The Gronkle Cake

Have you seen How to Train Your Dragon? If you have a child, know a child or have ever been a child, go buy this movie. This is a direct quote from my mom. We watch this show at least once a day.

If you tuned in last year about this time, you will know that I asked The Boy what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday. His answer was "a Wonder Pets tate." You would think that I would have learned my lesson with that one, but again this year, I asked. At first he wanted another Wonder Pets cake. This was quickly vetoed and we spent quite a bit of time looking up cakes on the web. If you have never done this, I highly recommend it. There are some amazing cake decorators out there.

We eventually ended up finding several HtTYD cakes, many of which involved fondant. I'm not a big fan of fondant, mainly because it doesn't taste very good. Frosting is where it's at for me when it comes to decorating. Mind you, I didn't say I was good at it, I just prefer it.

So after many days of changing his mind, The Boy decided on a purple Gronkle. For the uninitiated, this is a Gronkle.

You will notice that Gronkles are actually green. When McDonald's had dragons in their Happy Meals, the Gronkle was purple. I'm not sure why. So a purple Gronkle it is. I was actually relieved. Of all the dragons in the movie, I truly believe the Gronkle would be the easiest to build.

Start by baking your cakes. I ended up with two batches and was actually thinking I wouldn't have enough. But if done correctly (and in this department, I was extremely lucky), two should suffice. The trick here is to bake your pieces in the correct sizes to begin with so you won't have much in the way of rough edges to frost. This is not a fun undertaking and should be avoided at all costs. Look around your kitchen, you probably have something that will work. I have a set of Pyrex mixing bowls. The incredible thing about Pyrex is that those bowls can double as a baking dish if you need them to. Most of them cannot be heated on the stovetop or in a broiler, but just baking works out just fine.

It is a good idea to do all the baking the evening before. This way, the cakes will be completely cool when you are ready to work with them.

Once they are cooled, we can start putting our dragon together. This is also a good time to turn the movie on so The Boy doesn't try to "help make a purple Drontle tate." We're still working on some of our consonant sounds.

This is a shot of my baked cakes. The yellow cake in the top left was baked using a regular baking pan filled about a third full. This is going to be the base of the body. Below that was baked in my round Pyrex casserole dish filled about half full and will form the top of the head. The two chocolate cakes were baked in regular cake pans, about half full. One will become the top of the body and the other will be the bottom of the head. The four yellows in the middle are regular cupcakes, with four mini cupcakes right next to them. These will become legs. The rounded cake right next to the minis was baked in myPyrex mixing bowl filled about half full. And the last cake was baked in a ramekin. Both of these will form the tail.
Start with the head. Slice just a little bit off the back to make a flat edge.
Take the chocolate piece and place it in between the two layers to form an open mouth.
Slice a little bit off the front of the two body layers. Place the flat edge of the body up against the flat edge of the head.
Take the bigger of the smaller cakes and cut out a slightly rounded edge that will fit up against the edge of the body where you want the tail.

Take the remaining small cake and cut out a small slice to finish up the end of the tail.

So here we have the structure of the body.
Now we are going to form the legs. Even out the tops of the cupcakes. Just slice the tops off a little bit form a flat top.
Do the same thing with the mini cupcakes.
Put a mini cupcake on top of one of the regular cupcakes. Arrange them where the legs of a dragon should of course go.
Now we are starting to look like a dragon.
This is a pretty good time to call in quality control. It's a good thing, too, because I forgot the Gronkle's horn.
Find one of your scrap pieces and form a little horn. You might also notice here that I somehow sliced off the front of the head. I did NOT mean to do that and I will put it back on before I frost it.
Frost your cake. Pick a color, any color. It is really difficult to get a dark purple frosting, but The Boy said it was fine. I also added on a piece of the chocolate edge to use as a place to hold up the eyes.
The eyes are powdered donuts stuck into the frosting. The really great thing about frosting a Gronkle cake is that it is a dragon. Dragons have scales. So the frosting doesn't have to be smooth. Actually, you want a pretty rough frosting job.
So here he is frosted.

Now, Gronkles have spots. Big ones and little ones. Jeff has been inhaling Maple Nut Goodies since he decided to quit chewing. These were perfect.
For the little spots, The Boy added in peanut butter chips. Looking at it now, I would be sure we put the chips upside down.
Now the wings were a challenge. Fruit Roll-ups fanned in between pretzel sticks work pretty well. This is not as simple as it seems. Fruit Roll-ups are really sticky. Luckily, I had children in the house to eat up the scraps. These are also a good thing to put on right before serving so they don't fall off the cake.
The Boy came back and was extremely concerned that the Gronkle didn't have toenails. Slide in four Maple Nut Goodies on each foot to fix this inaccuracy.
Now the teeth. These are sliced up Andes mints. Add a little bit of frosting along the bottom of the mouth and stick the mints in there so they stand up. I didn't even try to add them to the top, because I knew they would fall out.
You don't even notice, do you?
This took awhile. All told, I think I clocked in four hours, including the baking of the cakes. It was a lot easier than the Wonder Pets cake, that's for sure.

And again, totally worth it :)

The Wonder Pets Cake

So my now 3 year old was asked a few weeks ago what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday. He thought for a minute and said, "Hmmm...maybe a Wonder Pets take."

Wonder Pets cake. I actually was thinking something along the lines of, you know, chocolate. But, he wanted a Wonder Pets cake. So off to Google we go. There are some incredible cakes out there, many of which are much too involved for my skill level. But the Nickelodeon site had a template for the Flyboat. This is only fair since it is their fault that my child knows about the Wonder Pets in the first place. In truth, the cake didn't look all that difficult to make, so I figured it couldn't turn out THAT bad.

Since you are on a decorating quest, use a cake mix. Because, truly, do we need another challenge??

Use a bit of the cake mix to grease and flour your round pan. This is a brilliant cover up when your husband points out that you have just poured the mix into the baking pan instead of the mixing bowl. What can I say? I just drove 3 hours from Kansas City to make a Wonder Pets cake.
While the cake is baking, get started on the wheels. A small package contains six chocolate donuts. Put these onto a cooling rack that is sitting over waxed paper. Do not forget the waxed paper. We are just starting to make the mess here.
Tint 1/2 cup of white frosting (you guessed it, Duncan Hines) so it is a violent blue color. We are now going to microwave this for about 10 seconds. Just long enough to make it pourable.
Spoon the frosting over the donut so it is covered down the sides. The bottom doesn't matter since we are going to stick this on the side of the cake.
Did you know that a small package of M&Ms has THREE yellow ones? Good thing I bought two packages. Put one of those rare yellow M&Ms M-side down in the middle of the donut.
Repeat with the other donuts. If you are good at this kind of thing, you can probably get away with only making four wheels. I am not, so I am making all six into wheels. Notice the poor wheel on the left. That is what happens if your frosting isn't warmed enough to make it pourable.
This is the template the Nick site has for the Flyboat's sail. In the hands of a less ambitious (insane??) person, this would be fine to cut out and put on the cake. For some reason, this was not good enough for me at the time. Don't let it be good enough for you either, because this was probably the easiest part of the whole deal.
So cover it in waxed paper.
Get out three (2-1/2) squares of almond bark. I found The Boy with an entire slab of this underneath the kitchen table. He seemed to think he was eating cheese. Just trim that part off and melt the rest. Microwave for about 30 seconds and stir. Microwave again and stir.
You can kind of tell it's getting late here, because I didn't think a flat sail was good enough. Put all the M&Ms back in the package and put it under the template. This sail is going to blow in the wind.
Spread the melted almond bark in a semi-even layer over the shape of the sail. I did this the night before. I highly recommend that so it has time to harden. At this point, I realized that I colored outside of the lines and can no longer see the shape of the sail.
Noooo problem. Once it hardens, just take a pair of scissors and cut it out. Patience is key here. Don't try to make big swipes with your cuts. Little ones keep it from breaking, especially if your sail is blowing in the wind. If it does break, just melt some more almond bark and glue it back together. Can't even see where this one broke, can you??
Find The Boy's Wonder Pets toys. and give them a bath. I have plan to put them into the Flyboat.Now that your cake has cooled, level off the top if it needs it. We want it really flat.
Like so. This step will also tide over any hungry people hanging around asking if the cake is done yet.
Now cut the cake in half.
Tint the rest of the frosting purple. Purple is a really difficult color to make right when it comes to frosting.Frost one half of the cake.
Sandwich the two halves together. The flat edge is going to be the top of our cake, so we want it to be even and flat. I would like to point out here that this is how the edges lined up for me. There was no trimming involved. I am pretty proud of that...
We want the cake to stand on the round part, so trim a tiny bit of cake off the bottom.
Just enough so it doesn't roll one way or another.Then stand the cake up.
This is where I start to get nervous. The cake immediately started to crack in the middle.
So I put it back down on its side to frost it.
This didn't work as well as I thought it might, but probably not any worse than the other way would have been.
Remove about 1/2 cup frosting from a second can of frosting and tint the remainder red. It's pretty tough to get a true red in frosting, so a dark pink will have to do.

I am going to let you in on a little cake decorating secret. It is nearly impossible to smoothly frost the cut side of a cake. I ended up putting on a pretty thin layer and sticking it in the refrigerator for about half an hour.
That's better. Now it is relatively smooth. For the life of me, I could not get the wrinkles out. There is a really cool blog called Cake Wrecks that highlights horrible cake decorating decisions. On Sundays, incredibly beautiful cakes are featured. All with frosting that does not have wrinkles in it. After spending 20 minutes trying to make a smooth side to the Flyboat, all I have to say...Wow.
Use the little bit of untinted frosting to "glue" the wheels onto the side of the Flyboat.Add on the pretty buttons to the side. Besides, at this point, there is no such thing as too much sugar.
Of course, the Wonder Pets have an emblem on the sail of the Flyboat. In my decision to forgo the paper sail, I inadvertently forwent the emblem. Not to be deterred, I searched my kitchen for something, anything, about the same size round. A curly straw works perfect. Look around, there is SOMETHING in your house that will work. So trace that with purple decorating gel.
Not bad as far as my circles go.
I was pleasantly surprised at how the "W" turned out.
Of course, now we have a very thin edged sail on our flyboat. I had a chocolate covered pretzel stick that worked perfectly as a mast.
Just as I feared, this is not a stable configuration. Notice the crack at the base of the sail.
I tried putting the spare tires under the edges, but nothing, I mean NOTHING, was stopping this cake from falling apart. So I frantically searched my kitchen for any bowl that would hold it together. Amazingly, I had a clear one the perfect size...

But doggone it anyway. I was really upset about the whole thing, until...
...The Boy walked in.
"It's perfect, Mom."

So it was totally worth it.

For more complete instructions and the template, go to this page on the Nickelodeon website.