UP Birthday Cake

It's been almost a year since I've blogged! Sad, I know, but there it is. Yesterday was my oldest nephew's 4th birthday! My mom and I decided we would do the cake ourselves, and since it was a Pixar's UP themed party, we simply had to do the house with balloons. I'll admit, it's not professional, but it was  a lot of fun and he enjoyed it all the same! 

Ingredients: 

• 2 cake mixes (your choice)
• a picture of the house to follow
• lots of icing - we used abotu 1 1/2 tubs of Duff's found at Michael's 
• food coloring: orange (or pink), purple, blue, green
• Piping- we used Duff's Candy Writers. We got blue, pink, white, green, and orange. We could have used yellow and brown though. We had to make brown later. 
• tiny cupcake papers
• cake pop sticks
• a ruler

First thing in the morning, we headed out to Michael's to get Duff's buttercream icing. I'm not sure I'd recommend that. The icing was wonderful, but we probably could have used icing bags instead. 


Then we got colorful cupcake wrappers (the tiny size so they wouldn't look like giant balloons!) And also some cake pop sticks. We thought about string, but it needs to be something stiff without slack, because remember, it's holding up a house! 


Next we needed cake batter, Cole requested Strawberry. We got two mixes-- one for the cupcakes, and one for a plain sheet cake. Bake both cake and cupcakes!


Once the sheet cake is cooked and partially cooled, we put it in the freezer to prevent it from falling apart. When we were ready to cut it, we used a serrated knife so that it wouldn't make even the tiniest details crumble. Although it's possible to just cut the cake's design straight out of it's original form, I recommend cutting it into a square (use your ruler!), so that your not having to cut so meticulously. 


Go ahead and put it on your board!! 


You are going to need a ruler for the cutting, because when you cut the tallest peak of the roof, you need to measure your angle so that when you go to do your blue outline, the angle of it matched up with the rest of the house. (follow pictures for this). 
          - a key here is that you cut the rooftop peaks from the highest part of the cake      (because it rises most in the middle) so that it doesn't look like it's coming from the back of the roof. The chimney can come from the edge, though. 


Next, cut in from the bottom of the roof to the ground. The roof is the widest part! Do this on both sides! 


Now that your house is made, take a break and ice your cooled cupcakes! Pick all kinds of fun colors! 


Back to the cake, block in your colors of icings. I would suggest doing the yellow and lighter colors first. If you need to draw a picture to understand, that's a great idea. I did! 
You're going to think "Nailed It!" When you look at your blocked colors. That's ok-- It looks better with piping! A good way to smooth out your icing is to wait until everything is iced then get a cup of hot water and dip it in, wipe it off, smooth out a section, repeat. It makes smoother strokes. 


Now for the piping! Pay attention to details! You can't get too detailed-- if you want to do shading, do shading! If you just wanted to do piping, fine! This is where the cake will really start to look like the picture, so give it a once, twice, thrice look-over! Roof details, siding, shadows, porch railing, windows, etc!


NOW, the cake is done and BEAUTIFUL! it's ok for it to look messy and creative :) So add your cupcakes and cake pop sticks! The sticks should come out of the chimney. We did not glue ours down and we knew they'd stay in place for a short ride over. 


Then arrange your cupcakes however you like! We just did random and were careful not to make rows although sometimes a row is unavoidable. 


Last, but certainly not least, add your sweet birthday message and some fluffy clouds-- just a few will do it! 


Voila! An UP Birthday Cake people will love :) Enjoy!