A piece of cake: Book offers decorating tips for any occasion

Deseret News (Salt Lake City), Oct 10, 2007 by Valerie Phillips Deseret Morning News

You can have a fun special-occasion cake without spending lots of money at the bakery, or getting in up to your eyeballs in frosting.

And you don't need lots of decorating expertise or special pans, said Melissa Barlow of Bountiful, author of "Easy Cut-Up Cakes for Kids," (Gibbs Smith, $14.95).

Barlow came up with the idea for her book "Because I was tired of having to go to the store and buying a special character-shaped pan when I already had pans at home," said Barlow, who is an editor at Gibbs Smith and has some cake-decorating training. "It was just a matter of figuring out a few patterns."

For her 25 cakes, she uses standard round, square and 9-by-13- inch rectangular pans, or a glass mixing bowl, which most people already own.

After baking, you cut the cake into shapes with a knife, and rearrange the pieces to come up with designs for a fish, a turtle, teddy bear, lion and so on. "You can have a really cute cake for your child or for a party, and it will seem as if you spent a lot of time doing it," said Barlow.

She also tried to simplify the icing and decorating process, so that a large kit with numerous decorator tips wasn't necessary. "There are a couple of recipes where it's helpful to have a decorator bag and a star tip, but that's something you can buy at the grocery store," she said.

In most cases, you can put the frosting in a gallon-size zip- lock bag, snip the corner and squeeze out the frosting.

Her Creepy Crawly Spider cake calls for a decorator's bag with a star tip. "But you don't have to be precise or anything, you just squeeze it out, and it goes really fast. The idea was to have the cakes easy enough that a child could help you do it, or do it themselves with a little supervision," said Barlow, who practiced making the cakes with her many nieces and nephews.

The 2001 Weber State University journalism graduate wrote, "101 Things to Do With a Salad," ($9.95) for Gibbs Smith a couple years ago. Before tackling the cut-up cake book, she looked at other cake- decorating books on the market.

"It seemed like they were kind of hard, they require more skill and used the fondant frosting that's harder to deal with," she said. "In my book, I used simple cuts, so it's just a matter of putting them together and frosting the cake. And I use a butter cream frosting that's a lot easier to handle. I feel like this is a book that anybody could use."

She also chose to use cake mixes in her recipes. "You can usually find cake mixes on sale for $1 or less," she said. "So if you don't have all the ingredients on hand to make a cake from scratch, you don't need to go out and buy them. You can just use a mix."

Some of the cakes are geared to holidays and seasons, such as the Football cake for autumn, the Creepy Crawly Spider for Halloween and You Are My Sweetheart for Valentine's Day. But many could be used year-round -- Rocket Blast-off, Little Ladybug and Chugga Chugga Choo Choo, for instance.

The Pirate Ship follows on the heels of the "Pirates of the Caribbean" movies. "Pirates are totally in right now, a lot of kids are wanting to be Captain Jack," said Barlow. "So it's great for a birthday or a Halloween party."

CREEPY CRAWLY SPIDER

2 8-or-9-inch round pans

1 cake mix, any flavor

Black frosting

Purple frosting

8 pieces black licorice

1 large marshmallow

Make cake mix according to package directions. Bake cake as directed on box for two round pans. Cool cakes in pans for 10 minutes, then invert and cool completely on a wire rack.

Place one cake layer in the center of a plate or foil-wrapped board. Frost the top with black or purple frosting, and then place the second layer over top. Frost the entire cake with a thin layer of black or purple frosting.

Using a decorator's bag with a star tip, make black spider "hair" by slightly squeezing the bag to create each piece of "hair." Squeeze pieces of "hair" close together over the entire body, but don't worry about making them touch, as the spaces will be filled in.

Using another decorator's bag with the same star tip, fill in any spaces with the purple frosting so the spider's hair is highlighted.

On each side of the spider, using a round frosting tip, create four rounded mounds of purple frosting. These will be the spider's feet. Gently press 4 pieces of black licorice into each side of the cake to create the spider's legs, then place the loose ends of licorice into the frosting mounds (spider's feet) on each side of the cake.

Finally, cut the marshmallow in half and press on cake as the spider's eyes. Use a dot of black frosting on each to finish. -- Melissa Barlow, "Easy Cut-Up Cakes for Kids" (Gibbs Smith, $14.95)

FOOTBALL

1 9-by-13-inch pan

1 chocolate cake mix

Chocolate frosting

1 large tube white frosting

Make cake mix according to package directions. Bake cake as directed on box for a 9-by-13-inch pan. Cool cake in pan for 10 minutes, and invert and cool completely on a wire rack.

Cut the cake according to the diagram above, and throw away or eat the unused pieces. Frost the entire cake with chocolate frosting. Using the white tube frosting or a decorator's bag, draw a white line in the middle and then the smaller white lines across it to look like the football laces.