Have Your Beer and Eat it Too!

So this was a beer mug cake that I made for my brothers' 40th and 50th birthday party. My brother Roman is really into making home brew and my other brother dabbles in it as well. In any case, they really like beer so it all worked out! I'm sorry I don't have the process broken down more but it was a pretty basic cake. Not to difficult to put together at all and a great first time project for newbie decorators like me!

My biggest mistake was making the cakes in a spring form pan. Really just a lapse of reason on my part. I had regular round pans! So though the cake got rave reviews from everyone, I personally thought it was a little dry. The recipe I used was the chocolate WASC cake I got off of cakecentral.com. This is a really great cake carving recipe that's never failed (in a regular cake pan ;)! The buttercream frosting was thrown together as usual but EXTRA vanilla-y. Yummay!

I used a 17" round base with a 12" (3/4") dowl drilled in. The cake was made with 7 torted layers of cake with buttercream 'foam' and colored fondant coated in piping gel for the glass. The handle was gumpaste. I only put one cardboard circle for support between the third and fourth layers of the cake. I did however, give plenty of time for the cake to settle. Muy importante! It was funny because my bro Roman actually cut through the cardboard thinking it was the cake! Needless to say, he had had some beer prior to cutting!

The fondant: I had real trouble getting an amber color for the beer....like, a really hard time! Not a good couple of hours! It ended up looking like one of those pastel orange colored marshmallow circus peanuts! People, my best piece of advice is to have your color wheel handy! Use your complimentary colors to tone things down! So I took some blue and it ended up turning more of a yellow-y amber color which I further saved by painting it with diluted copper luster dust. The gel coating really made it pop...I was very pleased with how it turned out.

And there's nothing like all that foam spilling over to hide the seam and various other flaws! Plop some buttercream on the top and you got yourself a beer mug cake! Easy Peazy! The cake stood about 15" tall and I used the 8" round pan for the layers. Hope you guys like it and thanks for looking! Beach-themed cupcakes next!