Dual Birthday Cake

I got a phone call from my best friend’s son to ask if I would make a birthday cake for her for next weekend. Even though I had not planned on being home that weekend, I said yes. Of course I’m going to make a cake for her! Then, I found out that it was to be a dual birthday celebration. Her birthday is a couple of days before her grandson’s. Now what was I going to do?!

I’ve been working on an elaborate cake for a baby shower on that Sunday and planned to take it up on Saturday morning. Looks like a change of plans is in order. I’ll go up after the birthday party Saturday evening.

So, this would have to be simple. It was to be a small gathering, so a small 6″ round, but tall, cake would work. Triple chocolate sounded good to me! I’ll bake it tonight (tuesday) and freeze it until friday.

Grandma’s side… lovely white roses on smooth fondant

Okay, cake flavor is decided, now how to decorate for two people? I had a vision of an all white cake. White fondant with white gum paste roses on top for Grandma and if I turned it around…wait for it…. paintball splats for her paintball loving grandson!

I could make the gum paste roses and leaves a couple days ahead and not have too much to do on Saturday morning.

Not sure how I was going to do paint splats. So I had to experiment some. I wanted something easy to add to the cake and sturdy enough to travel. I settled on Candy Melts, brightened with candy coloring.

I laid out some wax paper and after melting the candy and coloring it to my desired color, I put the candy into a disposable piping bag. I started by squirting a small pool of candy onto the wax paper I then took a new, baby’s aspirator and squeezed air into the middle of the pool of candy. It has to be a quick spurt to create a splat. I tried  a few different techniques and found that you can’t let the splat get too thin or it will not transfer to the cake without breaking. Before finishing with each color, I made different sizes of drops on the wax paper too. I would add that to the splat and to hang off the flowers, I hoped.

Saturday morning… defrost the cakes, layer and frost. The plain white, but vanilla flavored, fondant worked out fine and I wanted a more rounded look to the cake, so far so good. I found a doily and decided to place the cake on that. Add the flowers and leaves and glue in place with white frosting. Very feminine, looks nice at this point.

Cake for two… Grandma and paintball loving grandson!

Now comes the fun… I get to add the splats!

I used the melted vanilla Candy Melts to glue the paint splats in place and tried to keep them to one side of the cake only. Luckily, I remembered to make plenty of splats, in case of breakage. I was able to pick and choose as I decorated the cake.

Taking photos of the cake was fun because I could actually see that looking at one side showed me a cake with a different feel from the other. Perfect for Grandma and grandson!