Vanilla cake with chocolate frosting and orange curd (mini)

Miniature vanilla cake with orange curd and chocolate frosting

This weekend I made two mini cakes. Its been a few years since I made a mini cake. I think these turned out okay though.  Here are my step by step photos.

Brushing chalk on the cake layers to give them a cooked look. Yeah, Im not sure this is a necessary step, unless you do a naked cake. 

1. miz translucent, white and a cream colour together. Then texture with a toothbrush and dust with brown chalk (to give the look of being cooked)

2. Cut out some thinner brown rounds of the same size and some even thinner orange+translucent rounds.

3. Stack them up, and put the cake in the fridge to firm it up. When you cut into it you want it to be cold and firm so that it does not mush together when you cut it.

4. Cut out a slice and be sure to cut directly down (not on a slant).

5. Texture the cake layers (not the chocolate or orange layers). This is the worst part of the whole process. I use the tip of my scalpel to do the fluffing, others use a pin.

6. Frost the cake. The frosting is made by combining brown clay with liquid translucent clay. It will take about 10min of stirring/mushing to blend the two together.

Making a cake board. Chocolate frosting (bottom left) and chocolate bars (bottom right)

7. Finish decorating the cake. I made some orange slices from an old cane (tutorial). Make sure to texture each orange slice. I use a pin and make small indents in each segments. This way it catches the light much better after its been glazed and it looks more real. I also made a few chocolate bars for the cake "board".

Miniature food fridge magnets on my fridge right now. 

Cake Platters

These little platters are fun to put together.  All of the food is made out of polymer clay and the little pieces of wood are very inexpensive. Some of these little cakes take me over an hour to make. I find the frosting turns out best when you apply a few layers, baking between each application. This takes a little time.  After 1-2 hours of work I usually drop the "cake" into a Tupperware and throw it in the closet never to be seen again.

I have seen dollhouse scale plates on etsy but I have not brought myself to buy any. I am so determined to make everything from scratch, but I have no idea how to make plates or a cake stand. I would really love to make a DIY cake stand! Anyway, I have found a temporary fix to my problem. I bought some very inexpensive wood pieces from a craft store. It was about $1 for 4, 3cm pieces of wood. Ok actually

1) this is a rip off but at least I didn't have to cut the pieces myself.  
2) For you Americans inches are a big mystery, I think 3cm is a tiny bit larger then an inch.

I stained a few of the wood pieces and left the others.. raw? (clearly not a carpenter). Then I made the extra little touches for each cake. For the carrot cake I made some carrots and a raw egg, for the chocolate cakes I made a chocolate bar and for the citrus cakes I made some little lemons and oranges. All of these extras take mere minutes but make such great props.

Dollhouse carrot cake

Plain chocolate frosting cake

Cherry chocolate dollhouse cake

Red Velvet dollhouse cake

Orange citrus chocolate cake

Cherry chocolate dollhouse cake

Orange lemon chocolate dollhouse cake

Carrot dollhouse cake

Cherry chocolate dollhouse cake platter

It is the extra little touches (chocolate bars, lemons, carrots and oranges) that bring these platters to life.  Here are some tricks I have picked up for the extras.

Carrots:  I bring the carrots to life with little dirt indents. The "dirt" is just brown chalk.

Chocolate: The chocolate bars are brown clay squares that I pressed with the back of a razor and then glazed.

Oranges: the orange is a little orange circle of clay that I textured with a toothbrush.

Lemons: there are a ton of youtube videos that can show you how to make these. Just search "lemon cane".

Cake Texture:  Older clay flakes nicer then new soft clay. I use a very sharp scalpel tip to texture the cake. I found a toothpick presses down the clay and just does not do the trick.



There is one problem though, I am running out of cake ideas.  :)