Buckets O' Fun

If you know anything about me you'd know that I'm not the most outdoorsy of people, but when it was decided that we were to go to the beach for my friend Janie's birthday how could I say "no". Since this was a destination birthday party I wanted to make something totally cute for her cake. As usual, I went to cakecentral.com for inspiration but everything I saw in the beach theme gallery was so cliche that I definitely didn't want to use anything there; so I came up with my own idea. Lately I've been on this "let's carve a cake into something" kick so I decided to make a sand pail cake.

Here is my masterpiece....

It was chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream filling, iced in a sky blue buttercream decorated with pink buttercream flowers, and finally a fondant handle. After the initial blue icing went on I stuck the cake in the fridge to set up. Next i got a blossom cutter and imprinted the image on buttercream and outlined with pink frosting. I think proceeded to do a brushed embroidery technique that I've been dieing to try for ages. Take a close look at the flowers...

After applying the technique on the flowers I outlined the rims with pink frosting. For the sand I used crushed vanilla wafers, but before that went on i got some of the scraps from carving the cakes and laid them in from to make an elevated hump w/o using so much cookie crumbs. Then I got some frosting tinted it with some ivory color and then applied the "sand" to the cake. After I was "done" with the cake I stepped back to take a look and decided it needed something. So in a snap, I whipped a pair of purple flip flops to accompany the pail. These were made out of gum paste and left over night to dry.

After a day at the beach and some BBQ it's cake time! The Birthday Girl and her cake...


I really liked how it turned out. Next time I'll add a shovel.
Take Care All!

Luv
-Chris-


P.S.
Come and watch my youtube chanel for a video on this and other cake projects of mine.
http://www.youtube.com/user/azeboi2005