Zebra!

Zebra stipe is so popular with the girls these days. I've seen zebra bags, zebra scarves, zebra pajamas, and even zebra duct tape. I don't understand why it's so popular ... but I'll go with it.

Last year, my friend Ginger asked me if I'd make her daughter's birthday cake. I've known Ginger for a lot of years ... we even had a baby shower together almost 15 years ago ... so of course I told her yes ... and of course Grace wanted zebra stripes on her cake. So I researched how to do it, and I tried it out at home, and it looked horrible. So I made some adjustments and was able to come up with a cake for Grace. It looked like this ...

The cake was a triple layer strawberry cake with vanilla buttercream filling and I covered it with marshmallow fondant. Grace seemed very happy with it.

Last week I was asked to make another zebra cake. One of my students, who also happens to be in the same class as Grace and of my son Collin, wanted me to make her a zebra cake. She liked the way I did Grace's cake, but she wanted a pink "C" for Claire. Claire, however, is a twin, and today is their birthday. Needless to say, Grant did NOT want a zebra cake. I'll write about his cake in the next post. Because they were having two cakes, I made Claire's zebra cake a little smaller. This is what Claire's cake looked like ...

This cake was a double layer chocolate cake with buttercream filling and covered in marshmallow fondant. Chocolate is my favorite, so I had to cheat on my diet a little and taste some of the cake that I leveled off the top. Mmmmmmm.....

This is how it's done ...

First, I covered the cake with white fondant. Then I cut a circle out of the black fondant (I used a small salsa bowl as an outline) and did my best to center it on the top. Next, I just randomly cut some curvy strips out of the black. I didn't really want to brush water on the back of each strip to "glue" them on the cake, so instead I brushed the whole cake with water and then quickly placed the stripes on the cake. I just kept going around the cake with the stripes until their were zebra stripes everywhere. Finally, I cut a "G" out of blue fondant for Grace's cake, and a "C" out of pink fondant for Claire's cake and did my best to center it in the black circle. I was a little disappointed with my pink "C" because it stretched a little when I moved it from the counter to the cake. I did my best to reshape it, but it probably should have been thicker to keep it's shape better.

I'm not sure how many more zebras I'm going to be making in the future, but I learn something new each time. For instance, I've learned to roll the black a little thinner and to cut the stripes a little narrower. Sometimes they tear when putting them on the cake, but that's okay. I'm also getting a little faster with them. I'm pretty sure that neither one of my boys, however, will ask me to make a zebra cake ... I'm pretty sure I'm stuck with guitars and Legos for them.