Cricut Cake

Hello Friends! I am going to try to blog more often. I am so terribly sad that the Cricut blog has gone away and my creations are now going to be for myself, so I decided that before the Circle blog is permanently taken down, I would copy and paste all my circle posts for my blog. Some of the newer posts will still have to wait until 2 months have passed, but I have a full two years to go back on and show you what I have created over that time. Some posts will be redo's, but I'm ok with that.  thanks for checking me out!

May 22 2012

There’s a party going on right here…

Posted by: Kristen Swain · Edit

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! Ok, so it might not be today, but it’s sometime this year right? How about someone special in your life. Wouldn’t you love to see their faces as you present them with a beautiful birthday cake that was pretty easy to make and looks like a professional made it?
Meet our friend- Fondant Birthday Cake

Our friend fondant is delicious and amazing to work with. I found a yummy fondant called Satin Smooth- and you could always mix your own fondant with a marshmallow recipe.
Once you learn some super simple techniques the sky is the limit with decorating a smooth cake. First, make your cake, let it sit over night to cool. When your cake is cool, use a serrated knife to even the cake, you may take off a big part of the top, but that’s the decorators treat.  Now that your cakes are flat, ice the middle with some frosting, put them together, then wrap them in saran wrap for a couple hours. It wouldn’t even hurt to put a heavy object on top of a plate on top of your cake, this will help it condense and you will have a more solid cake.
When you are ready- you can give the cake what is called a crumb coat, which is a super thin layer of frosting ( it gets lots of crumbs in it- but will be covered with the fondant). Put in the fridge until you have your fondant ready to cover them.
Now, take your fondant, heat in the microwave for no more then 10 seconds- you want it just barely warm. Add it into a baggie with icing color. I used a lime and a blue to make mine. I also mixed mine so that there were still swirls in the icing, so it would look neat. The blue shows this more ( and the dark green)  When your color is mixed to your liking, remove the fondant from the bag.
I used cornstarch to lightly dust my table ( never used this before and this is a huge lifesaver) – then I rolled the fondant out into a circle that would cover my cake. I brought my cake out, added it to the center of the fondant and pulled the edges over the sides to the bottom of the cake. You can use the fondant tool kit that Cricut has available, in there is a smoothing tool that is wonderful for smoothing out wrinkles. This cake is actually my first covered fondant cake- I’m learning with you. And I think it was pretty easy and turned out nicely. When you have covered the cake, remove any bulky fondant with a knife and smooth the bottom of the cake to stand flat.

Now that we have our cakes covered, we have the fun of decorating them! Cricut has many cake cartridges available and the designs are varied for the occasion. Since I was working on a teen cake, I used flowers, grass and butterflies.
For my bottom layer- I cut a grass border. You can use buttercream or shortening to attach your cut fondant pieces to the cake. I chose to use the orange flowers, and added in the center dots on my cake as well.
Next, I cut out butterflies in pink and purple and attached them all over the cake. I liked that I wrapped them over the edges to completely fill the cake.

To attach the two cakes together, I used a dollop of buttercream, just enough so the top cake stayed together, this might be a step you do if you are traveling with the cake after you arrive at your destination, but our cake stayed at home. If there is too much cornstarch on the outside of the cake, use a pastry brush to remove it.

Almost finished. I cut one more butterfly  then attached a couple toothpicks and allowed it to dry so that I could stick it in as a decoration.

After about 2 days it was perfect and I stood it up on the cake.
But it seemed a little plain, so I used some paper to cut numbers- glittered them with clear glitter and attached them to toothpicks and stuck them in the cake.

I love that this cake is bright, playful, trendy and fun. You could do many layers all in different colors and with a variety of diecuts.
Please try this technique, you will be so pleased with the results and your family and friends will be in awe!!


Designed By: Kristen Swain
Cricut Machines Used: Cricut Cake Machine, Cricut Expression Machine
Cricut Cartridges Used: Something to Celebrate, Martha  Stewart All Occasion Cake Art
Other Supplies: Fondant, Cake, Buttercream Icing, Icing Colors, Green cardstock (American Crafts), Glitter (JoAnn’s Craft Stores)