It was a slight tinge of horror that ran through my mind when Lionheart asked if I could do an Elmo cake for his daughter's birthday. And for 60 people too. I have till now avoided like the plague any orders for kids birthday cakes, but since I attended the cupcake class at Cooking House recently, and saw that fondant/sugarpaste wasn't that hard to make, especially with a kenwood, I thought I'd give it a try. What I find particularly tough about sugarpaste is coloring it. Kneading the dyes into the sugarpaste is a lot harder than it looks, especially to get an even coloring. However, since Elmo and appendages was going to be red all round, I mixed the coloring in at the mixing stage, so the entire batch was red.
Sugarpaste Recipe
480 gms icing sugar
2 tablespoons gelatine
3 tablespoons water
2 tablespoons liquid glucose
2 teaspoons glycerin
Sift the icing sugar. No shortcut here. Some brands of icing sugar are less lumpy than others.
Melt the gelatine in the water. Add the glucose and glycerin into the warm gelatine mixture.
With the K paddles at slow speed, gradually add in the mixture into the icing sugar, until it all binds together. Scoop out the sugarpaste onto a surface that has been dusted with icing sugar, and knead until you get a nice pliable blob.
And then, last Monday, Lionheart tells me that he's actually having TWO parties for his little princess, and needed a Cookie Monster cake for the dinner part. Up till that point, I had no idea WHAT Cookie Monster looked like. Thank goodness for the easy accessibility to such information online. Anyway, here's my 1st attempt at Cookie Monster.
Anyway, the other thing I find really hard to do is to achieve a nice smooth surface for the buttercream, as my buttercream is pure butter, as opposed to the Wilton one, which uses shortening, which I find exceedingly gross. The Wilton "butter"cream however spreads marvellously and looks gorgeous, but you can taste the lingering greasy slime of shortening on your palate, and fingers.
They were my birthday present to the Little Princess.
