A Cake in the Mail

The last few days have been a blur for me. I decided to try sending a cake in the mail. This would open my world up to all new possibilities giving me more excuses (or people if you like) to make cakes. My nieces' birthday is the 10th of May and since she was soooo helpful during Julia's Alice in Wonderland party, I decided to make her a cake. I didn't have time to take any pictures along the way or of my "amazing" packing job, but here is the finished cake:


It is a triple chocolate fudge cake with chocolate icing and caramel filling covered in fondant. I tried a new fondant recipe on CakeCentral and I actually think it tastes good. It isn't as sickeningly sweet. Don't get me wrong, I still love my buttercream, but I can eat this stuff.


My sis-in-law called me yesterday to see if I could make a Ford Mustang for the top. Ummm, no! But I did manage to find a little Hot Wheels. It isn't technically a red Mustang, but hopefully she won't notice and hey it's better than nothing right? I think the design of the cake would have been better without it, but hey it's what they wanted not me!

Here is the top of the hat. The numbers and horseshoes are made out of royal icing and painted and then dusted with my fave luster dust.



The hat is made out of modeling chocolate and I really like working with it. It also tastes very similar to a Tootsie Roll. It dries much quicker than fondant which was a bonus since this cake was pretty last minute.


Just one quick picture of the girls eating what Sydni thinks is "cake." FYI, she also thinks "pie" is whipped cream.

So you may be wondering, how on earth did you package that cake? If you weren't, too bad I'm telling you anyway! I took the numbers and the car off for shipment. The only reason they are on the cake is so I could get pictures of it. Gotta build that portfolio, right? I carefully wrapped the numbers in multiple layers of seran wrap. Then I took my Seran Wrap and carefully built up layers around the hat hopefully giving it good support. Then I wrapped and wrapped and wrapped the whole bloody cake over and over again. I used an old box I had from a "Cocoa Motion" my in-laws got us for Christmas one year (love that thing!) It still had the styrofoam in it because I am just that crazy about saving boxes. I cut a circle out of the styrofoam that the cake could sit in snuggly and then just packed it with paper toweling. I really hope it makes it, but I have serious doubts it will. I think just shipping a cake that had completely flat designs would work, but I don't really know. How do some online shops ship their cakes? Maybe I should order one and find out! LOL! UPS flat out told me there was no way the cake would make it. The USPS lady was more reassuring, but still doubtful. So we will see... If Angie sends me pictures, which I hope she does, I will post those as well.