"Desserted" Island

Finally! We are posting pictures of the "desserted" island cake we made about a month ago. This cake was made a week before the pirate ship cake, and roughly 5 months after the playground cake...obviously these posts are not in chronological order. It has been a busy time since we made the pirate ship cake with Paul starting a new job and us moving to a new town. We hope to get back to creating cakes soon, but for now we'll just have to reminisce about the cakes we have already made. In the intervening time we did put together two other cakes and a batch of cupcakes (for Kathy's birthday!). Maybe we'll do another post with pictures of those cakes together.

So here is the island cake:

The cake itself is from a box, probably white or yellow, whatever was in the cabinet. The frosting was the powdered sugar/Crisco shortening recipe that Paul likes so well. This cake was one that Kathy has wanted to make for some time; there is a how-to for this design in one of her cake books. We took some liberties in preparing the cake and ventured away from the step-by-step process provided by the book. It helped the cake be unique and a lot of fun to build.

There are two layers of the cake: a square base, 10" by 10" and an island cut from a 10" circle. The boulders with waves crashing upon them are coconut candies of some kind, they fit the part perfectly. The vegetation is created with rolled icing (store bought this time), with a palm tree trunk built out of Rolo chocolate covered caramels. For structural integrity there is a toothpick helping to keep the tree up. Cocoa mix was sprinkled around to indicate dirt, as well as some chocolate crumbs left over form trying to carve the hut with chocolate. The carving didn't work, so more rolled icing was used to slap four walls together. It was then painted with melted chocolate and covered with a grass thatched roof of more rolled icing.

The water was a lot of fun to create. Once the icing was spread out we just used the spreaders to create swoops and swirls. Then, using white icing, we created the look of white caps on the waves. It was really easy and came out looking amazing! But perhaps we are a bit biased in our judgment.

Fondant, or rolled icing, can be great to work with, you can make so many neat items. The leaves on the palm tree, the flowers, the thatched roof, and the treasure map were all made from the stuff. Melted chocolate or food coloring paint can be used to dress it up quite nicely. And depending on if you make it yourself or buy it, it can taste great (or terrible). On the other hand, it can be a mess to work with. It is sticky and sometimes unforgiving. Overall it is a great resource for constructing a creative and imaginative, fully edible, great tasting cake.