Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Blue and Gold Blizzard

Since my son started Cub Scouts a couple of years ago, I have been lucky enough to get to make the cake every year for the Blue and Gold Banquet.  I'm usually given free reign on the design as long as I work within the realm of Scouting.
2012 Blue and Gold Banquet Cake
2011 Blue and Gold Banquet Cake

This year I really wanted to do a cupcake tower instead of my usual tiered cake.  I have always wanted to do one of these because I never have really had an opportunity before and I've often been inspired by bakeries like Pink Cake Box that do lovely ones.

The banquet was scheduled for two weeks ago and I spent a couple of days baking and decorating ten dozen cupcakes.  I made Oreo, Vanilla, and Red Velvet flavors.  They were perfect.  I also made a 6 inch cake for the top and decorated it with some little fondant figures on a bridge.  And then the day of the event...there was a blizzard here in Boulder.  A full-on-road-closing-shut-everything-down blizzard.  The event was cancelled.  I was stuck with 120 uneaten cupcakes.  Ugh.  Luckily between friends, neighbors, and coworkers we were able to give them all away.  But it still meant that I would have to remake all of them when the event was rescheduled.

As luck would strangely have it, there was another severe snowstorm this weekend as well!  That's life in Boulder for you!  Thank goodness this snowstorm wasn't severe enough to cancel the event again.

After last time, I took a slightly easier way out and just made two flavors or cake-Oreo Cake with Vanilla Frosting, and Vanilla Cake with Vanilla Frosting.  The Oreo cake is basically my regular chocolate recipe, but with a cookie in the bottom of the cupcake.  It tastes pretty awesome and was pretty popular among the boys.

The theme this year for the "Twelve points of Scout Law" and I wasn't sure how to make that interesting.  Awhile back, when I lived in Texas, I did a cake with that as a theme and had piped each value on the tiers of the cake.  That tends to be more of an Eagle Court of Honor thing, and not something all that fun for little boys in Cub Scouts.  So I decided to use the Crossover Ceremony as inspiration instead.
Eagle Court of Honor Cake, circa 2008

The Crossover Ceremony happens at the end of the school year and the boys walk over a bridge to symbolize becoming the next rank of Scout.  So I made a tiny bridge out of brown gumpaste. I scored the pieces of fondant to look more like wood and then attached them to the cake with wooden skewers.

When the bridge was complete, I made each individual rank of Cub Scout: Tiger, Wolf, Bear, and Webelo.  I tried to make their heights correspond to their ages and ranks, with the little Tiger Cubs in the front.  I also attached them to the cake with skewers through the legs.

Once I had the boys on I felt like something was still missing from the cake, so I added the apple tree with a little blue bird in a nest.  The leaves of the tree are just small balls of gumpaste in different shades of green, with the red apples randomly dispersed.  I like how the tree turned out (although it does look like it is covered in M&Ms) because it added some color and whimsy to the cake.

I hope the boys enjoyed the cake and cupcakes, and good luck to everyone in the next year!


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