Poker Table Birthday Cake

Happy Sunday! This week brings Vic's Poker Table Cake. It comes with a story behind it, as all cakes do, and a big "hitch in my giddy-up" to get it made.

Ok, so the first part of the story is that I've made Vic's birthday cakes for the past few years and each on is based on what he likes to do. This cake also followed that theme with the Poker idea. Along with the idea comes a bit of pressure to make each years cake better than last years. Even coming up with the idea is a hard one for his wife and is planned out months in advance.

The cake is strawberry cake with buttercream filling...strawberries and cream! The outside is fresh fondant...all of it. The cards are sugar as are the chips. I started with the covering of the cake with more buttercream and then topping it with the dyed green fondant. After that came the panels along the sides followed by the table "legs". These are just fondant snakes that have been textured with the scalloping tool and then applied along the seams on the sides with a light misting of water. I followed that with the table padding, dying the fondant black. Then I let it rest for a couple of hours so the fondant could set up and not dent so easily when I applied the decorations.

The cards are from real playing cards. I had a sugar transfer sheet made up, the cards just a little smaller than real cards, that I then cut out and adhered to sheets of fondant and let dry till they were solid. I made more than just the Royal Flush so that I could decorate the cake a bit more. All of it is stuck to the cake with a bit of water. The chips took a bit more work. I had to cut out the circles with fondant that had added tylose. The tylose helps the fondant dry out and get solid more quickly. I used a piping tip to make the indent in the center and then used an xacto knife to make the ridges on the top and sides of each chip. At that time I decided how I wanted each chip to be on the board and glued them down and together with water.

The last step, of course is piping the wording on the cake board. Now all of this should have been fairly easy work. A lot of detail, of course, but nothing I was worried about. Until I slammed my hand into a door and broke a finger tip. I did this on the same day I was to make the fondant and fill and crumbcoat the cake. The day before the actual decorating. I have never even considered cancelling a cake on a client before and I certainly didn't want to do that to a regular client! Fortunately, for most of the work, the fact that I am ambidextrous was a huge blessing. I do use my right to write so the piping was the only part that was really painful. The rest I did one handed. Since I'm "ambi" I am use to switching back and forth between hands to work. But for a good deal of this work I couldn't use my right hand at all. It certainly added a level of difficulty to the cake but I didn't have to cancel on my client! 

I'm happy to say the client was very happy with the cake and I'm hoping her husband thinks it is as great as last years cake. Check out last October's posts to see the Mah Jong cake that was his birthday surprise last year!

This week I only have my own cake to make so I can lay off the hand for a few days. I'll share it with you next weekend! (And, yes, I do actually want to make my own cake!). See you then!

Cat