American Baker in Germany

 This cake was for my kids to celebrate the first day of school this year. This is leftover cake from another project. This is a 5-inch round red velvet cake (without food coloring) filled with vanilla American buttercream. I crumb coated the cake and chilled the cake in the fridge before frosting it again. And I made some rainbow fondant including a peachy skin color to decorate with. My 11-year-old daughter wanted to help. I covered the cake with white fondant and cut out some black letters spelling out Back to School and placed them on the cake board. Then I cut out an apple out of red fondant and a leaf from green. I made a pencil out of yellow, peach and black fondant. And placed it on top of the cake. I added a yellow rectangle on the side of the cake. And I painted ruler markings with black food coloring. I made a paint palette out of peach fondant. Then I started adding color splotches on the paint palette. I made a paintbrush out of black, peach and red fondant. Finally, I...

This cake is part of our series in how to dress up a sheet cake. Back to school this year is special since it will be the first time some children will have gone to school for nearly six months due to COVID-19. I wanted to make it special. I started out with some vegan American buttercream and I put some in two bowls coloring one black and the other brown.  I frosted the top of my sheet cake with black buttercream.  Then I frosted the sides with brown.  I put the rest of the brown buttercream in a piping bag with a ribbed, flat piping tip.  Then I piped a line around the edges of the cake.  The lines overlapped a bit and I piped another, shorter line if there were any gaps.  Then I put away the buttercream and got out the fondant. I rolled out some white fondant and cut out the letters to spell Back to School, ABC and 123.  Then I placed the Back to School in the middle of the cake.  ABC and 123 diagonally in the corne...

This cake was to celebrate my oldest daughter's first day of first grade. It's a huge deal here in Germany. My daughter was vacillating between joy and tears. But, being the daughter of a cake decorator, she has very detailed ideas of what kind of cake she wants. She wanted the cake to be covered in pink fondant. She wanted school supplies on it, but preferably not on the top. She wanted chocolate cake and Swiss meringue buttercream. I started out by getting out all colors of fondant.  I wanted to make some colored pencils. I start out by making a snake of the color I'm using and cutting them in short lengths. Then I made tiny little cone shapes of the same color.  Then I get some flesh-colored fondant out and roll it into a cone shape.  I trim the back end to make it flat.  Then I cut off the tip to make it flat, too.  Then, I put some edible glue on the end of the yellow cylinder.  I stick on the flesh-colored cone and add some...