Birthdays Cake

CAKING IT: October is a busy month 'round these parts, at least in the birthday sense. It's Rick's birthday, my birthday and Annabelle's birthday.

We really aren't too into making cakes for ourselves, so we like to take our birthdays as an opportunity to make a cake for someone else. 

This week, we made a cake for a teen living in a homeless shelter. Like Annabelle, the girl loves to dabble in the arts. So Annabelle, our resident artist, helped make an art cake for her fellow Libra.

We often look online for ideas, but Annabelle didn't like what she saw. All of the art-themed cakes she was coming across skewed too young for a teen, she figured.

So, we came up with our own plan. We like to start with a conceptual drawing.

 

The birthday girl wanted a chocolate cake, so CJ baked a three-layer one. I made chocolate filling and added some mini chocolate chips for a little bonus surprise. 

Meanwhile, Annabelle made modeling chocolate that would be shaped into brushes, tubes of paint and more. 

Those shapes were then covered with fondant we made. 

We always have some trouble. This time it came in the shape of edible paint brushes. One broke in multiple ways while being attached to the cake. Sigh. We solved that by making it shorter and stronger. In the end, we were the only ones who would ever know that it wasn't the original piece. (Well, if you're reading this, I guess you know, too.)

FYI, on the photo at the top of the post, I Photoshopped the birthday girl's name, for anonymity.