First I need to explain the history of my kids and their birthday cake choices. The first birthdays were always picked by me for obvious reasons, but as soon as they developed a personality and interests, it was clear what each one wanted. Unfortunately they often wanted the same thing, and sorry, as much as I love them, I just couldn't do that. Where's the creativity in making the same old cake over and over. Luckily it hasn't been too much trouble, until this last birthday. Jacob wanted a spongebob cake. But, I had already done a square yellow cake for Joshua, so I had to think outside the box, er, bun.
So, a giant hamburger patty, aka Krabby Patty, cake was invented.
After a quick trip to googleville, I discovered that I was clearly not original in this whole Huge hamburger as cake idea. Multiple sites were dedicated to their attempts at this feat. Many of them impressed me. Some of them just frightened me, but all of them were helpful in guiding my final choices.
I made a trip to Country Kitchen, our local candy supply store, and purchased my first ever fondant. I opted for the pre-colored stuff to make my life easier, but I'd be willing to try it from scratch next time. I bought primary colors since I'd be needing red for tomatoes, green for lettuce and orange (red and yellow) for cheese. the blue just got thrown out. My apologies to the fondant police.
One of the sites used a brownie for the burger portion of the cake. I thought this was genius, and a very clever way to get as much sugar as possible into this fast food fakery. So, I baked two white cakes and one brownie. I filled one cake pan up higher, to achieve more of a bun look.
I started mixing the yellow fondant with a tiny bit of red fondant. I'm glad I started with a tiny bit of red, because it didn't take much to turn all the yellow I had a nice shade of fake cheese orange. It works a lot like playdoh and was fun to use.
I layed it out on waxed paper and sprayed it with cooking spray, based on recommendations I found online to keep the fondant from drying out.
I repeated this step until I had 3 slices,
One perfect slice.
The tomatoes were fun to do. Obviously rolling
them into a round circle was key, but one tip I found online was to square off the edges to make them look more like real tomatoes. I just used the blade of a knife and ran it around the edge of the circle. Then, used a toothpick to make the little indents on top for effect.
The lettuce was my favorite part. I used straight green for this, but if I were to do it again, I'd mix some white into, or maybe a little yellow. It was almost too dark green. To get it to look wrinkled like actual lettuce, I took more advice from the trusty ol' internets, and balled up my saran wrap first before pressing the ball out thin with my hand, then wrapped the saran wrap all the way around, making sure to keep it wrinkled. When I pulled the wrap off, it left all the lines, making it look very authentic.
Layering the cakes with a buttercream "mayo", and the cheese. I picked the edges off the brownie to make it look more hamburgery too. And it really did look like actual meat. Kind of creepy.
Added the lettuce and tomatoes....
I placed pine nuts on top to look like sesame seeds. Some sites used sliced almonds, but I thought these would look best.
Also, most of, if not all, the sites I looked at left their buns unfrosted. I opted to frost mine. Too much sugar is not an option on birthdays.
Also, most of, if not all, the sites I looked at left their buns unfrosted. I opted to frost mine. Too much sugar is not an option on birthdays.
The final product.
I'm not sure you can see them, but the candles on top are spongebob themed, with cute little pineapples, and underwater flowers, and spongebob himself. Not too over the top. I then piped his name with a bright red buttercream to look like ketchup on top. The fries were made of sugar cookies, and drizzled with more "ketchup."
I printed the red and white paper from my computer to cover the cake board.
And, most importantly, the birthday boy LOVED it.
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