Diary of a Wimpy Kid - Lucas & Landon Birthday Bash (Special Edition published 2016)

I was so excited when I started this project as I've been meaning to make a book cake and just play around with the design. Just as it happens that Lucas is into reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid. As any commercialized theme/title, you will be able to find tons of sample cake in the same of the book series. BUT, every cake made, is a unique art by itself. And out of the entire series, we chose the Diary of a Wimpy Kid book 1, the #1 best-seller red color. It's bright color, not boring and yes, it is classic (at least to me).

In this blog, I won't bore you in talking about the steps I took in making the cake. Instead, I decided to list out the essential tools/ingredients I used to decorate the cake. This will give you an idea of what baking tools are and its functions (and how many baking toys I have, I mean tools....shhhh!) So let's do this!

For this project, I used a 9 x 13 rectangle cake pan (I prefer the one with more defined edges like picture below).

calphalon-gourmet-hard-anodized-nonstick-9x13-cake-pan

It's the perfect size and shape. I didn't have to trim much of the sides of the cake to make a book shape cake and to satisfy the number of servings (about 40 - 50 servings).

Now the fun part, Decoration tools. I've mentioned in previous blogs how I just love Fondarific fondant. It tastes good and real easy to work with. For this project I used mainly two colors, red and white, and a small amount of yellow fondant. And my favorite flavor so far, buttercream. You can purchase it from Amazon.com or better yet, straight to the source at Fondarific.com.

Here are the other special tools I used to make this book cake:

1. Veining tool

I used Wilton brand veining tool to make the lines of the "pages". There are plenty of brands you can get, but for me Wilton is a lot easier to get as they are available at your nearest JoAnn's or Michael's stores.

2. Plastic ruler

Clean food only use ruler to measure the rolled fondant and lined the book spine.....nope you cannot borrow your kids school ruler. A steel ruler or a special culinary ruler will do. But please do not mix use this ruler with any other uses. Here is an example of what a culinary ruler look like.

3. Decorating brush

Again, this has to be food save decorating brush. I have a set of Wilton decorating brush that are made of plastic and yes, it is food safe, and no you cannot use your kids brush they use to paint Santa last Christmas. I used this to color the spine of the book using edible paint/food coloring.

4. Edible markers

Yes, I did draw the lines and pictures on the cover page....impressed yet? Well, as much as I like Wilton brand markers, I now decided that I prefer Americolor's edible markers. I found Wilton's to have stiffer tip, which is harder to use on a soft fondant. Whereas Americolor's markers have softer brush like tip, which I think is a bit more "kinder" to the fondant or royal icing when I'm decorating cookies.

Unfortunately, I haven't had much luck in finding it in nearby stores, so I think your best bet is to order it online. And my go to online store....drum roll....AMAZON.COM.

5. Edible gel

I used blue sparkle gel to cover the blue part of the book title. Yes...sparkle. I LOVE IT! The sparkle makes the title pops up more than if you use a blue fondant. I have a collection of these sparkly gels from Wilton. They don't really taste like anything other than sweet. But the effect it gives WOW!

There you have it. The essentials that makes this cake the way it looks. The Diary of a Wimpy Kid book cake is done! I am happy, the kids are happy, and guests were impressed and hopefully you are too!