Abbey Monster High Cake Tutorial

Below are the instructions on how to bake, decorate and hand paint this cute Abbey cake but first…

…welcome to Monster High, the place where children of famous monsters rule the school! Abbey Bominable is 16 years old and the daughter of Yeti! She’s the coolest ghoul in the school and I love her trendy wardrobe and white fur boots. Her BFF is Draculaura and I have a Draculaura cake tutorial that you might like here.

Draculaura Cake

Although Abbey is very pretty she says ‘I am cold in the touching and being touched’

Her favourite sport is Snow Boarding and her pet “shiver’ s an adorable baby Wooly Mammoth.

Shiver

Instructions

This 7″ Abbey birthday cake is made from dark chocolate mud-cake and filled with dark chocolate ganache.

Materials

10″ cake board

7″ set up board

1.2 kg Ice blue sugar-paste

For cake topper….

Tylose powder

Edible Americolor gel colour in blue, white, pink and lilac

White sugar-paste

Make the 7″ round Dark Chocolate Mud Cake

190g unsalted butter

155g dark chocolate

4g instant coffee

1 cup warm water

145g caster sugar

200g self raising flour

23g cocoa

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla

1. Grease and line base and sides of cake pan with one thickness of baking paper, bringing paper 5cm above side of pan.

2. Combine chopped butter, chopped chocolate, coffee, and water in a saucepan. Stir over low heat until chocolate is melted. Cool 15 minutes. Transfer mixture to bowl of mixer.

3. Add caster sugar to mixture and beat well until dissolved. Add sifted flour and cocoa, lightly beaten egg and vanilla.

4. Pour mixture into prepared pan.

5. Bake at 150C for 1 – 1.5 hours . Test with skewer. Cool cake in pan.

Make the Dark Chocolate Ganache

600g dark chocolate, finely chopped

250ml pure cream

Method:

Heat the cream until it just starts to bubble, pour over chocolate (which you have blitzed in the food processor to coffee granules size) and let it sit for about a minute to melt. Use a hand whisk to blend it all together then set aside to cool. Your ganache at this point will be thin. You will have to let it set overnight until it thickens to a slightly thicker peanut butter consistency. Since I don’t have the patience to wait, I just let it cool to room temperature and then pop it in the fridge (don’t cover because you might get condensation). It would usually set in the fridge in about an hour or two. If it sets too hard, just microwave it in 10 second intervals (keep mixing it whenever you take it out).

For more information on how to make ganache and cover your cake with it, please click here.

Assembling the cake

Cut the cake in half and fill with ganache. Attach cake to set up board with edible glue or some Royal Icing. Cover the top and the sides of the cake with ganache and smooth the surfaces. Cover cake and board in one application with Ice blue sugar-paste.

Cake covered with ganache

Cake covered in Ice blue sugarpaste

Printable image

Using the Template Click on the image above and save image. Enlarge or reduce the image to fit your cake. I printed it out to fit a 6.5″ circle just a little smaller than the cake. Print 2 copies so that you can keep one copy intact and the other you can cut up to make smaller templates. 1. Face, ears and neck (cut out in Ice blue sugar-paste). 2. Hair and headband (cut out in white sugar-paste).   You may wish to make a little modelling paste in white and some in Ice blue for the Abbey cake topper. This will help the topper dry quichly and make it stronger. Modelling Paste 350g sugar-paste 1 teaspoon Cellogen (if using CMC, Tylose Powder or Gum Trag then use only 0.5 teaspoon) Sprinkle the powder over the sugar-paste and kneed carefully till smooth.

Cut out the face and neck in Ice blue sugarpaste

Cut off any rough edges

Cut the hair and headband section from white sugarpaste

Neaten up rough edges if necessary

The two sections should fit together well

Using a few fine paintbrushes, edible gel colours and a little Vodka as a thinner start painting the hair / headband area as it is simpler and then paint in the facial features last. To help me place the eyes, nose and mouth in the right spots, I used the face template, tracing the outline of the features on the back of the template and then transferring the details onto the Ice blue sugarpaste by tracing over the outlines of the features with the template the right way up on top of the sugarpaste. You can see the fine graphite outline of the lips in the image below.

I have made a video of me painting Abbey’s face and will upload it here shortly.

Painting the face and hair with edible food colour

Abbey

Add pink candles for a nice contrast

Add ‘Chelsea’ to the covered cake board

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Materials needed

7″ and 9″ round card for the base of each tier.

Doweling for support

Bottle Green satin ribbon – 6mm wide by 2m

Bottle Green satin ribbon – 2 inches wide by 2m

Black satin ribbon 1 inch wide by 2m

Diamontes buckle

13″ diameter cake board 4mm or 6mm thick

7” Dark Chocolate Mud Cake round

135g butter

135g dk choc

15g coffee

100ml water

75g SR

75g plain

30g cocoa

.3 tsp bicarb

295g caster

2.5 eggs

4.5 tsp oil

60ml buttermilk

Ganache

735g dark chocolate

365ml pure cream

Fondant

740g sugar-paste

9” Dark Chocolate Mud Cake round

220g butter

220g dk choc

25g coffee

160ml water

125g SR

125g plain

50g cocoa

.5 tsp bicarb

480g caster

4 eggs

7 tsp oil

100ml buttermilk

Ganache

1200g dark chocolate

600ml pure cream

Fondant

1.2kg sugar-paste

Click here to learn how to make dark chocolate mud cake and dark chocolate ganache.
Click here to learn how to torte and cover your cake with ganache.
Click here to learn how to cover your cake with sugar paste.

The pattern on the top tier of the cake was inspired by Crewel Embroidery and I looked at many examples on the net for inspiration.

 

Sample of Crewel Embroidered fabric

I wanted to use simplified elements of the original designs to create a new and unique black and white design.  

First of all I made a template for the top of the cake and the sides from some greaseproof paper…

….and then drew on my design with an HB pencil. 

 

I turned the paper around and traced the design on the back, again using an HB pencil (do not use a softer pencil as it will smudge onto your pure white icing and really make a mess). Pencils are made from graphite not lead and are non toxic.

I transfered my design onto the cake using a sharp HB pencil, securing the template with sticky tape around the sides and holding the top down lightly with my fingertips.

 I scanned my greaseproof paper templates for you to enlarge in your photocopier to fit the exact size of your cake. Once you have the outline transferred to the cake you can paint the motifs larger going over the lines a little covering up all the pencil marks as I have allowed for this by drawing the outlines smaller than i require for the finished work.

 

The bottom of each stem is covered by the green ribbon and the top of each stem I ended in an RI dot or two. Choose one of the central stems and line it up with the stem on the top of the cake.

I used Cake Art black edible colour on top but it was a little shiny so used Wilton on the sides and was happier with the finish. I used two round Taklon brushes a No 5/0 to outline and a No 4 to fill in.

If your colour is too thick, use a little Vodka to thin it down. I didn’t need to use any on this occasion.

 

Sorry that the video is so boring and has TV noise in the background but it is my first YouTube clip and I hope to improve. It also shows how slow I am at painting on cake. it took me 4 hours to complete! My brush was rubbish with hairs sticking out at right angles which I cut off making the brush almost impossible to use as there were only about 12 hairs left LOL! I have since replaced it.

Another tip! Use a brush with very long hairs as this helps with lines. Lay most of the brush on the cake and pull it along as this reduces hand wobble.

To make my design zing I wanted to add piped Royal Icing dots but decided to wait until the cake was fully assembled.

 

To assemble the cake I firstly placed the bottom tier on its base using some Royal Icing as glue. I then covered the bare edges of the board using a roll of sugar-paste which I unrolled like you would a carpet around the cake. Join at the back by first overlapping the sugar-paste and cutting with a knife through both layers, removing the excess and joining with a little Royal Icing.

Ali (my partner) marks the length of dowel to be cut while I take the picture.

I needed 4 dowels to support the top tier for this cake and one double height piece for the central dowel (this stops the top tier from sliding about while being transported).

Ali pushes in the first dowel

Ali carefully taps in the central dowel.

The central dowel cuts right through the middle of my design but it is easy to cover this up with a small black sugar-paste cut out, topped with a smaller white round piece of sugar-paste and crowned with a large dot of black royal icing.

Can you see the added dots!

I stuck the black ribbon onto the middle of the green ribbon using 12mm wide double sided tape but left the ends of the bow unstuck so that they could be hanging loosely from the bow as they would look too rigid otherwise.

I didn’t cut the ribbon in any way to form the bow. I just made it look good while holding it in my hand then slipped it through the diamonte buckle trying not to lose any of the nice shape I had.