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Robot Cake Guide

My about-to-be 3-year old wanted a robot birthday party. Being a fairly frugal mom, I always make my kids’ birthday cakes. My first thought for a simple robot cake was to make a sheet cake, put some Transformer action figures from the toy aisle on it, write happy birthday, and be done with it, but you know, he didn’t say he wanted a Transformers birthday, he said robot. I decided to make an actual robot-shaped cake rather than a cake with robots on it. The result was not only simple to make, but very “cool” according to my little man. The cake turned out good enough, I thought I’d share a how-to guide.

How to make a robot cake:

Ingredients you’ll need:

Two boxes of cake mix: I used chocolate with a box of pudding added and milk instead of water, but I let my kids choose the flavor of their cakes. You can also make yours from scratch if you prefer.

Two containers worth of white frosting: I made cream cheese frosting equivalent to about 2 store-bought tubs. As long as its white, you can use any frosting you like.

Black food coloring: Note, that in some areas this can be hard to find when it isn’t Halloween. Plan ahead, you may have to order some.

A frosting writer pen: I used black

Assorted button-shaped candy: I used Rolos wrapper on, mini Rolos, Riesens wrapper off, and part of a Hershey bar

Donuts: I used two round cinnamon rolls, one round twist, and two glazed twists. Frugal tip: Many bakeries offer an after 6 pm special where donuts cost less.

A 13 x 9 pan, a large muffin pan ,and one 4 X 9 bread loaf pan

Instructions:

First, bake one sheet cake in the 13 X 9 pan, one loaf cake in the 4 X 9 pan and two large cupcakes in the muffin pan (papers aren’t necessary). You may opt to do a two- layer cake on the 13 X 9 if you wish, but you’ll require more cake mix and frosting than I did. Allow to cool before frosting.

Empty the frosting into a large bowl, add drops of black food coloring, and mix until your desired soft-grey to silver robot shade is obtained. Frost the sheet and loaf cake and arrange. You may find rinsing your frosting wand between applications helps it smooth on easier. I used a Commercial cookie sheet for my robot cake and it fit perfectly. You may have to construct a serving tray if you don’t have one. See the photo attached to this article for arrangement. The loaf cake is the robot’s head, and the sheet pan is the robot’s body.

Add more food coloring to the left over frosting to achieve a slightly darker grey and frost the tops of the cupcakes, then cut the muffin tops off, and attach them as eyes.

Next, cut two round donuts in half (this is where I used my cinnamon roll donuts), frost both halves, and attach as the robot’s legs. Frost two donuts (this is where I used the twist donuts), and situate them as the robot’s arms. Finally, cut another round donut in half (my round twist) and place it between the loaf and sheet cake for a neck joint. Again, you can look at the photo of this article for a visual guide.

To finish up, write “Happy birthday” or your desired message in a robot-like square font. Attach candy as buttons as desired. Break off two squares of Hershey bar and score with a knife to appear as a mouth. Since my son was turning three, I attached candles as antenna on the robot’s head. This would work well for robot cakes for children turning one to three.

Overall, I would rank this robot cake firmly in the beginner’s category on difficulty level, it really is as easy to make as baking a cake, but looks pretty neat.

The History of Smores: Chocolate, Marshmallows, and Graham Crackers

Certain things just scream summer, so much so they’re almost essential to summer. Do you know where they came from? Is a hot dog really made of dogs? Who froze Popsicles? Were smores an accident or an act of genius? Prepare to be answered. The history of some of your favorite foods is about to be revealed to fill your brain with more useless trivia for camp ground conversation and late night silence shattering than you ever really wanted. So much so it requires more than one article, today’s subject…

Smores, dripping with love:

No camping trip is complete with out America’s finger goo-ing, sweet-toothed, chocolate-lipped treat, the smore. In fact, the Smore has become such a beloved dessert that it actually has it’s own (although not national recognized) holiday, August 10th during prime camping season.

What’s a smore lack?

A verified history. It seems despite it’s popularity the actual exact date and time that some one decided to place marsh mellow atop chocolate and sandwich it between graham cracker is unknown, but here’s what we do know.

The very first printed record of the recipe was in a 1927 in a girl scout’s manual entitled, “Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts”. It’ said the smores original name was actually “some more”, awarded because of the constant requests for more and later shortened to simply “s’more”. It’s suggested that this abbreviation was perhaps born from sticky mouthed individuals unable to properly say, “some more, please” or that smores are just so delicious, you don’t have time to say the whole phrase. Because the three primary and necessary ingredients for an unaltered smores recipe are: graham crackers, marsh mallows and chocolate bars, and these items became popular and readily available to the public in the 19th century, it’s safe to bet the recipe originated in that time period, and we’ll simply credit it’s creation to happy camper’s everywhere.

Don’t fret we’ll offer you some history yet…

Breaking it down: The history of the smores building blocks:

The marsh mellow:

The marsh mellow far beats the smore in an age contest being over 4,000 years old. It was first discovered Egypt by squeezing a mallow plant and was reserved only for gods and royalty. However, it didn’t receive it’s more common appearance until the 1800’s. French candy makers whipped the plant extract into egg whites and sugar to make not treats, but medicine. Marshmallows originally were used to treat sore throats, suppress coughs, and help heal minor cuts and burns, and became so popular a quicker production method had to be found. Unfortunately, this method also put an end to the use of actual mallow in in marshmallows resulting in the modern recipe of corn syrup, corn starch, sugar, and gelatin. Marshmallows have no medical use, but Americans still purchase more than 95 million pounds per year.

The graham cracker:

We can put a name and a date on this one. Sylvester Graham in 1829, and clearly the cookie is named after it’s inventor. Graham created the cookie as part of a vegetarian diet as a high fiber, slightly-sweet cracker made with whole, unrefined wheat flour. He is also credited with having the first bread brand to be enjoyed world wide, but Graham was not worldly loved. He rallied against tobacco, meat, and alcohol and was regularly assaulted in the street. Not a kind way to treat someone who played such a big part in the smores birth.

The chocolate bar:

The most extensively researched ingredient of the smore, the chocolate bar, has a rich history dating back to it’s sister ingredient the marshmallow’s time more than 4,000 years ago in 2000 B.C. Chocolate originated in the Amazon and has been used all-throughout history by almost every culture ever known at some point in time, it was even once a currency in Spain. It wasn’t, however, forged into an actual chocolate bar until 1847, when Joseph Fry created a paste from chocolate that could be pressed into a mold. Chocolate DOES have medical uses. Harvard’s school of medical health claims that a few pieces of chocolate a month can actually lengthen your life! Chocolate is also high in antioxidants and essential minerals such as iron and copper.

But you know the best part of the smore is not it’s history, but it’s taste. I leave you with no other closing than the original 1927 recipe for smores compliment’s of the girl scouts.

“Some More:

8 sticks (for toasting the marshmallows)

16 graham crackers

8 bars plain chocolate (any of the good plain brands, broken in two)

16 marshmallows

Toast two marshmallows over the coals to a crisp gooey state and then put them inside a graham cracker and chocolate bar sandwich. The heat of the marshmallow between the halves of chocolate bar will melt the chocolate a bit. Though it tastes like “some more” one is really enough. “

Pirate Ship Cake Tutorial

Every year I let my kids choose a “theme” for their birthday. In the past, they have really chosen some tough ones, but this year my soon-to-be five year old choose pirate. Yes! Something there is an abundance of supplies for that I don’t have to Macgyver engineer. One of the biggest components of a birthday party is, of course, the cake.

In this case, I wanted to do a totally awesome pirate ship cake. First, I decided I didn’t want to mess with trying to cut and shape cake. You can do it that way, but honestly, it’s kind of a pain, and you can buy 3D cake pans fairly inexpensively. I choose the Nordic Ware 3D pirate ship cake pan. I shopped on Amazon, because first, they had the lowest price. Second, they had reviews which helped me know how to bake that bad chicken once, rather than 3 or 4 times before getting it right. 3D cakes can be awesome, but they also can be tricky because bake times and cake consistency can really count.

Anyway, my cake did turn out awesome (see pictures), and I’m going to share just how I went about making it for you.

What you’ll need: (Ingredients)

-3 boxes cake mix flavor of your choice

-Milk, eggs and a pudding pack for each cake mix and 1 for each whip cream tub

-Almond extract

-Pam Flour baking spray

-8 oz dark chocolate chips

-1 cup heavy cream

-Blue food coloring

-Whip cream as needed

-Decorations (kebab sticks, printed sails, Hershey Snackers, black frosting pen, candles)

How you are gonna do this, aka instructions:

First, you want to bake the pirate ship cake. You actually need it second, but I discovered if this sucker does not have a lot of time to cool, it’ll break in half when you go to move it. Mine was cool on the outside, but apparently still pretty dang hot on the inside after about 45 minutes. I had to glue it together with ganache. You can’t tell, but still, avoidable mistake. To bake the 3D cake you’ll use just under 2 boxes of cake. Mine made the cake plus 3 large cupcakes on the side. I ended up using some of those to prop the ship straight, so that’s helpful actually. I also cheat, a lot, if you have time to make cake from scratch and whip cream yourself, etc. go for it, I’m sure it tastes better than way, but this mom at least “aint got time for that.”

I followed reviewer’s recommendations to use flour Pam baking spray (light coat only, too heavy and you’ll lose detail) and a cook temp of 310 of 70 minutes. I used boxed chocolate cake mix, added a box of chocolate pudding mix for firmness, and replaced the water in the cake with milk for flavor.

Once the pirate ship cake was cooling, I made a base for it. Pictured is a 13 X 9, but if you want more space you may consider a sheet pan. For my 13 X 9, I used one box white cake, replaced the water with milk again, added a vanilla pudding and 1 tsp almond extract for flavor. Once your cake is in the pan drip blue food coloring in and swirl. Bake as directed. Now I caution here, my “ocean” was semi green once cut because apparently, vanilla pudding had yellow coloring to it. If you want a true-blue cake color, skip the pudding or make sure it does not have a yellow tint, if you care more for flavor and like the pudding additive, keep it.

While that cools, you can make ganache for the pirate ship. A ganache glaze seemed to be the easiest way to maintain the detail and frost the cake. Ganache is actually super easy to make too. Just take 1 cup heavy cream and place it in a double boiler until just bubbling—be careful not to let it scorch. Dump that hot mess onto 8 oz dark chocolate chips in a bowl and stir until creamy. My ganache came out a bit thicker than a glaze because I used an entire bag of dark chocolate chips (10 oz) to 1 cup cream, so if you want a thinner true glaze than pictured, keep that in mind.

Allow your ganache to cool a bit, but not so much it isn’t pourable. Set your pirate cake up on a cooling rack above a pan to catch drippings and just pour the ganache over it and leave it to set. Meanwhile, your base should be cool. For the whipcream frosting for those awesome waves, it is one 8 oz tub plus 1 tsp vanilla extract, plus 1 pack instant pudding (I used cheesecake flavor), and between ½ and 1 cup milk. Generally, I find 1 cup too much but ½ cup not enough so I just start at ½ cup and add milk until it looks frosting consistency—I know, very precise I am. Once mixed pull about 1/3 and separate it, then drip blue food coloring in the remaining 2/3 and swirl, you don’t even need to full mix you want a watery look.

Frost a spot on your base and carefully place your pirate ship cake on top. Frost the rest of the base heaping some around the ship to look like wake and leaving some wave like bumps here and there. Next, use the 1/3 of plain white whipcream frosting you have remaining to add foamy wave tops and more detail to the wake. I did them by just touching a frosting spatula with white to the surface and pull it up again, sort of frosting the frosting.

And there you have a plain 3d pirate ship cake slate to work with. I added kebab stick masts with simple printed sails that I singed with a lighter. The prow and little window dot decoration things are graham cracker sticks from one of these Hershey’s Snackers things. The pirates are from a Pirates TOOB also found on Amazon. Here is the jolly roger I printed. the other sails are just white squares. I did take an extra kebab stick and trace the wood lines on the ship and used left over black frosting from writing happy birthday to draw some of the ship details back on because my ganache glaze was so thick.

All in all, this pirate ship cake took me about an hour minus bake times. It was a huge hit, very happy 5 year old. It’s versatile enough you could do a lot with it to make it your own.