Elephants

About a week ago or so, my friend Autumn emailed me and asked me:

So silly question, how do you make gray icing

I emailed her back and said to use a bit of black.

She sent me this photo and said this is what she was making for her son's birthday party.

**found here**

She said that she was making a cake table for his birthday party and if she felt like attempting this, she'd make it for his party.  She was going to make him a cake (strawberry maybe), her Mother-in-law was (a gooey butter cake), another co-worker was going to make her one (chocolate) and if she felt like it, she'd attempt this.

I told her if she'd get me a package of powdered sugar & 2 cake mixes, I'd make it for her.

SOLD!  or DEAL!  whichever :)

So I planned on baking the cake on Wednesday night, however, well... I forgot until 10pm.  And hubby told me around 6 to do it.  oy!  So he was an absolute sweetheart and woke up early Thursday morning to help me.

Then I came home last night, made my icing... {If you want the icing Recipe I used here, go here...}

Got hubby to help me cut out cardboard to set the cake on.

Cut out the cake.

And to town I went.

I have absolutely NO idea what I was looking at, thinking about or doing.  This photo cracks me up!

And here is the finished product :).

Think it'll work?  I made Autumn's son's first birthday cake, now I'm making him one again!

Large Batch Buttercream Icing Recipe
2/3 Cup Cold Water
4 tbsp Meringue Powder (1/4 cup)
12 c or 3# Confectioners Sugar
1 1/4 cups solid vegetable shortening
3/4 tsp salt
Up to 1 tsp Flavoring

Mix water + salt, dissolve salt.  Add meringue powder.  Add flavoring

• White icing - use white flavoring
• Candy flavoring by the drop
• Almond - no more than 1/4 tsp

Next add 2 # of the powdered sugar.  (easiest way is to weigh it out on scales).  Add shortening 1/2 cup at a time, mixing completely.  After all shortening is added add the last 1# of powdered sugar, a little at a time.

This gives you about 7 cups of icing at a stiff consistency.
You want to Ice a cake with thin consistency so thin out with a couple tsp of water (or milk) added one at a time until you get desired consistency.

Fun fillings --> stiff- Pipe around outside to hold filling - use a bag & coupler with no tip:

• Plain Icing
• Icing/Fruit
• Icing/Jam
• Icing/Jelly
• Icing/Pudding (pudding cup good for regular sized cake)

Happy Friday.

p.s. It is ironic I'm doing a post about an elephant cake after Jill's post yesterday (Hi Jill).