Magic Cake

We held Tanner's 13th birthday party this weekend. Hard to believe he's going to be a teenager already! He is totally fascinated by magic, so we did a magic theme for his birthday which, of course, necessitated making a magic cake!

Here is what we came up with and how we did it:

Sorry our picture quality is still developing. Our photography was a bit off this time as the boys decided they want to make a youtube video of this cake being decorated, and got so busy recording that they kept forgetting to take photos! I'll let you know once the video is edited and posted.

In the meantime, here are the instructions for the magic cake:
1)Base - 2 9" X 13" cakes stacked and iced with chocolate icing died black
2) The top hat is made by baking a cake in an empty tin can; we used a diced tomato can (apparently you need to make sure your can is not lined, so don't use one with a white inside). Set it aside for now.
3) For the brim of the top hat melt chocolate chips and spread them in  a circle on wax or parchment paper to form a slightly larger circle than your can. We traced a slightly larger bowl onto the paper then filled it in with chocolate. Freeze it to set.

4) Magic wand - I couldn't find plain breadsticks so I ended up using cherry Nibs. Pocky would also have worked but I couldn't find them at the time. Turns our I was in the wrong aisle! LOL Dip most of your wand in the melted chocolate and place it on the paper to set.  Put it in freezer to set completely before adding the white chocolate.

I found the wand melted when I picked it up, then melted even faster when I tried to dip it in the white chocolate, so I resorted to spooning the white chocolate onto the ends of the wands and that worked much better. Return them to the freezer.

5) Playing cards - dip tea biscuits in white chocolate then freeze them. Spread more white chocolate on the back to make a better looking and more even card surface. Return them to the freezer.

Pipe red or black icing on them to make the card faces. We used red icing and made aces and twos to keep it simple.

6) Dip mini ice cream cones in melted chocolate (we used blue) for the cups and ball trick. We couldn't find mini ice cream cones so we just cut sugar cones down to size then dipped them. For the balls we used mini gobstoppers, no prep required!

7) After assembling the cake base decorate it it with red buttercream icing to make it look like a magician's table. Tanner took the opportunity to practice his newly-acquired cake decorating skills!

8) Finally assemble the cake. I did this a few hours before the party but if I had it to do over again I would do it later. The brim of the hat softened too much (see how much nicer it looks here than in the first picture?) which made it change colour, droop, and eventually break. Also the weight of the top hat sunk that corner of the cake a bit - not badly, but not perfect.
Oh, and the bunnies were leftover Easter candy we found on clearance.

Tanner loved his party, especially the fantastic magician we had, Steve Dickson. Tanner also loved his cake, I love creating these memories for my children, and another successful party was had by all!