eyes and nose of the alien with a toothpick and filled them in with black frosting.  Usually I make my own black frosting but this time I bought pre-made black in a squeeze tube because Walmart was out of black gel food coloring.  The tube was so easy and the color was great.  I may do this again in the future.

The recipe I use for all of the frosting except the black, you can find here.  It's the best one for decorating.  It is a very rich recipe and one I use only for special occasions, but it works so well!

As I said, the top two layers are yellow cake.  They were made in pans of two sizes, I think a 10-inch and an 8-inch, but I'm not exactly sure on that.  Either way, one is bigger than the other, but neither is as big as the spring form pan that I used for the bottom layer.

After I frosted the bottom layer and piped in some dots for an outline, I placed the larger yellow cake on top.  Next, I mixed up some of my vanilla buttercream with cocoa powder and brown gel food coloring.  The mix of food coloring and cocoa made just the right color.  I spread it over the entire second layer.

I did not want to put the fur on my Sasquatch yet because I knew it would interfere with frosting the top layer.  So I placed the next layer on top and frosted it with a layer of light blue frosting.  I used Wilton Sky Blue.

I didn't like it because it had no texture and didn't really look like water.  Referring back to the original I saw they piped on waves.  I tried that and hated it.  So I opted to dye some frosting a shade darker and sweep it on to look like waves.

Once the waves were done, I was ready to give the Sasquatch some fur.  I used a grass tip for this and piped it on starting at the base of the blue cake, making long strands down to the alien.  

Next I piped some eyes, a nose and a mouth onto my Sasquatch and piped a border layer at the base of my loch.  I let it sit that way overnight before I added on Nessie.  I didn't want to have the Loch Ness Monster topple over and ruin the whole thing.  

To make the Loch Ness Monster I simply used pre-made fondant from Wilton.  The night before I put it on, I shaped the fondant like play doh and tried my best!  I put some toothpicks in the bottom of the fondant and draped it over a cylinder and hoped it dried properly.  It did.  I think it looks like more of a snake, but it works!  They eyes I made by creating indents and piping on some white and black frosting.  Right before the party I stuck Nessie on using the toothpicks I had inserted into the fondant the night before.

So there you have it.  If you don't know what to make for your 13-year-old who likes mysterious creatures, here you go!  It's really not too hard!

Comment below if you like to make creative cakes for your kids!  Or maybe you have a question.  Leave it below and I'd love to help!


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Shopkins Birthday Cake

I don't know about your kids, but my daughter loves her Shopkins!  She attended a birthday party at a friend's house earlier in the year with a Shopkins theme and when it came time for her birthday, she just had to have the same!  I was happy to oblige.

My kids were a little late to the Shopkins game, but they've been collecting them for a while now.  I have to admit, the little figurines are quite cute.  When they first started collecting them it was sometimes difficult to find them in stock.  But now, after a year or so my kids have friends giving them their old ones.  Works for me!

Back to the party planning!

Once we had a theme we had to decide on a cake.  It had to reasonably meet my daughter's expectations and be within my skill set.  My daughter and I searched the internet for a while, trying to come up with a good idea.

We saw some simple cakes using the actual toys as decoration.  Not a bad idea.  My daughter wasn't interested in that style.  There were other elaborate cakes with so much detail I was not willing to even try.  Then one night while I was saying goodnight to my daughter, we looked at her Shopkins poster and saw Cheeky Chocolate.  "What about that one?"  I asked her.  She liked it!  The rest is history.

There are some errors in the design, but overall I think it turned out cute and resembles Cheeky Chocolate quite nicely.


Cheeky Chocolate Cake

Ingredients/materials:

Best Buttercream Icing
Wilton gel food color in Sky Blue
Wilton gel food color in Black
Wilton gel food color in Brown (optional)
Cocoa
2 box cake of choice
2 - 9x13 pans
frosting spreader
3-4 piping bags
writing tip(s)

Instructions:

Follow the instructions on your box cake mix and pour each cake into a 9x13 pan.

While the cake is cooking, mix up a batch of the Best Buttercream Icing.  Put 1/3 of the mixed frosting aside in a bowl and leave it white.  Cover.  Place 1/3 in another bowl, put aside and cover.  Leave last third of frosting in the mixer and very slowly add sky blue until you reach your desired color.  Cover and put aside.

To one of your bowls of white frosting, add a few tablespoons of cocoa.  You may need to add a small amount of cream to fix the consistency.  DO NOT mix in any black food coloring yet.  Add brown food color if necessary to get desired color.  Cover.

Once the cake has cooled, check if it is even.  If not, trim as needed.  Place one cake on desired tray then top lightly with white frosting.  Place the second cake on top of the frosting.  No frosting should be oozing out the edges.

Next, you will use the chocolate brown frosting to make the exposed chocolate bar.  Spread the frosting smoothly over the top of the cake where the chocolate bar should be.  Wipe off the frosting knife and gently drag it sideways to make 8 chocolate squares.  Then add some chocolate frosting to a piping bag fitted with a writing tip.  Make small hearts in each chocolate square.

TIP:  To make your frosting smooth, dip a clean frosting spreader in warm water, remove from water and shake off excess.  Use knife to smooth frosting before it hardens.  

Now you will take your blue frosting and spread it over the remainder of the cake.

After the blue is spread smoothly, take some of your white frosting and add it to a clean piping bag equipped with a writing tip.  Outline a white wrapper (look at picture for shape) bordering the brown and blue.  Then take your spreader or a smaller knife and fill the outline with white frosting.

Once the wrapper is complete, find a round template such as a glass and make a light mark where the eyes should go.  Outline the circle in white and fill in with white frosting.  Do the same for the inner brown part of the eye, using a smaller circle template.  The nose and inside of the mouth are also brown.

Now you will make your black frosting.  Take your chocolate frosting and mix in black food coloring until you achieve your desired color.  You will not get a good black without using chocolate frosting.  The amount of food coloring you would need would leave you with a very bitter frosting.  Add the frosting to a clean piping bag equipped with a writing tip and add the last details you see in the picture above.

There you have it!  Cheeky Chocolate.

I hope you enjoyed seeing this cute cake!  Let me know in the comments below if you've ever made a Shopkins cake or if you try this one out.


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Barbie Cake

My daughter wanted to have a Barbie theme for her birthday party this year.  Granted, we were having it at the local bowling alley, but a girl's gotta have decorations, right?  Well, we went to Walmart and got the necessary paper goods and picked up a couple boxes of cake mix.  I wasn't going to go all out this year with the cake. I was going to keep it simple and just frost it with colors that coordinated with the plates and napkins. 

Well, after talking to a friend of mine, Janna, I was convinced it would be easy to do a simple Barbie-themed cake.  She looked up a picture of the Barbie logo online and I took a peek.  From looking at it, I guessed it wouldn't be too difficult.