Winnie Pooh birthday cake

Okay, here finally my master piece. ;-)


This is how the Winnie Pooh cake turned out. It was by no means perfect - but oh well. I am trying to think - as long as my daughter does not care for perfectionism I should take it easy as well!



I was actually quite surprised that I managed to make a recognizeable Winnie Pooh bear out of fondant. (Please DO NOT tell me otherwise!!!) At least my daughter instantly recognized "Winnie Pooh!" Well, I do admit that it might have helped that Winnie Pooh always wears a red sweater ... :-) If I think back to my first attempt of making a fondant bear ... oh well ... (I might post some pictures some time soon of my other "cake adventures" so you'll see what I'm talking about.)
The thing I like most about this cake however are - the bees. I don't know why ... but I find them cute! And believe me - those stupid tiny little things were quite some work! I think in the end I probably spent more time on making bees than on the rest of the cake decorating. (However, I made too many bees. I realized that once I tried to put them ON the cake. So I have a bunch still sitting around waiting to be used.)




I was also quite pleased with the taste of the fondant. This marshmallow fondant in my opinion does really have a different taste compared to the "real" fondant. However, I prefer the marshmallow fondant.

For the cake itself I made a simple vanilla and a chocolate cake. (My daughter could not decide which of the two she would rather have ... So mommy made both ...) I cut the two cakes into two layers. I was planning on four layers - alternating the colours. But when putting everything together the cake simply got too high and it would have looked rather weird. So I decided to only use three layers. I put everything together with a vanilly cream/frosting kinda thing ... and I was so happy that it turned out so well.


I have never made a layered cake before - at least not with different layers ... so I was rather scared that somehow the layers might get squashed together and not be recognizeable anymore. But they were fine!


Of course my daughter ended up eating only the cream that was between the cake layers instead of the whole cake ... but I guess that's something one has to live with when being a mom!
Last year she did not even try her birthday cake AT ALL (at least not at her birthday)! So I am making progress and am quite pleased! :-)

Update: I added a post with tips for using fondant and also a post with photos of other cakes I have decorated with fondant ... if you are interested ...

Layered jello

As you can see the layered jello turned out quite well in the end. My husband came up with a clever idea how to speed up the whole process. We put icecubes in a bigger tray and put the bowl with the jello on top of the icecubes which really made a huge difference! (Luckily we own one of these freezer/fridge combinations that also produce ice - which is in the US really common but overhere rather rare.)
Here again the instruction(s) I used
Fly to my window
Cafe Zupas

It's definitely fun eating it - making it not so much though! ;-)

What the heck do they put in jello?!

When I lived in the US I once also attended a baby shower (which is a custom we don't have here in Germany ... at least yet) and for dessert one of the guests brought layered jello. I was totally amazed! It looked simply awesome! I only had it once but it stuck with me. (I was so impressed I remember that I took a photo before I ate my piece.) I thought it probably can't be that hard to make it but I never actually tried it. Overhere in Germany I also never attempted to make it - we simply don't have as many kinds of jello as in the US. In a regular supermarket you find red, green and yellow. That's it. When I read the instructions for layered jello in the blog Fly to my window I came across the idea of adding cool whip, joghurt or sour cream to make the colors paler. So I figured I could end up with at least 6 layers - that sounded good! (Far better than three!) So I was keen to try. (There is another recipe which uses a mixture of cool whip, cream cheese and sour cream to make the color lighter.) So I started by making some red jello, pouring half of it into a chilled dish, mixing the other half with a bit of sour cream ... and put my timer on 15 minutes. This is the time both recipes suggested you should wait. Within 15 minutes the jello in the refrigerator should be firm to the touch - and you should be able to pour the next colour onto it. WELL ... I checked after 15 minutes. But my jello felt not even slightly set! I waited another 15 minutes - again, total liquid. Nothing set! I got a little bit nervous and figured, maybe there is a difference between the american jello-mix and the german "Götterspeise-mix" ... so I consulted the internet (what else?). After a bit of searching I finally found some recipes for layered jello in german (using german jello-mix of course) and discovered - to my shock!!! - that they suggest waiting 6 HOURS !!!! or more before pouring the next colour on top!!! Well, that explains why my jello is not even close to being set ... but it also means that there is no way I will be able to make this dessert for tomorrow ... Rather we will probably be ready to eat it in two days or three ... GREAT!
So I'm really wondering what DO THEY PUT IN JELLO that makes it set so much faster than the german jello mix????

Well, watch out ... in about two or three days there should be photos of my layered jello on this blog ... or of my failed attempt to make layered jello ...