This time last week.

It was last Thursday morning when I started doing this.

Baking cake.

I needed several layers of cake for the birthday creation I wanted to put together for Morgan's ninth birthday celebration.

I had spent several weeks trying to decide what kind of design I wanted for his totally rad skateboard cake. It's what he had requested. I like to deliver.

When I started searching I really couldn't find any great cake ideas until I searched the Ace of Cakes site and found that they had indeed at one time made a skateboard cake. I should have known.  Of course there had to be a skateboard cake they had designed in their history of cake baking awesomness. Ace of Cakes is the "bomb diggity" as we like to say in our household. And we watch them every single time they are on. Morgan and I especially.

So I decided on the Ace of Cakes design with a few modifications to make the cake our own and then began whipping up cake.

Lot's of cake.

I thought two layers for the bottom of the cake would be enough but as I continued to build the cake I realized that I would need an additional layer to create the border on the bottom of the cake. 

Let them eat cake I say! Really I didn't say that. I just kept mixing batter is what I did.

Batter, batter and more batter!  Batter Batter SWING batter!! Sorry.

Then I baked and layered. Like for days it seemed.

Frosting with butter cream in between layers.

And finally had the bottom cake prepped for fondant.

Duff Goldman's (the king of Ace of Cakes) fondant to be exact. Did you know you can purchase this now for yourself?!! You can.

I have never used fondant before so I knew this was going to be interesting.

I followed the directions and it worked perfectly. Well almost perfectly.

First I warmed the fondant in the microwave then I rolled it out. Then I layed it over the triple layer of cake and started to smooth as fast as possible.

This part if the cake was going to serve as a base for the top of the cake and also as  place to put a banner of edible skateboard stickers.

Then you work to smooth the surface and eventually cut of the excess with a pizza cutter.

 

Eventually I ended up with a fairly smooth creation. This stuff is not easy to perfect. That is why the professionals are professionals.

Next was the topper. The Ace of Cakes guys made a skateboard wheel for the top of their cake and I thought that would be a much easier task than say a detail item such as a truck or even a skateboard deck for that matter. Plus Morgan loves new skateboard wheels like nothing else. I knew he would love it! Plus he could eat it. And share it with his buddies.

I started with two cake rounds.

   

Then I cut them down to size for the wheel.

Then frosted and layered.

That was going to be a big wheel.

Then again with the fondant. This time purple. Morgan's fave color! And the color of wheels he is currently using on his skateboard.

Rolled it out again.

And placed it over the wheel.

 Then I started the smoothing process. Notice I cut a hole in the top with a circle cookie cutter to create the hole in the wheel. This gave it more if the realistic look. Then I just smoothed the fondant down into the hole.

This process was easier than covering the big base of the cake with fondant simply because it was a smaller surface. I like smaller surfaces. Like totally.  

And finally .. a wheel.

It then topped the base.

Now time for the real decorating.

Morgan's favorite thing on the planet besides skateboarding, or purple wheels, or backside aires (skateboard trick) would be stickers.

Skateboard stickers to be exact. And with these skateboard stickers he covers his helmet and at times his skateboard deck.  We have 9243 of them laying around our house at the moment. You think I'm kidding.  I would SO not kid about that many skateboard stickers. Seriously.

What's more fun than sticking skateboard stickers on your helmet or board... eating them. Who knew? I though it best to print several of them on edible paper with edible inks and put them on the cake so the kids could chew them up.

I'm intense like that. True story.

Here they are.

A few the stickers did not print as brightly as I would have liked.

That is where these came in. Duff's color gels. Basically they are paint you can eat.

And so with these lovely gels I brightened up the stickers that needed it.

Next I cut them out and placed them on the base of the cake.

His favorite skate company's stickers donned his birthday cake and all was right with the world.

Kinda.

Next I had to finish the wheel. And the dude. What dude you may ask?! I'll tell you more about the dude in a moment.

I painted his favorite wheel company on the top.

 

Then I knew that we needed a skater dude to top off the wheel.

This particular skater dude.

I had watched Ace of Cakes make many "fondant people" for their cake creations and thought I might be able to pull it off.

Here is what I came up with on my first attempt.

Not good. Not good at all. This guy got sent back to the fondant pile and I got a new perspective of just how amazing the true cake artists are today. 

 

I tried again and came up with this guy.

And his board.

 

Which was a slight improvement but not much.

What I realized at this point was that Morgan and his buddies would be excited to see skater dude and that skater dude would be loved no matter what.

I hoped.

And you know what.. he was!

Morgan's first glance at this cake was utter surprise beyond what I could have imagined.

He was shocked and said "That is just freaky how good that is mom"

I took that as a compliment. Like totally.

Then he continued to sit in awe of the cake. And this also made his mother feel quite happy.

Then we took it to the party and all of his buddies were like

"Dude that is like a totally sick cake!"

Each new generation has a new saying for "cool" and sick is the twenty first century's way of saying cool, rad, awesome or insane. Imagine my relief.

All in all it was a great experience. From start to finish I really did enjoy the process. It's hard to believe that just a week ago I pulled this thing off but indeed I did.

Of course I could not have done it without Keith running to the store 483 times for more cake flour and butter. Nor could I have sped through the process without Austin taking pictures and helping to grab things for his mother such as paper towels, rolling pins and sedatives   encouraging words. You would be amazed at how good that child is at positive words. Really, really!

Then before I knew it we cut into the thing and it was gone in mere minutes.

 

And Morgan thought it was great.

Which was what I was really going for.

Sure to be a birthday he'll remember forever.

So that is what I was doing last week.

And this week I am taking it easy. Go figure.

Over and out.

The (still has the faint order of fondant in my nose) Side Line Mom