My son's 10th birthday was Gaming themed. Since Minecraft is his favourite game, I decided to use that for the cake. And the the rest really followed from that.
The checkerboard cake was quite a bit of work, but the effect was really cool. I used woodruff flavour, in the green cake layers as well as in the cream, which I personally don't like much but all the kids love it. So the cake was adored and declared yummy.
For her 16th birthday, my daughter was holding an "animated Disney" themed costume party and dressing herself as Belle. I pondered different cake ideas for quite a while. Many people making "Beauty and the Beast" cakes seem fond of using her yellow ball gown as inspiration, and I've seen some really pretty cakes based on this.
However, to me, what sets Belle apart from all the other princesses is that she's such a huge book nerd. So I went for a book and decorated with elements from the movie. And since there were a lot of other fairy tale characters at the party, I went with a book title that's both highly specific for Beauty and the Beast, but also works for other tales.
The cake is sponge cake filled with mango compote (bringing back the yellow of Belle's dress ^^) covered with cheese cream. The rose is marzipan.
This was a request by a colleague, as a gift to his wife for their wedding anniversary. (Apparently, DocMorris boots were the theme of their wedding.)
While the motif (this is life-sized 1:1) wasn't challenging per se, it sure was craft-wise. I made this in high summer, with the air warm and humid, so my buttercream kept melting on me. So i had to re-chill the cake every ten to twenty minutes, which the fondant didn't really like...
That was quite a mess. ^^ But in the end, it worked out, and the cake was adored and found delicious by all who got to eat it. Which is what counts. <3
(Under the fondant, this is vanilla cake filled with thin layers of vanilla buttercream.)
I made this cake for my brother's birthday party. He was having a big board games party, and The Settlers of Catan was probably THE game of our childhood. (My brothers and I got it for Christmas when I was barely a teen, and we played it countless times over the years. Now that I'm a grownup, I see its faults and have other games I love more. But this one will forever have a soft spot in my heart.)
Needless to say, it was a huge hit and my brother's grin of joy when he recignized the board was super rewarding. And it was super tasty, too!
The cake is a vegan "Swedische Apfeltorte" (basically sponge cake, apple compote and cream), but I used vegan cheese cream instead of pure whipping cream to get a sturdier cream.
This cake was a comission, requested by a colleague for his wife (who apparently, like probably most mums, makes birthday cakes for everyone in the family but never gets a fancy one for herself, so he figured it's high time to change that ❤️).
It's vegan chocolate cake (once again, the lovely recipe from https://biancazapatka.com/de/schoko-himbeer-torte/, with added cocoa nibs and chocolate chunks) filled & covered with dark ganache. The white keys and notes are white ganache, the inside of the piano is a mix of mostly white and a bit of dark ganache. The black is sugar writing. The piano lid is dark chocolate.
Craft-wise, I'm a bit unhappy with it. I still haven't figured out how to temper chocolate correctly, so I had to cover the solid-chocolate piano lid with ganache to hide the massive stains. And the ganache itself went out of emulsion halfway, so there are stains of cocoa butter everywhere.
But I guess it's still cool enough. And apparently, it was very chocolatey and yummy, and adored by everyone who got to eat it. So win. 😁
My son asked for a Rowlet (German: Bauz) cake for his birthday party this year, as it is his favourite Pokemon. Since he likes neither marzipan nor fondant, I covered the cake in cheese cream.
Of course, hiding Smarties in a funfetti cake is a cheap trick, but it never fails to delight all kids present. ^^
This cake was for my daughter's Jugendweihe (a non-religious German coming-off-age celebration at age 14). The idea I wanted to express that the Book of Life now lies before her, still mostly blank and waiting to be filled with memories. Which is why the little chocolate box labelled "memories" contained little photos of events and people in her life.
As she is a huge book lover, she was delighted by the cake as well as the metaphor. As were all the guests. :-)
The cake itself was a vegan chocolate cake with cherries (recipe from Bianca Zapatka, only slightly adjusted to our taste with more sugar and more cocoa), filled with self-made cherry jam and covered with a vegan ganache and marzipan.
(And boy, do I love it when my vegan cakes taste better than all the non-vegan ones on the table. ^^' The only thing non-vegan about this cake was the memory box because of the KitKats.)
My son really loves this type of cake, which we call "Butterkekskuchen". It's sponge cake covered with vanilla custard covered with individual cookies, which have been covered with icing and decorated in whichever way. It's always a big hit at school buffets and the like - there, I decorate the cookies individually, with tiny sweets or sprinkles.
So, my son wanted such a cake for hus birthday party last year. And I really wanted to make a football (soccer) themed cake.
This was the result. Very easy and quick to make, in comparison with other cakes I've made. Was a huge hit at the party. :-)
My daughter asked for a dragon cake for this year's birthday party.
The dragon is marzipan (plain marzipan painted with food color including a bit of metallic red edible glitter), its "mountain" is a vegan "mole's cake" (basically chocolate cake filled with banana and a whipped cream containing chocolate splinters, formed to look like a molehill).
I'm quite happy with how it turned out, especially since it was comparatively quick and easy. Originally, I had planned to include way more details on the dragon, but I actually think it works better this way.
I'm slowly learning that when it comes to cake art, less is often more. It fits better with the transient nature of cakes - since they are usually only admired for a short time and then eaten. ^^
This cake took a loooooong time between initial idea and completion.
Back when I was planning the wave cake, in 2018, I came upon a set of silicon molds for gear wheels that screamed "steampunk" at me. Instantly, I thought "I could make a steampunk cake for my sister with these!" and bought them.
They have been lying around since then. Mostly, because for this kind of cake, you need a lot of eaters. ^^
Well, my sis finally had a big party last weekend, so here was my opportunity!
Inside, the lower tier is gluten free, soy free and vegan almond sponge cake filled with "cream" and summer berries. The upper tier is a classic sponge cake filled with a different vegan "cream" and blueberries. (The latter had to be improvised after the initial attempt did not work out at all - the cake crumbled, the cream coagulated and the blueberry jam was way too liquid.)
Everything was coated in vegan white citrus ganache and covered with marzipan.
Transportation of "the monster" was another issue, but happily, my new cake transport box worked perfectly!
This cake was for my cousin’s Jugendweihe. He’s a huge Legend of Zelda fan, so I decided to give this theme a go. (I’m not much of a gamer, myself, but geeky topics are always a joy! :-D) I’ve seen a lot of gorgeous Zelda cakes out there, but I really wanted to make one without fondant or marzipan, so this is what I went for instead.
The base is vegan chocolate cake covered in & filled with vegan dark ganache.
The shield is vegan almond sponge cake (from https://biancazapatka.com/de/himbeer-mandel-torte/) filled with home made cherry jelly and covered with Swiss meringue buttercream. (I tried for a vegan version of the latter, but failed utterly. Will give it another try another time.)
The little Navi cakepop was made from residue from the shield and its wings from edible paper. The sword is flower paste. (Lesson learned: use a center stick on this kind of miniature, or it will break! :-( )
The cake was a huge hit at the party - my cousin squeed with delight! :-D
My son chose Ninjago for this year’s birthday party theme. He doesn’t like fondant, marzipan or the like, which would have made a Ninja face easy. But he does like jelly, especially woodruff jelly. So I decided to make him a Ninjago cake with jelly. :-D
Pretty cool for relatively little work. :-D
The little white specs were not intended - things did not quite go as originally planned and some jelly got under the layer of cream and floated it to the top. -_-
But all kids were very happy, so I’ll call it a win, anyway. :-)
My daughter is currently a huge Loki fan, so she requested a Loki cake for this year's birthday party. *grins*
This is sponge cake, filled with vegan coco strawberry tiramisu cream (based on silken tofu and cocomilk), apricoted with strawberry jam and covered with marzipan. The horns are chocolate rice krispie treats covered with marzipan, and the figurines are pure marzipan.
I had quite some leftover hazelnut cake from the Hedwig cake taking up space in the freezer. So I decided to make these cute little hedgehogs to use it up. I just added a bit of nougat spread and plant based yoghurt, rolled it up into little hedgehogs, covered them in dark chocolate and sprinkled some chocolate sprinkles on top. For cake pop related things, that was relativly little work. :-P
I used too much of the yoghurt, so the whole dough turned out rather moist. So the results taste more like cake-flavored pralines than cake pops. They are delicious, though! Which is, after all, what counts. :-)
This year's Halloween cake was, for once, a complete copycat thing, at least look-wise. The inspiration was this: https://www.sugarhero.com/red-velvet-marshmallow-spiderweb-cake/
I merely made the spider deliberately more cute and less scary, for the 6-year-olds at the table, and went for less height to avoid leftovers.
Taste- and material-wise, though, I basically changed everything:
- This is chocolate cake, filled with cherry marmelade, instead of red velvet cake.
- I used dark ganache as frosting, instead of chocolate buttercream.
- The spider is marzipan, not modelling chocolate.
It was very yummy, and pleasantly quick and easy to do for such a cool look!
For next time: hotter melted marshmallows make thinner threads, which look better. Don't be afraid to re-heat!
(In German, because this only works locally, anyway. ;-))
Weil das Thema immer mal wieder aufkommt: ja, ich mache Motivtorten sehr gern auch auf Anfrage für andere. :-)
Voraussetzungen:
- Der Besteller muss die Torte bei mir in Dresden abholen können oder sich anderweitig um den Transport kümmern.
- Der Besteller zahlt die Zutaten, und ich verwende hochwertige Zutaten. (Tierischen Produkte kaufe ich z.B. im Biomarkt, nichttierische teilweise auch.) Ich kann eine ganz grobe Kostenschätzung vorher abgeben, aber final wisst ihr erst hinterher, wie viel es kostet. Ich gebe gerne Kassenbons mit, möchte aber nicht verhandeln müssen. Für eine normale Torte könnt ihr locker mit 30 € rechnen - wobei der Spielraum riesig ist, je nach Zutaten und z. B. ob Fondant verwendet wird.
- Für meine Arbeitszeit berechne ich nichts, ist ja mein Hobby und ich habe keine entsprechende Ausbildung oder einen Gewerbeschein o.ä. und auch nicht vor, das nebenberuflich zu machen. Ich möchte nur halt nicht draufzahlen. ;-)
- Der Besteller gibt ein grobes Thema vor, die kreative Ausgestaltung ist mir überlassen. :-) Ich nehme eure Ideen gerne auf, möchte aber eben auch selber kreativ sein und nicht einfach nur eine fertige Vorlage abarbeiten.
- Mehrstöckige Torten scheitern tendenziell an limitierter Kühlkapazität. Also, ich kann schauen, was ich hinkriege, aber eine klassische Hochzeitstorte wird da eher schwierig.
- Ich muss ALLERSPÄTESTENS 2 Wochen vor Termin Bescheid wissen. Früher ist sehr viel besser! Gerne auch mehrere Monate oder auch ggf. Jahre vorher. Generell gilt: wenn ihr den ungefähren Termin wisst und drüber nachdenkt, irgendwann anzufragen: fragt an. ;-) Ich nehme mir gern lange Zeit, in Ruhe zu recherchieren und zu planen und Motive zu überlegen, und das geht mit Vorlauf einfach deutlich besser. Und zum eigentlichen Torte-Herstellen brauch ich ja auch noch ein paar Tage.
- Ich behalte mir grundsätzlich immer vor, Anfragen (zeitnah nach Eingang der Anfrage) abzulehnen. Es ist ein Hobby, und meine Freizeit ist begrenzt. Der Termin muss für mich passen, und mehr als 1-2 handvoll Torten im Jahr schaffe ich nicht. Auch daher: zeitiges Anfragen erhöht die Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass ich es einrichten kann, drastisch! :-)
- Ich mache das als Privatperson, d.h. der Besteller trägt das lebensmittelsicherheitstechnische Risiko. Ich arbeite selbstverständlich nach den Regeln der Küchenhygiene, aber ich lasse mich nicht verklagen, weil sich jemand irgendwo nen Magen-Darm-Infekt einfängt. ;-) Das heißt auch: wenn die Torte für ein Event mit Catering vorgesehen ist, sprecht unbedingt mit denen ab, ob es für die ok ist, dass eine privat gebackene Torte dazu kommt. Gerade wenn das Catering von der Location ausgerichtet wird, geht dies aus versicherungstechnischen Gründen nämlich oft leider nicht.
- Ich darf die Torte und ggf. den Prozess der Herstellung fotografieren, und darf diese Bilder frei verwenden, auch für mein Tortenblog.
Benötigte Infos für eine Bestellung:
Rahmenbedingungen:
- Thema und alles zum Motivwunsch
- Datum, wann die Torte gebraucht wird (wenn es lange im Voraus/ noch nicht klar ist, reicht auch ein ungefährer Zeitrahmen)
- gewünschte Größe / wie viele Esser ca.?
- Nahrungsmittelunverträglichkeiten/-allergien etc. unter den eingeplanten Essern. (Ich kann mit so ziemlich jeder Einschränkung arbeiten, aber ich muss es wissen.)
- Füllung (schoko, vanille, nussig, fruchtig (welche Frucht?)?; eher fluffig (Richtung Mousse) oder dichter (Marmelade/Ganache?)?)
- Teig-Füllungs-Verhältnis? (Lieber viel oder wenig Creme?)
- Verkleidung (Fondant, Marzipan, Creme, Ganache? Wenn nicht ausdrücklich erbeten, arbeite ich am Liebsten ohne Fondant oder Marzipan und dekoriere lieber mit Creme oder Ganache, wobei das die Optik halt ggf. einschränkt. Was trotzdem geht, sieht man beispielsweise unter dem #nofondant Hashtag. :-))
Und was euch sonst noch so wichtig wäre. :-)
Ich geb dann zeitnah Rückmeldung, ob ich es einrichten kann und was für Rückfragen ich ggf. habe.
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