This spring I tried to get a little creative with my son Jonah's birthday cake. Just for fun. One of his first words was "door." And one of his favorite movies at the time was Monster's Inc - lots of doors in that movie! He would sit rapt with wonder at the movie and say: "door, door, door" as Mike & Sully flew by on the elevated conveyor. That was when I decided to make Jonah a Monster's Inc birthday cake.
It was my goal to keep things simple. I'm no pastry chef, remember?! I discovered; however, that the more I architected my design, the more complicated it became from a products standpoint.
I bought white frosting and iced the 9x13 cake - Boo's Door. Actually, I bought lots of white frosting because I knew I would need to mix up a few other colors, namely teal & green for Sully & Mike - and a little pink for the trim on Boo's door.
I bought a handful of Wilton icing tips. I didn't have any & I needed them to do the trim on Boo's door. That's when I discovered there's a nifty little tip designed to make frosting look like grass - or better yet, fur! I had to get it. Sully would look really cool with teal-blue icing fur.
So, now I had the icing tips. Cool. And I could make all the colors I needed - anything else? Oh, yeah - how in the world was I going to draw some of those small little details in icing, like the flowers on Boo's door, or Mike & Sully's face? *stessed out* And then...I found the next wonderful Wilton product. No this is not a Wilton commercial. *smile*
I found a set of instructions online that said something like: "Amaze your family & friends at your next party by using Color Flow Icing. Simply download any picture from the internet or use any picture out of a coloring book and flow in the icing. Your party-goers will simply not believe the cake wasn't professionally decorated." *laugh*
This stuff is pretty cool to work with. The directions are simple and you tint it the same way as the frosting - using the icing colors. I've done both freehand designs & downloaded a design that I traced.
Color Flow creates hardened cake decor, so this was perfect for things like Boo's flowers, Sully's black fingernails, Mike & Sully's horns, the door knob, even Mike & Sully's eyes. It seems no decoration you make is too small or intricate. Color Flow hardens completely. The designs are pretty sturdy - I don't think any of mine broke. Just make sure you flow the design onto wax paper so you can peel the it off after it hardens (24hrs later). There's even a handy little suggestion that if you are decorating a round cake and want your designs to be curved (fitting the sides of the cake): use an empty cake pan and flow your designs onto the wax paper covering the cake pan. Neat-o!
I next put a border (pink) around the bottom edge of the cake just to make it look more "finished." Finally, I put all the Color Flow pieces on: eyes, horns nails, flowers, door knob, and Mike's arms & legs.
This was so much fun to do and I learned so much! In fact, I did another cake for my brother 2 weeks later using a logo downloaded from the internet. Guess who he roots for?