Friday, March 27, 2009

Seeing Red!

My oldest has recently turned 6, and we have his party coming up (it couldn't be on his birthday because the kids were away at my parents' over his "real" birthday!) He decided on a Firetruck/Fireman theme for his party and so I, in my loads of extra time (that was sarcastic, if you missed it!) decided that I would make a perfect firetruck cake. I've seen them online and they can't be that hard, right?

Well, the cake itself is not the problem... I spent 2 days (well, pieces of 2 days, not a full 48 hours!) trying to get the perfect red coloured icing for the truck. It started out like this....


Then I added red (no-taste) Wilton gel. But all I could achieve was this at first: (I don't think Scott would be happy with a "Cameo Coral" firetruck cake!)


Finally, after a lot of asking around, and even putting a plea to my pals on Facebook who are cake decorators, and more mixing and adding gel colouring, I came up with this... There is a bunch of chocolate icing in this as well, which helped create a richer red. I am so glad that the gel by Wilton is no-taste, otherwise nobody would eat the cake!

The colour seemed to darken a bit after I left it in the fridge. It is a great firetruck colour, now, so I am very happy.

Once I finish decorating the cake I will post the pictures!

Here is the invitation that Scott and I made together. These are some super-cheap invitations to make, but I think they turned out pretty cute, and in keeping with the theme!

5 comments:

koralee said...

What fun!!!! Your creative ability amazes me...you have a bunch of blessed children to have a mom like you....have fun!!!

Jen S. said...

super cute!
Can't wait to see how and what you do with the theme for his party!

Patti said...

Now I know the trick to red icing, make it chocolate first. Good to know. Wyatt has requested red icing before and like yours it comes out pink.

alexa said...

Weird that the red didn't work. I bought the (Wilton) Cars pack of icing... red, yellow, blue and black and they've always turned out great.
Can't wait to hear about the party!!

Alexa said...

apparently i didn't use the red often enough (i have at some point) cause now i'm trying to do the lady bug and it's orange!!! I may have to wait until tomorrow :(