I’m no baker. I can barely turn out a good batch of cookies. I’m also not the world’s biggest biggest hockey fan. Unless you’re watching the game in HD, you can’t tell where the puck is. So it may come as a surprise that I made this:
A Los Angeles Kings birthday cake!
If you know anything about me, you know that I love wedding shows (and House Hunters, which I’m watching now, but we’ll save that story for another day). Sundays are devoted to WE tv’s Wedding Sundays whenever possible. I’ve seen every episode Amazing Wedding Cakes, Ace of Cakes, D.C. Cupcakes- you name it, I watch it. So naturally I’ve always wanted to try my hand at making a fondant cake- it looks so easy on TV! Spoiler Alert: It’s not easy. I will not be starring in my own bakery show on TLC anytime in the near future.
My boyfriend loves the LA Kings like I love John Mayer (which is like woah, scary), so I resolved to make him an LA Kings hockey puck cake for his 26th birthday. Here’s what I had to work with:
Most of the frosting and materials were purchased from Michael’s, and I was so excited that the fondant came in black! I was afraid I was going to have to try and dye it with food coloring or paint it with an edible material- it was a definite plus that I didn’t have to deal with that disaster. I chose to bake the cake at my parents (you know my Super Oven), and Little Chef was with me to provide moral support:
Baking the cake was the easy part, and I tried to make the frosting as close to a royal purple as I could (eh, not so great). I also put my boyfriend’s name in sprinkles in the middle of the cake- my little secret!
Next I rolled out the fondant, which came in the tub pictured above. After heating it up in the microwave for ~45 seconds (the instructions cautioned against making it to warm), it looked like this:
A big, hard lump. Ugh. I covered the rolling pin in powdered sugar to prevent the fondant from sticking to it, but that only sort-of worked. It took awhile to get it to a nice thin consistency that would cover the whole cake:
And voila! The start of my hockey puck. It was so hard to neatly fit the fondant around the cake, and there were areas where I had to fold it over on itself (if that makes sense)- it wasn’t a perfect fit. After covering the cake, I worked on the decorations for the top, which included the King’s crown logo..
Ya, I’m no artist. Here’s the final product (after I spray painted it with silver edible spray paint from Michael’s):
Hey, I tried. I affixed the crown to the hockey puck and decorated the rest with gel frosting. The purple frosting tube, however, had to be softened in boiling water before being able to use it (What? I should have read the package more closely in the store), which was such a pain. When it was soft enough to use it was hot and runny, but if I waited until it cooled it wouldn’t come out of the tube because it wasn’t soft enough! Ugh! So runny purple frosting it was.
I had started to write “Happy Birthday” where the “NHL” square is but I totally messed up and it wasn’t cute, so I covered it with the off-centered square and fit in a “HBD Tim” on the side.
My mom though the white portion in the middle of the crown resembled go-go boots (ya, I guess I see it). Randomly Michael’s also had purple, black and grey swirly candles! They matched perfectly.
After going to a few King’s games at Staples Center, I have to admit I’m kind of starting to like hockey… I didn’t really understand why fans would get so excited when players fight, but deep down I think I do want to see Dustin Brown knock the lights out of someone on the ice. Look, I’m growing. Happy Birthday, Tim!
Go Kings Go!
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