A new (perhaps ill-fated) hobby...you tell me

Last year, Evan insisted that he wanted a Buzz Lightyear birthday. I had no problem finding the invitations, plates, cups, etc. for a Buzz-themed party, but after checking with several bakeries, it became clear that the cake would be more difficult. Since characters like Buzz are licensed, bakeries can't make them unless they buy the license from Pixar (or whomever). So,

I determined that there was no reason I could not make my own. After running several google searches, I found an explanation for a technique called an icing transfer that sounded easy enough. The steps included: 1) Find a coloring book picture of Buzz, 2) tape wax paper over said picture, 3) trace the picture with black frosting onto the wax paper, 4) fill in colors, 5) put white icing backing to hold it together, 6) flip entire transfer onto cake at appointed time. Easy enough, right? Here is what Buzz looked like when I finished him - still affixed to the wax paper.

The tricky part was flipping him onto the cake. See, this particular Buzz was huge. As you can see from the photo below, I almost dropped him off the top of the cake. Mom and I had to do some damage control to make it look like we meant for his head to be nearly hanging off the top, but Evan was thrilled, the other moms at the party were impressed, and I thought my first foray into cake decorating went pretty well.

Fast forward almost one year. Pressley has decided that she wants a Little Mermaid party this year. She is obsessed with all things Ariel. So, of course I decided that I would do an Ariel cake for her. But, having had the problems with figuring out how to flip the transfer onto the cake, I volunteered to make an Easter cake for the family Easter dinner so I could practice my craft. I found a cute little Easter Bunny coloring book page to use for the bunny.

This time, I decided I would make the cake too. (Last time, I bought the cake from Rhodes and put the Buzz on there after I picked it up. But Rhodes' white frosting was a different white than mine, and being OCD and all, I decided it would be best to do the whole thing from scratch myself. Plus, I usually get a pound cake from Rhodes and I can make a mean pound cake myself. I've never made my pound cake recipe in anything but the bundt-type pan, so I wanted to practice that too.)

So, last week sometime, I outlined the bunny picture with the black frosting and froze it. After we got back from the lake, I made a half batch of buttercream and made all the colors and filled in my bunny. Then, I froze the whole thing and waited. I made the cake yesterday after we got home from the Easter Egg hunt at church (don't worry - I will post pictures of that in due time...). I frosted it while dinner was in the oven and then set out to do the transfer. Ummmm...let's just say it did not go as planned. The colored frosting did not want to peel away from the wax paper. That was not at all the problem with Buzz. Buzz wanted to peel away from the wax paper so quickly that I couldn't place him on the cake precisely. My little bunny friend placed just fine, but then this is what happened when I peeled off the paper. I wanted to cry, but I was simply too tired to exert the effort.

So, after the kids were in bed, I set about fixing the dern thing. After being on my feet for what seemed like all day, it was the last thing I wanted to do, but I couldn't present it like that! Plus, I needed to know I could fix a disaster if it happens again with Ariel. I mixed a new batch of pink, gray and yellow frosting and set about it. It took about an hour, but I finally got it to the point that I think it should have looked like in the first place. And, I think I learned from my mistake. I think that the problem was that I used too much corn syrup to thin the colored frosting and it just simply never set up in the freezer like it was supposed to.

Here is the finished product:

Happy Easter, indeed. I will blog again later tonight or tomorrow to post pictures from our fun-filled weekend. And, at some point, I'll double back and tell you about the zoo. I'm still having nightmares about that, but maybe with some therapy I can talk about it in a day or two. :-)