Hello! So this post is going to be huge. Looking back I can't even believe that I took on this project while pregnant but there's really not much I won't do for my kiddo and he was turning 13 so it was a big deal. I realize it's almost a year later but I was busy being pregnant and exhausted and then I had a baby and I was exhausted so here we are. All that matters is that it makes it up in case some other mother (or father or auntie or whatever) wishes to recreate this. I learned a lot of things that I can pass on to anyone else wanting to do this and it will save some frustration. Without further ado let's get this show on the road. Buckle up. Supplies:Yes it's odd for me to used boxed cakes and tubbed frosting BUT I was 6 months pregnant and this cake is a HUGE undertaking in itself. Do I PREFER my homemade cakes and frostings?? Yes. But I made the fondant from scratch and the chocolate ganache from scratch so all isn't lost. That checkerboard cake set has come in more handy than I could have imagined. Flashback to 2016 and I made Jaxon's Mario cake with it and I've used the 3 pans for multiple other cakes. It's a really great set to have and I highly recommend it. I made that cake for his 6th birthday... hard to believe I'm working on a cake for his 13th birthday but AHEM here we are. Anyway, back to his 13th birthday... Jaxon decided he wanted to have a neopolitan cake... strawberry, vanilla and chocolate... so I decided I was going to make it checkerboard... I also decided to do a bunch of mini cakes and make them checkerboard on the inside as well (the minis weren't really worth the hassle of checkerboarding just FYI) Making the CakesThe only thing about these checkerboard cakes is that they are a lot of work because you have to mix up all 3 of your batters at the same time and I don't have a ton of counter space so it was a bit of a challenge but we got it done. Also. Since the cake was square this checkerboard thing didn't really work that great. It works great with round cakes but once I cut the cakes down it kind of ruined the effect. It worked with the mini cakes but only in the very center because the cakes were so small. But. You live and you learn I suppose. Now I know. I made A LOT of cake. We had so much cake... I ate cake scraps for like a month LOL. That is not a complaint, I was 6 months pregnant so cake scrap snacks were more than welcome. I cut all the tops off the mini cakes to so they would form squares. Making the FondantI ALWAYS make homemade marshmallow fondant. Everybody always talks about how gross fondant is but I wouldn't know... because homemade marshmallow fondant is pretty good. It's really good on cookies. It's only gross if you don't like marshmallows because it's literally just melted marshmallows, powdered sugar and some vanilla extract. You could sub whatever extract you want. Maybe it was the pregnancy brain but I had a really hard time trying to figure out how many squares I needed. Eventually I figured it out. In my first run I also didn't consider that I would need an actual Rubix cube to get the colors correct because there are rules!! Certain colors touching etc so I had Jaxon mix up a rubix cube and I used an actual Rubix Cube for reference on all the mini cakes and the main cake. No matter what I'm coloring whether it's icing or fondant if it's white and I need black I always add cocoa powder first and then add the black. For one, literally no one has complained that it changes the flavor to chocolate and for two, I get to black much faster without having to use a ton of black food coloring or whatever other party tricks people use to get to black. I always get a nice solid dark black and it tastes fantastic. Assembling the Minis - Round 1I never truly know what I'm getting into until I start doing it. I think that is true for a lot of things. It always seems easier in theory. I'm glad that I decided to do a test cube. For the test I used frosting to cover it just like you would any other cake. But it kind of failed to offer me the really clean lines I needed for that cube shape. To top it off I decided to try to cover the cube in one go with fondant. That also failed to deliver that sharp cube shape that I was after. So trial one gave me a lot of things to reconsider. It looked good but it could still be better. Also the frosting was just WAYYYY too sweet with the fondant. So. I had some troubleshooting to do. Assembling the Minis - Round 2 RevisedAfter scouring a few Facebook groups and airing out my concerns some lovely lady in one of the groups suggested that I use Chocolate Ganache to cover my cakes instead of the frosting. AND that I should use panels of fondant instead of a whole sheet at once. So that's what I did. I've never made Chocolate Ganache before but holy jeez where has that stuff been my whole life? It is SO EASY to make and it's delicious!! It also tasted better with all the elements of the cake believe it or not. It added a little bit of bitterness and help break up all the sweetness from the cakes and the frostings. Minis Complete - PhotoshootThey're not perfect but for my first time making square cakes, and mini cakes at that, they're pretty darn good. Jaxon was happy and that's all that matters. The Main EventSo I didn't get a ton of pictures of the final cake because... reminder... I was 6 months pregnant.. I also had company at the time AND it was the night before Jaxon's party and I was kind of to the wire. I still had cookies to flood so I was starting to feel the crunch. As I said, not perfect but acceptable. I had one side on my cake that was kind of funky but I'm really not a Cake-ologist y'all. I'm more of a cookie-ologist. But I came through for my kiddo. It actually worked out that all the grandparents that came got a mini Rubix Cube cake to take home as a party favor. I got to keep one as well. I still have it in my freezer. LOL. I kept the solved mini cube. It's not perfect... and it killed me.. of course I wished I could have done it over a thousand times BUT I remind myself that my kids don't need me to be perfect they just need me to show up and I did. The fact that he asked me to do a Rubix Cube cake actually speaks for itself. He believed that I could do it and didn't even hesitate to ask. That is a huge compliment. He had an epic 13th birthday party complete with Rubix Cube cakes, Cookie Tiles and My Chemical Romance Cookies. There is a separate post on his cookies you can check that out HERE. That face made all the work worth it.
I learned a lot, which is priceless and Jaxon got the 13th birthday he wanted. Honestly I can't ask for more than that. I hope something in this post will help someone else who's just trying to bring happiness to someone they love. Until the next adventure! Much Love Amanda
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