My kids like to come up with themes for their birthday cakes. Which is fun, because I like to decorate cakes for them. I go to Pinterest for inspiration and just try to mimic the ones I see. But this time I had to do good old fashioned figuring on my own (with a little help from Sister.)
Brother’s birthday was this last weekend and all he wanted was a Kermit the Frog puppet and a cake consisting of a helicopter and a landing pad. Those requests were good with me!
As I started thinking about the cake, I started making it more and more elaborate in my head. Which is a reoccurring thing for me, I can turn the simplest of projects into a master’s level undertaking, then I have to work the project back down to a doable task. I had mountains, caves, motors, the whole works going on in my head, but alas, I had to tame it down.
I’ve been wanting to do a gravity cake where it looks like something is floating above the cake, for a while now. I decided I needed to figure out how to do that with the helicopter for this one.
I started out with two boxes of cake mix. Yes, I said cake mix. Because nothing is too good for a Perry. I did doctor it up a bit with substituting milk for water, double the butter for oil and adding an extra egg. I hear it’s to make it taste more like a bakery cake, but I can’t really tell.
I used one mix in a 9 x 13 inch casserole dish for the bottom added the chocolate frosting (homemade, store bought stuff just isn’t the same) and added the second cake on top. As you can see it broke as I was putting it on, but no worries, it will be covered with frosting.
I coated the whole thing with a layer of chocolate frosting.
I got it coated and realized a missed a little spot on top. I went back to fix it, but all I did was pull a chunk off. As I tried to fix that I pulled another chunk off! I finally just stopped because no one will see this layer anyways. Well, besides you looking at the picture.
Next came the grassy field layer. It’s white frosting tinted with 25 squirts of yellow, 5 blue and 4 brown. I think it turned out perfect for an Army green field.
As I smeared it on with an offset spatula I tapped it to make the frosting stand up like grass.
Next came the helicopter landing pad. I used store bought white fondant and mixed some black food coloring in to get a cement color. After rolling it out I placed a cereal bowl on top as a guide to cut around. Using plane white I cut out an H, and E-12. My kids couldn’t figure out what the E-12 was for. It’s his initial and how old he is. I thought it was rather obvious.
Next came the engineering part. How to get the helicopter to fly.
We often see helicopters on base flying with a basket below them. I figured I would use that idea to get my helicopter in the air.
I bought wooden bamboo skewers and painted them black to be the ropes. I didn’t paint them all the way down because they were being put into the cake as supports.
Once dry the assembly began.
They were inserted teepee style and hot glued at the top. I never thought I would use hot glue to decorate a cake, but life is full of surprises. I then put more green frosting around the landing pad and at the bottom inch of the skewers to mask them as much as I could.
I had planned on constructing the basket out of black paper, but Sister said she thought I was going to use graham crackers or something edible. I liked the way she was thinking. The crackers weren’t the look I was going for but it got me thinking and I came up with using chocolate bars.
I put a Hershey bar down in the cake as a support post. Two more blocks were cut down to fit inside the skewers.
More squares were cut down to the correct size for the sides and glued on by melting the sides of the chocolate in a barely warm pan on the stove.
This is what it looks like after putting it together. I used my off set spatula to smooth out the chocolate by getting it warm in the same pan and just barely going over the edges.
Skittles (Brother’s favorite candy) went in the basket and around the landing pad for lights. 12 candles went between the Skittles as flares.
All that was left to do was put the helicopter on top. This is the one I got from the PX. It just happened to have a circle hole in the bottom for the skewers to go into.
With it in place it was time to hit the bowling alley for the party.
Can you see the shadow under the basket? It kinda looks like it’s up off of the cake.
Light the flares and sing, “Happy Birthday”
Blow them out quickly, Brother! We don’t want to set off the fire alarms!
Boys…
I don’t think he minded.
After a few hours bowling with his friends, eating cake, and being sung to by soldiers in the next lane I think it was a great birthday for him.
Thanks for checking out how the Helicopter Cake was made! Hope you enjoyed!
Here are a few items I used in making this cake.
Just so you know, I make a small fee at no additional cost to you for the items I suggest, should you click on the link and purchase them.
Remember there is a cookie recipe contest going on until April 8, 2019. Check out B.F.S.: Chocolate Chip Cookies for info.
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