Monster High Skull Birthday Cake

Monster High Skull Birthday Cake

It was my daughters 9th birthday on April 21st. She’s really into Monster High and I knew she’d freak if I made her a Monster High ‘skull’ design birthday cake. So that’s what I did! 🙂

In a panic trying to make this Monster High cake as best as it could be I made some mistakes, some so dumb you’ll be laughing along with me…

I started off making some royal icing run outs for matching Monster High cookies using an acetate sheet. I was trying to use the skull for the Monster High skull logo as a reference and printed off that image to my specified size of 3 inches. I mixed up the royal icing and piped the black outline of the head, bow, eyes and nose. All went superbly well, (in fact, too well) and got set aside to dry.

The next day, for some unknown reason or force, I Googled royal icing run outs then realised I’d left out one vital thing…. I forgot to put shortening on my acetate sheet! Gahhhh! I was glad I’d only done the outlines and not finished with flooding!

So, I had to do it all over again. The outlining then I put it in my cold oven with the light and fan on to assist drying as time was quite short now. That evening, at around midnight, I got the munchies. I went downstairs and made some cheese on toast remembering to remove the acetate sheet with the run outs on it. After, I ‘thought’ my oven was cool enough to replace the sheet. It wasn’t as I found out the next morning with a slightly wrinkled and deformed royal icing outlining. Gahhhh #2! Time was now too short to make the cookies so I accepted that the forces of nature were telling me to quit, so I did.

As for the cake, time was of the essence now. Of course, more haste equals less speed, and accuracy. I made an 8″ Madeira cake. Everything went well with the baking of the cake, and I managed to get the cake baked the evening before the eve of her birthday.

I worked on making the rolled fondant (sugarpaste) skull a few nights before the birthday from a picture of the skull I downloaded off the internet then transformed it into a template for cutting the gum paste. Everything went OK just a few issues with stretching when moving. I really should have made the skull further in advance so it could have dried separately and then fixed together after drying to resolve those issues but it was hard as I had to work in the evening and hide everything from her for the morning!

Also, as we’ve had an early summer, my house was super hot so the fondant kept getting sticky and tearing. In the end after attempting 5 times to cover, I just had to do some patch working after. 🙁

The Wilton ribbon fondant roller cutter I bought wasn’t very good neither. It didn’t cut through the black fondant too great (again, may have been a humid/hot environment) so after applying some poorly cut strips, I thought I’d scrap the idea and remove them, but I liked the look of the ‘spider legs’ strips decided to just add some goth looking black blossoms around the rest of the cake.

To finish off as planned, I placed the rolled fondant on top to finish.

Overall, everything comes down to a lack of organised time! 😳 If I had of had more time, I would loved to have added some red glitter to the gothic looking blossoms.

But I have learnt some vital skills and organisation techniques 😆 …

• To make the cake in advance and freeze.
• To make the rolled fondant (sugarpaste) and gumpaste decorations at least 3 days to 1 week in advance.
• If making matching sugar cookies, to also make the basic cookie shapes in advance and freeze too.
• If making matching sugar cookie royal icing run out decorations to also make these at least 3 days in advance and to make extra run outs in case any break.
• To create a one-week planner and plan throughout the week certain tasks on certain days so the whole task doesn’t become too overwhelming and stressful.
• Not to bake or decorate so night in the evening that I’m practically already asleep! Being tired kills e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g.!
• Not to write the birthday message with edible marker pens. It’s doesn’t look that great at all! 😕

Here’s my birthday girl. Namely my daughter, Collette, who turned 9 on the 21st April. 🙂 Fortunately she absolutely loved her very own Monster High birthday cake (and I told her to be honest!)