Pat the Hammer from Handy Manny

This weekend we have two birthday parties to attend, and I am making cakes for both of them. I made the first one yesterday; Pat the Hammer from Handy Manny. I was nervous about designing this one, because there are a lot of characters to choose from and none of them seemed particularly easy. I set out the usual way: scouring the Internet for a coloring sheet featuring Pat the Hammer (as that was the character I chose to put on the cake). Turns out I couldn't find a decent graphic to copy, so I had to do some finagling...I scanned, cropped, and enlarged a coloring sheet so that I could get Pat in the size that I'd need for the cake.

Earlier this week when I was thinking about making the cakes, one of my favorite bloggers, Pioneer Woman, posted a recipe for "The Best Frosting I've Ever Had." It's an interesting recipe that starts with a base of milk and flour, and then uses granulated instead of powdered sugar (and also, um, TWO STICKS of butter). I thought I'd give it a try for the Pat cake! The "Best" recipe takes longer than my usual frosting recipe, so I spent quite a lot of time on it. As I was putting it together, though, it was clear it wouldn't work for my purposes. For one, it was yellow, and two, it was very fluffy. I'd planned to make my usual decorator icing to put on top, but it was so fluffy that I was pretty sure that my decorations would sink (or fall off) the cake. As far as the taste of the icing, it was really good -- reminded me a lot of tapioca. Since I wasn't sure what to do with it but didn't want to throw out good frosting, I stuck it in a Tupperware container and put it in the fridge.

I whipped up a batch of my usual cake icing - it's not the recipe we learned in class, but a concoction I created using butter, cream cheese, and vegetable shortening. In my opinion it's a much better taste than the strictly shortening recipe they had us make in class. That stuff could clog an artery (and a pipe, for that matter!) in about three bites!

After the kids went to bed I got to decorate, and I was really happy with how it turned out!


As for the rejected "Best" frosting that I stored in the fridge, I got a great idea while decorating Pat. For the cake I'm scheduled to make today, I'm going to torte it (cut it in half) and use the frosting as a filling! It's a perfect consistency and taste to put in the middle of the cake. And as long as I don't break the cake into six pieces when I torte it (it will be a 9 x 13, too), it ought to be really cool!