Not a frozen cake…a Frozen cake!

The finished product…a Frozen cake that is NOT frozen! And the figures were plastic. Sue me…I cheated and bought them. The trees are ice cream cones piped with royal icing.

Update: a followup post for the Frozen cake How To is HERE.

As you know, I’ve been in the process of creating ice and snow in my kitchen…as seen HERE and HERE.

The big day was yesterday and the birthday girl was thrilled to see her cake at last.  Actually, Friday afternoon when she stopped by to deliver some things to me with her mom, she asked, “Where’s the cake?” and “Hurry up Meemaw!”.  I assured her I was moving as fast as I could.

I use a scrapbooking punch to make my snowflakes out of very thin, slightly dry gumpaste. Works like a charm!!!

All you have to do at this point is turn the punch down and the snowflake will fall out!

The hard candy idea was a new one for me…never made the stuff.  No idea why?  But once I figured out that you canNOT hurry the candy… At all. Not even a little bit. PATIENCE is the key!…I had candy ICE!!  My first batch came out very brown.  Yeah, I hurried it.  When the blue coloring was added it turned a nice olive/brown green.  Not what I had in mind.

So I researched the problem on the internet, rolled up my sleeves and began again.  Like my ongoing battle with fondant, I will press onward and upward!

The transparency of the hard candy makes this cake design!!!

I also learned a couple of lessons concerning structure, weight, balance and cake density.  I used a recipe I’ve used lots, but should have stuck with my STURDY cake as the two tiers were designed to be off center…more like steps.

I can’t get over how much I LOVE seeing through the “ice”…

And the candy needs to be a bit thinner if it’s going to be standing upright.  It also should be placed further into the center of the cake… about an inch from the outside perimeter. So if you’re using a 6″ cake, measure a little less than an inch from the edge thus forming about a 4 1/2″ circle of “ice”.  An 8″ cake would be ideal for this cake stacked onto a 12″ cake.

Also, my fondant snow drifts could have been rolled a little thinner to lighten the weight load on the buttercream covered cake.  And the buttercream might have not have shifted so much had I used fondant instead. Maybe.

Yeah, you’d think I’d know all of this by now.  But every cake is different and I learn something new every. Single. Time!

But…new techniques were pioneered this go around and, I conquered hard candy and LOVE IT!

Not quite finished…

And I still hate fondant.  There’s just no getting around it.  I admit it.  I am a fondant bigot.

The birthday girl ooohs and aaaahes over cake snow and ice…

One of the gals at church today thinks she wants a Frozen cake for her daughter’s birthday this summer.  I think 4 1/2 months rest should recoop me.  She might need to start saving $$ now though…I think about $5,000 would be a fair price for a birthday cake, don’t you?   Just kidding.  Maybe.