Elmo Cake

Today we are going to revisit the tracing concept I spoke about last time. My now one year old loves Elmo, so I wanted to make him an Elmo cake for his 1st birthday (last month). Rather than buying the character pan, that I probably won't use again, I transferred a drawing of Elmo's face onto a round 8" cake.

I haven't tried making my own cakes...yet. I wanted to try the Betty Crocker mix for this cake. I chose a plain cake and added almond flavoring to it. 

I use Bakers Joy to grease the pan that I bake in. After 10-15 minutes of taking the cake out of the oven, I flip it upside down and leave it there for at least 15 minutes. I feel that it flattens the dome that is on the top of the cake, so it's less cake that I have to cut off to make it level. 

For the frosting, I like to use a less sweet version of butter cream. I find the mixture of butter and vegetable shortening less sweet than the version of only vegetable shortening. 

The butter cream recipe that I am currently using is:

1/2 cup solid vegetable shortening

(Do not get buttered flavoring and add 1 teaspoon of water if using Crisco or it says no trans-fat)

1/2 cup non-salted butter or margarine

1 tsp. clear vanilla extract

4 cups of confectioners sugar (Dixi and Costco brands have worked best for me)

2 tbsps. milk 

Cream butter and shortening with electric mixer. Add vanilla. Gradually add sugar, one cup at a time. Beating well on medium speed. When all sugar has been mixed in, icing will appear dry. Add milk and beat at medium speed until light and fluffy. Keep icing covered with a damp cloth until ready to use. Keep in fridge when not in use in an airtight container. Yields around 3 cups. 

This recipe is from a 1989 Wilton Yearbook that my dad had from years back. 

When frosting your cake, you want to be sure you thin out your frosting. Being the recipe I use has butter in it, it will already be around medium consistency. I usually just add a tablespoon of water and feel it out. You do not want it runny though! Just thin enough where a spoon will fall to the side of the bowl if placed in the center. 

When icing your cake, you want to be sure your spatula only touches frosting. If it touches cake, you will have crumbs mixed in with your frosting and it's not pretty. 

I like to use this order when frosting: Frost the top - Frost the side - Pull in the extra frosting from the outer top sides into the middle of the cake to make a nice sharp edge.

Now take a printout or drawing of your preferred picture. Take some piping gel and color it the same color you want your drawing to be. For example, I did Elmo, he is red, so I used red piping gel. You want to make an outline of the drawing on the opposite side of the ink, as seen below.

The hardest part in this is making sure when you transfer this to your cake that you center your drawing.

Once you have the paper placed where you want it, piping gel side on the cake, brush over it lightly with a small dry paint brush. 

Once you slowly remove the paper off the cake, you will end up with an outline like this:

Using your butter cream, color a good portion of it red if you're doing Elmo. You want to color a little more than what you are going to use because if you run short, it will be difficult to get the same exact color. To get a deep red, you want to mix Red-Red and Christmas Red together if you're using the Wilton gel colors. Our Wilton instructor told us that the gel colors are better than the water based ones so you do not end up watering down the butter cream. 

I did small stars for everything other than the nose, somewhat like a character cake. I used tip #18. 

Black is difficult to make because it's so dark and you only need so much, so I just bought the tube. All you have to do is add the tip to the opening and the screw part of the coupler and you're ready to go!

For elmo's nose, I used tip #12, fill in the space then smooth out the lines.

Rather than doing stars for the pupils of his eyes, next time I may flatten it out. May look better?

I thought this style of sides was cute for a child's cake. First, using tip #3 to pipe vertical zigzag lines about a 1 in. apart along the side of the cake. Use tip #18 to pipe the zigzag boarder on the bottom. Then use tip #12 to pipe the bead top boarder. 

I also used the tip #12 to pipe the large circles around the cake for some dimension. 

Until Next Time, Happy Baking!