Buzz Lightyear: A New Hope

My friend Scott requested a Buzz Lightyear cake for a birthday party last Saturday. I had already done a Buzz Lightyear cake before and was at least familiar with the work that was involved with such an undertaking. This one, you may recall, requires seven different icing colors and whole lotta stars. It's a "fun" cake to do, but also a lot of work.

The last time I made this cake, I was SO mad at Wilton because I thought the instructions were faulty. The insert in the pan that has the picture you're suppose to follow for colors and lines actually became inverted once the cake was out of it. So what you end up working with is a mirror image of the cake you need to create. I panicked when I discovered this, but my brother came to my rescue. He scanned in the picture from the pan and did a mirror image print of it for me. It totally made things a little easier, but my husband also helped me out by etching the lines of the image into the buttercream for me. I'm artistic in a sense, but my art is really limited. I can't free-hand draw to save my life, but I'm happy my husband can. I think the cake I made for Dylan last year turned out very well, all things considered.

So, when I was asked to do this cake again, I knew there would be a lot of work involved in getting it done. I baked the cake. I had it filled and crumb-coated and asked my husband to help me out again by free-hand drawing Buzz's image to the buttercream. But as he was doing it this time, I realized that what we were doing was completely insane and unnecessary. I'm a Wilton INSTRUCTOR for crying out loud!!! I KNOW better that this! A piping gel transfer was the answer I was looking for.

I took the paper insert that came with the pan and placed a piece of wax paper over it. I then began tracing the image onto the wax paper, like this:

When it was done, I took the wax paper, flipped it gel-side-down and carefully placed it on the crumb-coated cake. Then, I took a paint brush and lightly traced the pattern onto the cake, like this:

(The picture of Buzz you see in the background was the one my brother made for me last year. It's the mirror image of what comes with the pan. )

After all of the tracing is complete, I carefully removed the wax paper and was left with this edible image on the cake.

After doing all of the outlining and filling in with stars, Buzz turned out like this:

I had some extra batter and frosting and threw in a few cupcakes as well.

I hope the birthday party went well! And I hope that the next person who tries to tackle this cake, finds this blog. Seriously...the piping gel transfer made all the difference!

"Mooooobagawk!!"

Danny is my wonderful husband whose birthday we celebrated this weekend. I've been pretty busy with the whole "cake thing" these last few months but the WHOLE reason I took the classes in the first place, was to be able to make nice cakes for my family. So, when Danny told me to "keep it simple" for his birthday, I looked at him like he was crazy. Here, I thought he wanted a cake in the shape of a human arm, bone and all! I was seriously going to make him that cake, but after looking at a few Google images of just that sight, both Danny and I agreed that it was a little (a LOT) too gross to serve our family. I mean...REALLY. Then, he wanted an R2D2 cake. 3-D. Which nearly brought me to tears. When was I going to have the time to make that one? Maybe for his fiftieth birthday. Maybe.

So to give me more ideas about what to do for his cake, he said, "I like movies, the Academy Awards..." Yeah, yeah, yeah... Danny really didn't need a 4-tiered cake, so I could keep it simple in terms of design, but I wanted him to have a cake that was meaningful and truly him.

Danny IS a huge fan of movies and I really wanted to incorporate something about that passion in the cake. And I remembered that when he was a Hall Director at Ripon College many moons ago, he created a group for film enthusiasts just like him. They called themselves the "Cinemaniacs". Danny made a really wierd logo with a cow/chicken (yeah, you read that right), and started a film festival for the students and community members. The rest is history.

I searched high and low for a copy of the logo he made. I finally found it on the Ripon College website (Facebook also has a Cinemaniacs page). And here is the "Moooobagawk". Danny will have to fill us all in on the meaning behind the cow/chicken and what it has to do with film, but it's truly a Danny creation and one that I wanted to incorporate onto his cake.

The great thing about teaching the Wilton classes is that I, too, am learning. I've been showing my class participants how to do a piping gel transfer. That's when you trace an image onto wax/parchment paper using piping gel, then you place the wax/parchment paper onto the cake surface. Once that's done, you decorate away. That's how I was able to get the logo onto Danny's cake. If I was a better artist, I may be able to do this free-hand...but I am not.

When I finally showed the cake to Danny, he cried out, "Oh Moobagawk!" and was pleased with the design I chose for him. The surprise was the actual cake itself. I made a yellow sponge cake with absolutely amazing strawberry buttercream. This is called a "vertical" or "spiral" cake and it.is.divine.

Happy early birthday to you, Danny! I love you so!