It's Good to be the King

I love making cakes! It's by far my new favorite thing to do, so I jumped at the opportunity to make a cake for my friend Ben's 34th birthday!

Ben loves Crown Royal. Ben loves a lot of other things too, but one of the first things I found out about him was how much he loves Crown Royal. Therefore, when Ben's wife, Phyllis, called and asked me if I had any creative ideas for his birthday, I immediately googled "Crown Royal cake" and came up with my own plan of action.

First I made 2 cakes (red velvet mix, cream cheese icing- this is his favorite icing flavor and I always like to pair it with red velvet cake...) and let them cool. Because I have a crappy apartment and a crappy oven and really crappy cake pans, the cakes came out a LITTLE lopsided. By a little I mean a LOT! (side note...now would be a perfect time for SOMEONE to save up for some nice cake pans...or a house...unless you're saving for something else...

sigh.

fine. cake pans it is)

Anyway, luckily for me, I was able to put the thin side of one on the thick side of the other and it ended up more or less level. With a thin layer of icing in the middle it looked pretty great. Then I eyeballed the shape of a Crown Royal bottle. It wasn't that hard, but if you're nervous, print out an image and cut around. Cover it with icing to crumb coat and prepare for the fondant.

Here comes the fun part! And boy oh boy am I glad Evan was there to help with this part.

I was trying to be cost conscious, so I bought white fondant and some candy coloring. I used this instead of icing coloring because it's not water based and using water-based food coloring in fondant can cause it to break down and soften, rendering it useless. I played with some colors (creating a very unsuccessful brown that is not suitable for human eyes) until I got the proper brown for the bottle, yellow for the cap and purple for the bag. This takes quite a bit of lower arm strength and your hands will get discolored and cuticles will look like crap for a while. Thanks for the help, Evan!

I rolled them out (pretty thick for the bottle so you can make lines in it like on the bottle--the rest pretty thin) and placed them on the cake. First the brown over the entire bottle. Smooth. Then the label in white. Brush a small amount of water on the back of the label and place on the cake. Repeat with the cap and band around the cap.

Here comes that iconic purple bag. I had fun with this one! I played around with it a few times before getting it perfect. I rolled it out, folded part of the top over so it looked like the section where the tie goes. Then I kinda gathered it up like folds in fabric and placed it on the cake. But I forgot to put water down first. So I held the folds in place and picked up sections and brushed water on the area under and placed it gently back down. I also used some extra yellow to make the cording. I rolled it out kindergarten snake style and twisted them together.

I had already gotten Evan to wrap it in plastic wrap but we took a picture of what it should look like thus far...

The next day I painted on the details by combining lusterdust and clear vanilla extract into little paint buckets. I brushed the gold paint onto the label and the cap and ties, bronze onto the bottle and purple onto the bag. I added a little food coloring (because I was too lazy to go to Michael's AGAIN to get more luster dust in the right colors) and it worked out pretty well but a little runny. I made red and purple for the details on the label. I also used the gold luster dust to write Ben's name on the bag and add some details. Here's a hint with that one though, maybe try writing the name on the bag BEFORE you put it on the cake because it was really difficult to do it after. Anyway, sorry for glossing over the last details, but you can be creative after you get the basic shape done. Here's what the finished product looked like. The lighting is quite a bit different, but you get the idea!

Hopefully will have some pics of people enjoying the cake later! :) I really should have taken my own pictures this time, but I had a little bit going on. 

OH! Forgot to mention that for party favors, I made the same oreo truffle recipe from before but did them as pops and just went with purple candy coating. Added some edible confetti with some corn syrup to make it a little more glittery. Then Evan bagged them up and I tied purple ribbons around them and BAM! All done! :) 

Happy Birthday, Ben! Hope it was the best day ever!