Teapot Cake

Oh my goodness, my  very FIRST order!!!

I was so happy to get this order. Not only was it my first one, which all by itself is exciting, but it was a super cute teapot. So obviously the most important part of the teapot is the handle and the spout. Which coincidentally are also the most difficult. Not only to shape but also to keep attached to the cake. I saw a few different types of handles and since this was for a sweet little girls 5th birthday, I decided to make a really cute one rather than just a plain ordinary one. I made both the handle and spout out of gumpaste. I prefer it to fondant because it dries really hard and still manages to taste better. My original spout was completely solid but after a few days I had a sudden epiphany. I was laying in bed and practically jumped out when I realized it might be too heavy.

 

I also finally took out my Cricut cake decorator machine!!

Since I've head the sugar sheets Wilton came up with are useless, I decided to roll out my own gumpaste. I'm not sure if I should have rolled it thinner, or let it dry a little bit before I cut it, but my little plaque didn't turn out so super. It wasn't terrible, but it also wasn't as neat as I would have liked. I let this dry for a few days but I ended up not using it. It didn't look as nice as I wanted it to. I ended up freehanding an oval out of gumapaste and used that as the plaque instead.

 I saw a few different teapot cakes which used the Wilton sports ball pan to get their teapot shape. Since I didn't feel like carving several cakes into a ball I decided this was definitely the way to go. I got really luck too because I got the last sports ball pan at Michaels. This thing comes with very explicit instructions. FOLLOW THEM!!! To the T! I skimmed them and I was like "How hard could it be?" Well I got my answer. The batter overflowed because I put too much in each ball half. They didn't cook correctly, and they wouldn't not come out of their mold. At all. As you can see, it looks not so good. :(

 So the next time, I read through the instructions 6 or 7 times. And as you can see, they came out really well. And, yes, I do know they look like boobies! So if you're looking to make a booby cake, the Sports Ball pan would be your best bet :)

 

The only issue I had was a tiny bit got stuck to the cake. I made this the bottom part of the teapot and filled it in with a boatload of frosting.

 

 I saw another cake that used these little tiny gumpaste flowers to hide where the handle and spout are attached. I loved the idea so I made a bunch of those too. I ended up needing more later though

I forgot to take pictures because I'm a dummy, but for the teapot lid, I used my actual sugar bowl lid as a model for the gumpaste to dry around. I cut a small circle in the middle so it would sit flush with the lid, then made a gumpaste ball to sit on top of it. This is the cake with the original spout. However, about 30 minutes later I noticed the spout was sagging. Luckily, because of my epiphany, I had made another spout a few days earlier, which I also forgot to take pictures of.  I modeled the hollow one around the one I had already made so I at least had a use for the first one. I stacked the teapot onto 2 layers of Fun-Fetti vanilla cake with vanilla frosting.

 

I put the flowers on after I took the first spout off and replaced it. However, being the genius that I am, I didn't give the second spout any support, so it started to sag too. This was after I had already put all my lovely little flowers on it, so I had to make more to hide the damage. I inserted a BBQ skewer through the spout and all the way through the teapot to make sure the spout would STAY in place! And it did :)

  

I used more gumpaste flowers to decorate the bottom tier. I piped my very best pearl border around the bottom of the teapot to hide the cakeboard. I also piped the ittiest bittiest pear boarder around the spot where I put the teapot lid on.  I also piped a small shell border around the bottom tier.

  

Right around now is when my client asked me to put some purple on. Well I wasn't sure how I would because it was already mostly decorated. However, I am extremely crafty :) I decided to make some even tinier gumpaste purple flowers to add to the handle and spout, and piped the birthday girl's name on my new and improved plaque.  Even though I formed the plaque on the cake pan, it didn't fit exactly flush. So I tried to pipe another pearl border, but my icing would just not cooperate. So I used a flower tip and piped them instead.

  

Here's the finished cake: front view

  

Cake Finished: Back view

  

So in between all the cake decorating and flower making, I also had to make some teacup cake pops. She asked for raspberry, and the icing recipe I used for Raspberry Icing was nothing but Raspberry puree and powdered sugar. I thought this would be raspberry enough and I didn't want to overload them with raspberry. So I made the same vanilla cake as the rest of the cake. They were delicious cake pops, but you really couldn't taste the raspberry at all. Apparently 2, 8 inch cakes make 51 teacup pops. 

 

 I did coat all of them, but I didn't end up making them all into teacups. I made 15 teacups in both pink and purple. I used little heart sprinkles i already had to decorate the front of the cups. I used Wilton candy melts for the plates and handles. If I wanted to be super fancy I could've made them out of gumpaste, but candy melts taste better than gumpaste, and that's what 5 year olds care about

Originally we wanted to put the teacups around the cake, but they were too big. It would've look ridiculous.

Stay tuned for pictures from Skylars birthday!