Cast party cake for The Vagina Monologues

My lovely coworker, Kaitlin, directed a fantastic production of The Vagina Monologues last week. I was really impressed by the whole production. When she asked if I would make a cast party cake, how could I possibly turn down the chance to do something like this? So, I started my research several months ago. And, by the way, I do not suggest googling vagina cake images. Some of them are disturbing! After lots of jokes and a decision that we did not want the cake to look like a bachelor party treat, I went with a line from one of the monologues: "My vagina is a shell, a tulip, and a destiny." And, I came up with the Vagina Flower, inspired by some of the (strange) female genital art on www.etsy.com.

The vagina flower is made from fondant. The silver sparkle is luster dust that i brushed on with a paintbrush. Each flower petal is individual. Trying to make the flower in one piece with five petals didn't go so swell. I kinda tried to make each layer of the female parts a little darker than the outer layer... so the flower was white. the next layer was a light pink. Then a bit darker pink, then the darkest pink.

Kaitlin's production raised $2500 for the Center for Prevention of Abuse. ROCK ON! What a fantastic effort for a great cause. Way to go, Kaitlin.

Blackhawks Jersey

Jake, my second favorite teenager in the world, requested a Blackhawks cake. I've enjoyed watching Jake play hockey over this past season, and he's a fun player to watch!

I wanted to come up with something really fun for Jake when his mom asked me to create something for his monumental 13th birthday. I came up with this Blackhawk's Jersey cake.

The jersey is made out of fondant. I recreated the emblem out of fondant as well, piecing like I did on the previous Blackhawks cake. I curved the jersey arms and body so it would look kind of dimensional. He seemed to like it. I think he pulled the emblem off the chest and stuck it on his head. He had already eaten most of a chocolate chip skillet cookie sundae before I got there with the cake... sugar OD? Perhaps...

Roller Skating cake

Maggie requested a roller skating cake for her birthday at the skating rink. I had free reign (like I normally do) so I just asked her for 3 colors and went to work.

The yellow circle is fondant, and I just needed a surface for the skates that wouldn't let them sink into the pink icing.

I made the skates out of fondant, and I think the wheels are fondant, too.I used a little bit of sucker stick or toothpick (can't remember) to hold the wheels in place. The laces are icing with a really fine dot tip.

South Pacific cast party cake

This cake was created for the cast party of a South Pacific production. It was really fun to make. Once again, lots of fondant for the characters.















The palm trees are thick pretzel sticks with paper leaves wired to the top. I would have liked to do fondant leaves, but time ran away from me and I was lucky to get done the parts I absolutely needed to have!

The blue and green icing is just tube icing that was glittery. I thought it looked nice as water. The 'sand' is crushed graham crackers. The grass 'skirt' on the hula guy is paper as well. Cutting the fondant so thin made it break apart too easily. The paper ended up looking pretty good.

Chicago Blackhawks hockey cake

This cake was created for Ian, who was turning 3 years old. I also call this cake Revenge Tastes Like Buttercream. If you get that, you know the story. If you don't get it, it's too hard to explain! LOL


Every time I do something new and different, I say "this is my favorite thing I have done yet." This cake is no exception. I have never pieced together a logo this complicated before using fondant. I have also not created as detailed a character as this hockey player. And last, I have never actually covered anything with fondant, so covering the Ding-Dong hockey puck was new, too!

I don't even know where to begin on what I did on this cake, except that I printed out several different sizes of the Blackhawks logo so that I would have a variety to choose from when assembling my cake. The big logo on the cake is about 6 inches in diameter. I cut up a printed logo and used the pieces to cut out the correct parts from different colors of fondant. I purchased all precolored fondant to save my hands all the kneading and mixing. I mixed the orange myself, and the skin color. All others were precolored.


The hockey player was made out of fondant. The hockey stick was fondant wrapped around a core that was a sucker stick. I rolled fondant super thin to create the 'tape' on the stick. The logo on the jersey was just paper (I cheated!) and the 'puck' is a fondant wrapped Ding Dong with a paper logo and icing writing. The guy was originally supposed to stand up, however, these fondant figures are HEAVY, and he had lots of pieces.



The Blackhawks logo was pieced with fondant cut out with an exacto knife. Yes, every piece! I was super proud of how this turned out. It really looked neat. It was easier than I expected, because I just kept cutting out the pieces of the logo like a puzzle, putting the paper on top of the fondant, and carving it out. Then placing on the pieces already assembled. It was fun to do. Time consuming, but fun to do.

Star Wars - Death Star cake

This little boy had the Treasure Chest cake for his 5th birthday. He requested a Star Wars Lego cake for his 6th Birthday. I did some fast research, then asked my good buddy Matt to look at this cake link, and tell me what that weird gray thing was at the bottom, and if it was significant to the cake design. He stared at me like I had grown a second head, and he said "Tess, that's the *death star*." At my blank look, he quickly searched and pulled up Wikipedia's description of the Death Star. Uh. OK. Yeah, it's important. At that point I shamefully admitted I have seen exactly ZERO of the Star Wars movies. Yes, I am a geek that has NOT seen Star Wars. However, I can make a Star Wars cake, so THERE!

I cheated and bought lego figurines for the cake. I DO have a life outside of crafting, yanno. So, Lego Store got my business. I found these cute mini figures, that were actually made to be magnets, but take them off their base and they were perfect for this cake.

The Death Star was made with the ball pan from Wilton (gee, I am a walking talking Wilton advertisement). I sprinkled it with black edible glitter flake stuff, and tried to recreate the surface, not very successfully, I thought.

But, I do like the laser beam touch, which was made out of a battery operated fiber optic light thingy that is supposed to be used in floral arrangements. A green Sharpie turned the fiber optic strands the right color. It was hard to see in the picture, but the laser beam was actually green and lit up. Ooooh. Aaaaaah. :)

The letters are cut out of fondant with cookie cutters. And the logo was printed, cut and pieced together to try to be super accurate.



It wasn't my idea to have Obi Wan and Darth on top, but that was my son's suggestion, so I did it. I also got pictures of my son attempting to eat the entire Death Star later. He made it about 3/4 of the way through, then looked a little sick. Hey, he tried, though.

Safari cake

This was made for my daughter's fourth birthday party. She wanted safari animals, and specifically, an alligator, a hippo and a monkey. So, of course the Princess gets what she requests...

All animals are made out of fondant. This was my first attempt at creating figures. I did get some inspiration from online searches, but the water from Jello idea is one that has been in my mind for some time.

I made blue jello and let it set in a 16" round cake pan. Then, i assembled the tiered cake, with fondant cut out leaves and animals, on top of the jello jungle watering hole. The best part was that the hippo and alligator sort of started to melt into the jello, creating some bubbles around where they were sitting on the water. It made it sort of like the water was moving around their bodies. Kind of unexpected, but cool!

WARNING! The animals sitting on the jello will absorb moisture from the jello and be very sticky when you take them off!


Here is the princess with her cake. You can see that I have a problem making small cakes... they just get bigger and bigger!


And here is a close up of the King of the Jungle:

Twins Birthday! Monkeys jumping on the bed cake

This cake was some work. Probably the most complicated thing I have done, outside of wedding cakes (damn, where are those wedding cake pictures???) Mostly because it wasn't just one cake, but one monster cake and 2 smash cakes.


First the smash cakes... similar to the monkey I posted before, but these 2 didn't turn out quite as good, I don't think. But this was at the end of about 3 days of marathon baking/making/decorating. I cut myself a little slack on that part of the project.



Next, the centerpiece was inspired by the 5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed story/game. This was a huge, HEAVY cake. The bed is a two layer 12x15 cake with raspberry filling. It is iced with buttercream. The bedspread is made out of Fruit by the Foot. I cut the fruit into 14" and 18" strips. After doing that, I weaved them together, using a bit of water on a paintbrush to seal the ends of the strips. After completing that, I draped the blanket over the "bed" and turned back the top of the blanket.

I created 2 pillows out of fondant, and added ribbons of icing on the pillows and around the bottom of the bedspread for ruffles.


The headboard is gumpaste that I colored a very light brown, then I colored another chunk a darker brown. Then, I mixed them together, but not too much, because I wanted it to be swirled to resemble wood. Mission accomplished!! I rolled it out flat and cut it freehand. I let the gum paste dry for a couple of days so it would be nice and hard. The bedposts are rolled with a gum paste ball attached to the top.

The bananas are just candy that was purchased in individual packets for party favors from Oriental Trading, I think. You could pick all the bananas out of 15 boxes of Runts, but this was probably easier.

Next, the adorable monkeys! Each of these creatures was made out of fondant. I created a different pose for each one, and a different facial expression. I can now make a monkey out of fondant in about 20 minutes, if all the fondant is already colored. Boy, were my hands sore after kneading all that color. I did cheat and use the precolored fondant for the black portions.

The noses were a little unique. Just a small ball, and I used a dry embossing stylus to make the nostrils. I think it adds a little something, dontcha think?

Here are a couple of closeups of the monkeys.


My favorite part of doing this cake? Watching my 12 year old son eat the big huge ball of Fruit by the Foot after I took it off to cut the cake. He was green by the time he was done. Mmmm, love me some Red Dye #40!