My Survivor Cake- and cartridge giveaway.

Hi Everyone.

I don't usually post my projects here but I wanted to share my "Survivor" Cake.

I'm a HUGE survivor fan! I've watched it since the beginning. Our dear friends (the Silvia family) who live next door invited us for dinner and a survivor finale party on Sunday. I was dying to make a cake with my Cricut CAKE machine. I had been practicing cuts and playing with fondant and Gum paste but had not actually put a cake together. I wanted to do more with this cake but ran out of time. Here's my cake:

(Yep- I spelled Villains wrong. Oops.)

I LOVE my Cricut Cake machine! I've been having so much fun.

I used the Paper Dolls Dress ups, life is a beach and Cake basics for the oval. Cake Basics come with the Cake machine.

I was surprised how easy it was to cover the cake with the fondant. I have not done that before. The hardest part was rolling it out. I used the Wilton Rolled fondant. I also used a peice of PVC pipe to roll it out. I saw in videos that bakers and cake decorators like using PVC for rolling pins. It's lightweight, food grade, strong and you can get pieces of PVC cut to any length you want. Mine is a 2 ft length and was $3 something at our local Home Depot.  The letters, dolls and wave border are all Wilton fondant also. Here are a few tips that worked well for me:

1. I use a pasta roller to make the fondant and or gum paste a uniform thickness

2. Add a cornstartch/powdered sugar mixture to your fondant as you knead in color. It made mine the right consistancy. I found that if it's a bit stiffer than how it comes out of the package then it cuts a whole lot better.

3. Use shortening on the mat to "stick" your material to the mat. I also tried butter and vegetable oil. Neither worked as well for me. I was out of shortening when I first starting playing with my Cake machine.

4.Watch this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhl50MMcyU0 and follow the advise to let the gum paste/fondant sit overnight IF you can (I did let some sit for a few hours and had great results). I only had a few sheets that I let sit overnight because I chose my colors as I went and was short on time so didn't have enough time to let it all sit. It needs to firm up. I found the large zip lock baggies at my local grocery store and I used some plastic sheets from Bed Bath and Beyond in the cutting board section- OR you could also use the Cricut Cake cutting mats

5. Don't be a hater. I was determined to make my machine work like the demonstrations I had seen on HSN. I worked with it until I found what worked for me and had fun doing it.

6. Use the Gum Paste recipe you get from signing up to receive email updates on this blog: http://www.cuttingedgecakeart.com/ It worked GREAT! It was the first success I had.

Just have fun and don't get too frustrated at first. Keep working at it and you'll love it as much as I do!
 
Ok- so, Leave a comment below (and a way for me to contact the winner) for a chance to win your choice of one of the NEW Cricut Cake cartridges. Good luck!