The plan

I've started work on Cally's birthday cake today. The plan is:

A chocolate sheet cake frosted white with a thin layer of jello on top of the frosting. That's the ocean. Then coming out of that will be an island of cake frosted and covered with graham crackers crumbs around the edge for the beach. It'll change over into oreo crumbs as it gets higher. The center point of the island is a volcano. I'm buying dry ice to put in it so the volcano has "smoke" coming out of it. Red gel icing for the lava, and I think I have a few plastic palm trees to put on the beach.

I made the jello already. It's on a large cookie sheet in the fridge. I lined the tray with parchment paper which kind of wrinkled up underneath it. It should make a cool wave effect. I'm going to use a blow dryer on low to warm up the jello if the parchment won't peel off easily. I'm using an angelfood cake pan for the island (but vanilla cake since that's what Caly likes). I'll carve it down a bit so it won't have a flat top.

So... am I crazy or could this work?

You may begin placing bets on what will go wrong now.

I can't wait to see what it looks like! It sounds like a plan to me, so carry on!

It could work, should. Be careful with the dry ice.

Problem #1: I thought I had a dozen eggs. After I mixed up 2 boxes of cake mix, water, and oil, I discovered I only had 4. Scott rescued me by running to town and picking up eggs and a couple of pizzas for dinner.

Erin, I am planning on being super careful and only adding a little. I don't want to have to explain how I managed to give a kid frostbite in June, LOL. The good thing is it'll evaporate fast in this heat.

Modifying the plan. The angel food cake pan is too big if you're going to be able to see the water. I put aluminum foil in a pyrex bowl so the shape would be more volcano-ish and covered that in parchment paper. It's in the oven now so we'll see.

Sounds exciting are you documenting with pics for us to see?

I should, shouldn't I? I haven't so far. I just put the frosting on the bottom layer and the jello on top of that. I put it back in the fridge to get it nice and cold before I attempt to take the parchment paper off the jello. I'm nervous, though. I may end up doing this all over again Friday night. The party is Saturday but I wanted to do the cake today so if it's a bust I can still have time to scrape off the jello and the frosting and redo it with just colored frosting. The plan is to get it looking decent, take pics, and then cover it in parchment paper and plastic wrap and pray that it stays decent until Saturday.

I am excited to see it...the water effect should be cool...and the volcano..that idea is awesome..

Well, shit. The jello just wants to slide off. I took a picture of it while it lasted. This is what it's supposed to look like. It was actually on the cake looking like this when I took the picture.



But it was just sliding around and starting to break apart so I took it off, cleaned up the frosting, and I'm going to build some kind of edge to keep it in place and try it again tomorrow. I'll need to buy more jello though.

This is how the island/volcano looks. It'll look better once frosted and covered in crumbs, but it's got the right shape.

That jello looks cool, well so does the volcano. Karen can you hollow out some of the cake to hold the jello in place? It will really be neat when you get it together. Can't wait to see the finish.

I'm either going to hollow out the cake a bit or make an edge of crumb-covered frosting. But all attempts will have to wait until tomorrow. I'm SO glad I didn't wait until Friday night to try this, LOL.

Freeze the cake, and put the Jello on last minute.

That is going to look really cool..I can't wait to see the finished cake!

The jello looks so much like water in a pool, I'd like to just jump right in. Whatever you did, it worked! Has Cally seen this experimentation or will it be a surprise?

get knox geletin. put in 4 tablespoons gelatin - 12 tbs water.

put in the microwave for 10 sec at a time for about 60 seconds.

take it out, let it sit. a scum will form on top. get this off. if you need to heat it back up, go ahead.

Pour in your pan. not too thick, but not too thin either. (helpful I know) it will harden HARD- but be pliable. this is what I am making Rayleys diamond ring out of .


it does not taste good. but its there.
you can paint it afterwards. OR for flavor-

2 pkg knox geltain 1oz
1 pkg sugar free jello (pick your flavor for color-) .32oz it HAS to be sugar free
12-13 hot water.

do it the same, but it takes about6-7 hours longer to 'gel'

OR get piping gel. it dries 'liqued' looking. tint with Blue. Wilton makes one. its real greasy looking.

use

All this talk of cakes has me wondering what i am going to do for Wynonna's 18th birthday in July...hmmm any suggestions?? I am open to anything and everything whether it includes fondant or is fondantless lol. Come on all you creative people and give me some ideas...

Thank you for the suggestions, Chelle. Of course by the time I'd read them I was all set up to do the jello for the second attempt so I'm hoping it works and I never get around to trying it a different way.

Erin, I would freeze it. That's totally the way to go. Only my freezer is full. So I've got it in the fridge instead. It'll have to be good enough.

So far, I've got the island on the cake, the place for the water to go dug out, and the outer edge of the cake frosted blue. The inner part is white because I think it'll make the jello look better. Oh and I put on the red gel for lava and the little plastic palm trees. I also used green gel under where the jello will go and wrote Happy B-day Caly. I figure it'll get mushed up and disappear when I put the jello on, but the green gel won't look bad if that happens and if it doesn't, it should look pretty cool.

Caly has NOT seen the cake but she knows I'm making it. She's been on a short trip to visit family with her grandma but she'll be home in a few hours. There's no way to hide it from her because it has to be in the fridge. I'm hoping she'll be excited to see it.

Tonight I'll cut the slab of jello to the right size to just drop down in the hole I carved, and tomorrow I'll get the dry ice. I'm really hoping the store that sells it isn't shut down or something stupid like that. But even if it doesn't work, I think it'll be a pretty cool cake and Caly will be happy that I tried. Besides, I've been nibbling on the part of the cake that I carved out and it's really yummy. It may end up looking bad, but I know it'll taste good.

OK. Except for the dry ice, it's done. The two little dots in the water are gummy fish. Under the water it says, "Happy B-day Caly". It's a little easier to read in real life. I doubt it will stay, though. The jello will probably dissolve it enough that you won't be able to read it. If it does, I'll write it around the edges of the cake.





Caly was super impressed. I also got some candles that are made to where the flame is colored. Like the red candles have red flame and the blue candles have a blue flame. So we're going to put one or two red candles in the top of the volcano and then put the dry ice around them so the top will have a red glow and smoke.

Now the main challenge is to make sure Zoe and Quinn leave it alone.

That looks so cool. You'll have to try and get a pic when it has the ice in it. Good job.

Sweet!

I remember when my oldest DS was in first grade. He signed me up to make jello jigglers or some sort of jello for their Halloween party. I overthought the whole thing and followed a tip in Family Fun or some such magazine and made little ghostly white shapes between layers of jello. Only I added red hots or some other little candy for eyes on the ghosts. The jello dissoved the candies and the whole thing turned into a hot mess (no pun intended). So even if your lettering dissolves eventually, at least she saw it when she could read it and appreciate it.

Awesome Karen!

that is soooo cool!! I am impressed!

I am starting on Rayleys tiara and 'big diamond ring' to put on her royal pillow now. It is not that very easy. LOL

Lori wrote:Sweet!

I remember when my oldest DS was in first grade. He signed me up to make jello jigglers or some sort of jello for their Halloween party. I overthought the whole thing and followed a tip in Family Fun or some such magazine and made little ghostly white shapes between layers of jello. Only I added red hots or some other little candy for eyes on the ghosts. The jello dissoved the candies and the whole thing turned into a hot mess (no pun intended). So even if your lettering dissolves eventually, at least she saw it when she could read it and appreciate it.

Yup. The letters dissolved overnight. But she saw it so I'm happy. I used green so that in case they dissolved it would still look OK. It's got kind of a sea weed look to it, LOL.

I love Family Fun. Some of their ideas are too complicated for my little ones or too simple for my bigger ones but 90% of the time I find something all four of them would love.

chelle wrote:I am starting on Rayleys tiara and 'big diamond ring' to put on her royal pillow now. It is not that very easy. LOL

I so would have bought a ring pop. I'm a chicken when it comes to fance stuff. And yes, I know the volcano is fancy but except for the jello bit it was just a cake with another lump of cake stuck on top. It didn't even have to have a particular shape.