"Ford At The Beach" Cake

My "Ford at the beach" cake

This cake was made for my husbands 30th birthday. Since you only turn 30 once, I wanted to make it big and bold. He's the average "country boy" (above average to me) -  in love with his family, his land, and classic tractors, cars and trucks. He has an old 1959 Ford Truck that he's been slowly working on restoring the last few years, but doesn't get much time to work on it between working and family time. I also would love to see it restored so I wanted to make a Ford Truck to put on his cake to make it "him". We've also taken some great family vacations over the years and our favorites have always been at the beach. So I wanted to incorporate that as well. I worked on this cake for 4 days straight (long 8 hour days). Most aspects of this cake I had never done before which is why it took me so long. As I mentioned in my last blog, I still have "kitchen disasters" myself even though I bake all of the time. With every challenge I learn new things and it makes me a stronger baker. So, step by step, let me show you how I made my "Ford at the beach" cake for my husband who absolutely loved it! (He better right? After 4 long days. LOL!)

I apologize ahead of time for not being the best sketch artist.
Here is the design sketch for my "Ford at the beach" cake.



My husband's birthday bash was scheduled for a Sunday so I started working on aspects of this cake on the Wednesday before. Aspects that would not spoil in between time. The first aspect I worked on was the shells that would go on the cake. I couldn't find a mold with shells small enough to use on the actual "beach" part of the cake so I bought the only shell mold I could find and slightly changed my design from there.



These "Candy Melts" are made by Wilton
and are great for molding designs out of
chocolate. They're tasty too!



These squeeze bottles are very inexpensive and are
crucial to molding designs out of chocolate.







This is the mold I bought, also made by Wilton.





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I melted the "Candy Melts" in the microwave being very careful not to burn the chocolate. Then I poured the melted mixture into the squeeze bottles. Very carefully, I squeezed the chocolate into each mold making sure to fill in the entire design. After all the shells were filled in with chocolate, I gently picked up the mold and tapped it on the counter a few times to release any air bubbles in the chocolate and to also smooth it evenly across the top of the mold. (If you want to make a marbleized effect you can mix colors of candy melts in the bowl before melting and then using a spoon or bamboo skewer, gently stir colors together a few times- not too much- marbleizing the chocolate. Then gently pour into squeeze bottles and fill molds.)  I made several different colors of shells since at the real beach they are all different. After the mold was filled, I put it in the freezer for 5-10 minutes to let the chocolate set up and then gently released the shells from the mold. This took me an entire day to do since I only had one mold. I made around 100 shells.

This is a picture of the shells before and after the
shimmer dust.

To give the shells a special touch, I painted each one with
edible shimmer dust. It comes in a power form and using a
paint brush, you just paint it on. Super easy and it gives
your design a great eye-popping effect.



This is the final result. See how they sparkle?
I layered them in an airtight container using wax paper
between each layer for protection.

On Thursday, I started working on the "Ford Truck" which I molded out of rice crispy treats. First, I drew out each truck panel (exactly to the scale I needed it) onto wax paper. Then I cut out each panel and layered it onto the rice crispies and cut around the design.



Here are the panels traced onto was paper.
(Sorry it's so hard to see)



Here are my wax paper panel cutouts.

          

I laid the wax paper panels onto the rice crispy
treats and cut around each panel.

                                            

Here are the panels put together.
This is the truck bed.

Here are the cutout panels.

After placing the panels together, I inserted toothpicks to hold them together (I did this only because the "truck" aspect of the cake is for looks not eating, otherwise I would not have used toothpicks). Then I filled in the middle of the truck bed with more rice crispy treats so the sides would not cave in.

(This was my "kitchen disaster". I learned the hard way that the sides would not hold up on their own and had to make another batch of rice crispy treats to use for "fill in" purposes). Molding the shape of the truck took me the entire day. There was also a lot of cutting and shaping involved.

By the way, I have NEVER molded anything out of rice crispies before so this was a new experience for me. By the end of it, I learned what to do and what not to do next time.  :)

On Friday, I worked on covering the truck with fondant and molding other details of the cake from gum paste. I love working with gum paste and fondant. I find them easy to work with and I love what you can create.

Gum paste is edible but has no flavor. It dries rock hard and dries out quickly so you have to move fast and keep all unused gum paste in an airtight spot at all times.

Fondant is an edible icing that is rolled out smooth and gives a great finished look to your cake or other project. You can buy fondant ready made (which doesn't have a very appealing flavor) or you can make your own. I make my fondant homemade using marshmallows. It not only tastes great, but I think it rolls out nicer than ready made fondant. You can also flavor your marshmallow fondant with extracts and color your fondant with gel food colorings.

Using white fondant, I covered the front half of the truck and the bed of the truck separately. Then using Wilton's "Teal" gel food coloring, I tinted more fondant and placed each panel over the white fondant. After a while and alot of patience, it finally started looking like a truck. I also molded the trucks trim out of gum paste and painted it with a mixture of Wilton's "black" food coloring gel and white shimmer dust and a couple drops of vodka. These mixed together make a "chrome" colored paint. The vodka makes the paint smooth and then evaporates leaving a shiny finish.


On Saturday, I made the actual "cake" part of the cake. I made an "Italian Cream Wedding Cake" with "White Chocolate Frosting". (I will post these recipes at a later date) This is my husbands favorite cake and frosting combination. I made a sheet cake so it would be big enough to feed everyone at the party and to also be big enough to fit the scale of the truck.

Then I made the "sand." To make the sand edible, I ground up honey graham crackers (extremely fine) and placed them in a bowl. Then I added 1/2 cup of brown sugar (light or dark brown sugar can be used) to give it a different texture. Then I spread the "sand" over the area of the cake that was to be the shore.
(By the way, this part of the cake was delicious! Great for guests that prefer a little less icing on their cake. The flavor of the "sand" blended well with the cake and icing flavors)

After all of the hard work the last few days it was finally time to put everything together, MY FAVORITE PART!

Here is the finished "Ford Truck." Notice all the details: The tires, truck trim, the door handles, the rear view mirrors, the pop can on the rail of the truck bed, the beach towel and the surfboard. There is also a license plate on the back of the truck (that I forgot to take a picture of) that says "30 TH" on it and also a tailgate handle. This truck was a lot of work, but well worth it. My husband loved it!



Here is another element I made to help tie the theme together- a picnic blanket and basket with bananas and peaches all made from gum paste. There is also a pop can and everything was hand painted with a mixture of gel food coloring and vodka.



Here is the "ocean." Using three bowls I tinted the frosting "Sky Blue", "Teal", and "Royal Blue" using Wilton food coloring gels. I used a small spatula to sloppily spread one color on the cake in spots, then filled in spots with another color and finally used the last color. Then I took the spatula and blended them together. Lastly, I used the last of the white frosting and spread in spots to give it a "rippling wave" effect.

 Last but not least, I placed the edible shells around the bottom border of the cake and also placed them around the cake board that the cake sat on. This helped give it a finished "beachy" look.

 I enjoyed making this cake for my husband very much even though it was alot of hard work. Like I said before, I learned a lot of things with this cake and also practiced different techniques. That's what I love about baking: the possibilities are endless. I hope you enjoyed watching how I made this cake and I encourage you to make your own cake creations.

Happy Baking!

The final result!