Power Ranger Cakes

Success!  Jack turned 4!  There was a party!  The Bounce House only collapsed on the children twice!  Relax, everyone is fine, no need to call the authorities.  There were 5 cakes!

I know it sounds crazy to make that many cakes BUT, there were many, many children and as you can see - each cake is only 8 or 9 inches round (I have no idea how big my cake pans are).  The theme was Power Rangers so I thought, wouldn't it be fun for the kids to pick which color Ranger they wanted to eat in cake form?!  Does that sound weird?!  Also, when you get a little help from the store, anything is surmountable!  I made my own buttercream but used boxed white cake mix (3 of them), separated the batter into 5 bowls, used food paste to color them, and then baked them...

I love making cakes with candy melts on top (as you can see here, here and here).  It's such a fun way to make an average, store-bought or semi-homemade cake look professional and fabulous THAT'S RIGHT FABULOUS.  And it's really easy to do!  My favorite product to use are these Wilton Candy Melts, because they melt beautifully and the colors are vibrant and last.  But you could also use white chocolate and dye it (I've just found white chocolate doesn't melt as well).  All I do is conduct a 'google image' search for what I'm looking for, in this case, Power Ranger masks.  I find one that's a decent size for my cake (or I adjust the printing settings to make it so).  I place the image under parchment paper and I trace with the melted candy!  You can use a piping bag, but I always put mine in regular old sandwich bags with the ends clipped and find that works really well.      

Here, the images are taped onto the counter with parchment paper taped over that.  

They're halfway done with melted chocolate (but next time I'll use Wilton's black candy melts because the color will last longer)...

I find I have a much steadier hand if there is wine involved...

Let the melts cool and harden before placing them atop cakes.

Buttercream recipe: 4 sticks unsalted butter at room temp (I like to use European style if I know I'm really going to taste it), 4 cups powdered sugar, 1 T vanilla and 1 tsp cream (or milk).

And for no reason other than I feel like sharing, I picked up flowers for each Power Ranger too.  The ninjas look much lovelier in flower form, don't you think?  Ok, time to start planning my 6 month-old's first birthday!  Just kidding, that was a joke, no it wasn't.

(Also, a Brobee Cake and a Wubbzy Cake)