Army Tank Cake

Army Tank Cake

I made this cake some years ago for my son, who was really into army tanks and airplanes.

I didn't document at the time how I made it, so this is just going off of a distant memory...

The body of the tank cake is made from a square cake.  It is in 2 layers, with the bottom layer slightly bigger all around than the top layer.  The front and back of the top layer are shaved diagonally down to create the sloped sides.

2 small round cakes (cupcakes) were also made.  One, with proper trimming, became the turret on top, while the other was cut in half and used as the front of the rolling tread tires.  They are shaved on the top at a diagonal.

Decoration was also simple.  Frost with a buttercream frosting, lightly colored with cocoa powder for the tan color.  Keep some frosting separate and color a darker brown with more cocoa powder.  After frosting the tank all over with the tan color, swirl in the darker brown for the desert camouflage effect.

For wheels I used 5 chocolate sandwich cookies (like Oreos) on each side, and one on top of the turret. (The top of the cookie is pushed into the cake so that it stands on its own).

Treads were made from licorice pieces (I couldn't find licorice ropes, but could get smaller pieces which I just lay next to each other.  The gun is a Pirouette cookie, stuck into the cake.  Tinted coconut flakes served as the sand.  Voila!

Front view of Army Tank Cake

Volcano Cake

Volcano cake

Just a quick post with this volcano cake that I made some years ago at the request of my eldest son.  The cake itself was easy -  a chocolate bundt cake, with a smaller amount of cake baked in a small pyrex bowl or cup, then stacked on the larger cake.  I did a little bit of shaping of the mountain, but could have done more.

Frosted it with chocolate frosting, roughly applied.

As you can see, I experimented with two types of lava.  I should have left out the lighter one; it was orange buttercream frosting that I made runnier, then pooled it in the crater at the top of the cake, letting it run down the side.

The explosive lava is orange hard candy, melted, then poured onto wax paper in lava flow shapes, and left to dry.  Then I stuck it over the cake.

A Director's Chair Cake

For the theatrically-minded, here's a quick cake for your favorite director!

Any self-respecting theatre or film director dreams of sitting in their own director's chair.  I couldn't figure out how to make a 3D chair, so I went with decorating the top of a regular 9x13" pan cake.

I have easy access to blocks of marzipan, so that's what I used.  First, I colored a small amount of marzipan black, and a small amount red.  Then I downloaded a template of a director's chair, cut it out, then used it on top of the marzipan to cut our the chair, megaphone and clapper board, in the appropriate colors (the legs are the natural marzipan beige).  The director's beret I free-formed from the red marzipan.

Next, I took some white writing gel and wrote the director's name on the back of the seat, his initial on the megaphone and filled in the clapper board.  The numbers represent the month and day of his birthday and the age he was turning.

It seemed slightly unfinished, so I decided to outline everything but the clapper board in grey.

Simple, but it worked!

Chocolate Pistachio Tarts for New Year's!

I saw these fabulous looking chocolate pistachio tartlets on the internet, and have been dying to make them!  Just got tartlet pans for Christmas, so I tried them out.  Delicious!  The recipe is here, at LindenTea.

I decorated them with red currants, whose tartness makes a wonderful balance to the rich chocolate ganache.