The menu included Deathstar Cantaloupe, Mr Slushie Dogs, Roast Bantha, and even Platypus Eggs!

(Thanks to the Evil Mad Scientists for the Deathstar Cantaloupe idea!)

(See all Phineas & Ferb Meet the Clone Wars Party Posts!)

Ready to make your Perry Cake?  Really, you CAN do this!

Yesterday we covered all The Prep Work required to make your platypus cake. Now it’s a day or so before you need the cake, and we’re going to put it all together.

You should have:

• 1 frosted flat cake.
• 1 unfrosted loaf cake
• extra cake (cupcakes)
• 1 batch marshmallow fondant
• the rest of your cream cheese icing
• The Supplies from yesterday’s list.

Clear yourself off a good work area, get your fondant out of the fridge, and let’s get to assembly!

1. The Base

You have your sheet cake, iced with your cream cheese icing.  You really don’t HAVE to do anything else, but I’ve found that working on the platypus tends to mess up your icing, so I added jelly beans to hide my sins, and also for additional color.  Any addons to the base can either be done prior to body placement (Step 4) or after.  I did mine after, but if i was doing this over, I would probably have done it immediately before the body placement, after Step 3.

Some ideas

• If you have plenty of extra fondant, use a flower cookie cutter to cut out fondant flowers.  Place them overlapping all around the cake (skipping the very middle that will be covered with a platypus, of course.  (In retrospect, I would have done this.  Fondant circles in various colors and sizes would also have been very cool.
• Cover the entire top with lime green tinted coconut, to simulate grass
• What I actually did:  Cover the ground around Perry with multicolored jelly belly candies (I was thinking they could be platypus eggs!)
• If you have enough extra, roll out a large sheet of colored fondant (any color but yellow or green) and cover the entire top of the cake with it, for an extra smooth look.

2. Molding the bill and the feet:

Marshmallow fondant doesn’t hold shapes as well as regular fondant, so last year when I did the dragon cake, i decided to use something a little stronger as a ‘skeleton’–molded tootsie rolls.  These can also be done ahead of time.  They also will not be seen on the final cake, but should be a light enough color that they don’t show through the yellow fondant that will cover them.

Get out your tootsie rolls.  Break one large roll into several smaller pieces, and microwave for JUST A FEW SECONDS to soften.  You can now knead this in your hands until it’s soft and moldable like playdough.

You’ll be making 2 foot shapes, a top bill shape, and a bottom bill shape.

The foot shape is simple.  Just make a flat 1/2 in thick triangle shape.  Then squeeze it with your fingers toward 1 point to elongate.  Then use your fingers to make ‘toes’ on the opposite flat end.  That’s hard to explain in words, but just look at the picture!

The bottom bill is simply a half circle shape (like a “D”), and the top bill is a larger half circle, with the flat side thicker, coming to a triangular point.  See diagram.  (I don’t have any shots of the bill uncovered, but you can see the shapes in the photos of covering the bill, later on in this tutorial)

Use your loaf cake to help judge the size to make these.  Remember, you’ll be covering them with fondant, so they’ll be bigger later, so make them a little smaller than needed in the final cake.  Set these aside.

3. Fondant:

First, you’ll need an idea of how much to color for each part–this can be trial and error the first time, so here’s a trick.  I’d suggest breaking off a workable size ball of white, and rolling it out to about 1/8 in thick.  You’ll need to knead it a little first to get it workable after the night in the fridge.  See how big it is.  Take your loaf pan (that you used to bake the body!) and use it as a model.  Hold your pan in the air, bottom side up.  Gently drape your test fondant over it, and see how big a sheet you’re going to need.  This is also good practice for how to work with the fondant, before you try it on the real thing!  I found Peggy Weaver’s tutorial on working with the fondant very helpful – go read it!

Once you have an idea how much fondant is needed for your body, make a ball that size, and set aside.  Make another ball that size and set aside for the tail.  Then make 2 smaller balls : 1 for the bill/feet, 1 for the legs.  Finally, you’ll 2 even smaller balls (like a large marble) which will be the black eyeballs and hair, and the white eyeballs.  And you should still have a good bit of left over white–which is good, because if you screw up, you may need it!

• Green:  Take one large ball, and one medium ball and knead together with green (and maybe a touch of blue) foodcoloring, until you get the desired Perry body color.
• Yellow:  Take one Medium ball, and knead together with yellow food coloring, with a few drops of red, until you get the desired yellow-gold color for Perry’s bill.
• Black:  Knead one small ball with black food coloring, for Perry’s hair and irises.  (You may not even need that much, so start small)
• White:  leave white, duh! for the eyes.
• Brown (or Chocolate):  If you have brown food coloring, you can use that.  I didn’t, so I kneaded in melted dark chocolate.  This changes the consistency of the fondant, so if you’re doing that, wait until we get to that step, below!

4. Perry’s Body

Roll out enough of your green fondant to cover the loaf cake (remember, we figured out how much we needed in the prior step!  Save some of the green for the legs.)

The body of Perry is basically just the loaf shaped cake, turned upside down. Round off his body by carving off the  4 top edges with a sharp knife.  Also round off the corners.  Place the cake on top of your upside down loaf pan, to use as a pedestal while decorating.

Cover the top and sides of the cake with a thin layer of icing.  Neatness doesn’t count here, you’re just providing glue and padding for the fondant.

Now, the fun part.  Carefully center the fondant over the cake, like we practiced, and drape over the cake and the loaf pan.  The fondant does stretch, so if you’ve screwed up and your not quite reaching the bottom somewhere, don’t fret.  let gravity do it’s work.  Let sit for several minutes for the fondant to stretch.  (Again, this tutorial is helpful.)

Smooth and stretch the fondant as necessary, trim off excess, leaving about 1 inch or so, which you can then tuck under the bottom of the loaf. A Perfectly Packaged Perry body!

You can now place him on his base.  Remember, you still have to add the bill to the front, so don’t center the body on the cake, leave several inches to add his bill.  The tail drapes off the cake, so no need to leave much room for that.

Covering & Placing the Bill and Feet

Roll out your yellow fondant, and wrap pieces around each of the feet, and the top and bottom bill.  Since the mouth is mostly closed, you don’t have to wrap the whole bill.  For the top bill, just turn the rounded end up a bit to achieve a slightly open mouth. You can go ahead and place the bill on the cake. See photos:

5. Make the Eyes and Hair:

In his platypus state (as opposed to Agent P) Perry eyes a little goofy, with no lids, and look in slightly different directions.

Use a little of your extra cake (the leftover cupcakes) to make a cake ball mixture.  Combine crumbled cake with leftover icing and mix with your fingers until the cake sticks together in a ball.  Make a ball the size of a large marble, and cover with white fondant.  Now make another!  (Note: if you don’t want to do cake balls, you can just use a ball of extra fondant in place of the cake)

Then take a little ball of black, and press flat.  Dampen one side, and press on to your white eyeball.

They are a little to round now, so use a knife to slice off the back 1/3 of the eyeball, so you have a flat side to stick to the cake.  You may want to embed a toothpick in the cake, and slide the eyeball on to that to make sure it stays put.

(I placed mine a little high on his head, I think, so you may want to place a little lower on the front of the face.)

6. The Legs

The legs are similar to the eyes.  Use your cake ball mixture to make the basic shape, then wrap in fondant.  Hide your fondant seam by putting it against the cake body.  Moisten with water or extra icing to stick to cake.  Note, I did his back legs too far forward, the thigh should have been closer to the rear of the platypus.  Place your yellow feet in the appropriate place, as shown.

….

7. The Tail

I didn’t have any good foodcoloring for the brown for Perry’s tail, so I figured why not mix it with some chocolate!  I melted a bar of Hershey’s Special Dark and kneaded it into the fondant the same as you would with food coloring, until I reach a good brown.  This worked, but it also caused the fondant to lose pliability, so it’s a little harder to work with.  Roll out a large piece of your chocolate fondant (either double the normal thickness, or stack two sheets).  cut out your tail shape, then use a chopstick to press a diamond quilted pattern into the tail.  I waited to attach the tail (since it falls off the cake) until i set up the cake for the party.  Just adhere the end to your platy-posterior with some leftover icing (see above photo in the legs section)!

Your Completed Cake

You’re ready to go now… store the cake in some sort of box, not in the refrigerator, but protected from ants and other lovelies.  Place in a cool room out of reach of children and pets.  The fondant will soften overnight, so be much more careful touching it the next day.  And even if it doesn’t come out perfectly (mine had a few flaws!) your Phineas and Ferb loving child with think you are the greatest!

(See all Phineas & Ferb Meet the Clone Wars Party Posts!)

I have a request for the tutorial to make the Perry the Platypus Cake, and since it’s needed in a hurry, I’m doing this tutorial in two parts.  By the way, I did a really detailed tutorial on last year’s dragon cake, and this year’s cake is actually similar, if a little simpler. So it wouldn’t be a bad idea to read through that tutorial in case I miss anything I covered there, as far as techniques.

More pics of the cake and the party here!

We’ll start with the prep work: assembling your hardware, getting the shopping done, and making ahead the components!

Hardware:

• 8.5″x4.5″ loaf pan
• second loaf pan or cupcake pan
• 9×12″ rectangular pan
• Rolling Pin
• Parchment paper (optional, but helpful)
• Large piece of cardboard, covered in foil, freezer paper or other paper, for cake board. ~24″x18″

Shopping List:

• 1 16 oz bag Marshmallows
• 2 lb powdered sugar
• Crisco
• Corn starch
• 1 8oz pkg cream cheese or Neufchâtel cheese
• vanilla
• 1 stick butter
• Pound Cake Ingredients
• Ingredients for base case (1-2 boxes cake mix or your favorite recipe)
• Food coloring (I used this one for the black and the green: Wilton Garden Candy Color Set, and some cheap yellow and red gel coloring.)
• Brown food coloring, or 1 bar dark chocolate.
• Vanilla or other light colored tootsie rolls (our local Dollar Tree had a two pack of the large sticks, which was more than enough)
• Wooden skewers (short ones are fine)
• Candy for base cake decoration (I used jelly bellies, but anything would work.  Green candies or green coconut would make a nice ‘grass’ effect)

Make ahead:

Set out your butter and cream cheese to soften.

Bake your first cake (ours was chocolate!) to serve as the ground that Perry lays on.  I used a box mix for this, and i think 1 box in a 13×9 pan was a maybe a little skimpy.  So you might want to consider making up 2 batches, and using 1.5 for the cake, and doing the rest as cupcakes.  Let cool thoroughly.

Bake your second cake, in a loaf pan, 3/4 filled. (here’s the recipe – with this recipe you’ll have enough for the loaf pan, plus some extra cupcakes) You want it as tall as possible, so err on the side of overfilling (Place a sheet pan under the loaf pan to catch any spillage). Bake the remainder of your second cake batter as cupcakes, or in your second loaf pan.  You’ll need some extra cake later, so save the extras, don’t eat them yet!
I like to use a sling of parchment paper as a liner to ensure ease of removal from the pans.  Just cut a sheet of parchment paper as wide as your pan is long, but long enough so that if set inside the pan, it hangs over both sides.  Spray the pan with non-stick spray, and  press the parchment.  If necessary, secure the sides with binder clips to keep the parchment in place and pressed against the sides of the pan.

Allow cakes to cool thoroughly.

You can go ahead and make up your batch of icing.  I like Cream Cheese Icing — here’s a quick recipe:  Cream together in mixer : 8 oz cream cheese, 1 stick butter (both softened).  Add 1 teas vanilla.  Slowly add 1 lb powdered (icing) sugar.  Beat until smooth.

Place your base cake on the cake board,  and frost the base cake.  Reserve at least 1/3 of the icing for later use.

Make up your batch of Marshmallow fondant and place in the refrigerator, wrapped tightly according to the directions.  Don’t color it yet.

You’re all prepped and ready to go!

Next we’ll assemble and decorate your Perry cake… go here!

For the Clone Wars section of the birthday party, (for the Phineas and Ferb themed cake, go here!) the hubby and I came up with the idea for upside down clone trooper helmet cupcakes.  These cupcakes were the hit of the party with the five-year-old boy set, though I will warn you, they are a bit time consuming to assemble. But well worth it! So here’s how to do them.

Cupcakes: You’ll need good firm cake, similar to pound cake. Here’s the recipe I used. I don’t know if it was luck, or overfilling the cupcake cups, but this cupcake came out with a nicely flat top, which is exactly what is needed (for Storm troopers instead of Clone troopers, a rounded top would be better). You’ll need to make your cupcakes in a tall cupcake pan (like this one: Wilton 6 Cup Kingsize Muffin Pan) The cupcakes must be tall for this to work, so overfill the cups.  Bake a few extra cupcakes or cake in any sort of pan, to use as cake ball mixture.  Since you want smooth sides, don’t bake in muffin cups. Either grease and flour the pans very well, and/or line with strips of parchment paper (that’s what I did) to prevent sticking.

Other ingredients:

• Cream Cheese or Buttercream frosting, enough to thinly coat the outside of each cupcake  (My recipe: Cream together 1 stick butter, 1 8oz cream cheese.  Add 1 tsp vanilla, then slowly add 1 lb powered sugar, beat thoroughly)
• Marshmallow fondant.  (Make this in advance – I’d go ahead and make the whole batch, that should more than enough for 1 dozen large cupcakes–probably enough for 24.)
• Food coloring:  Black paste coloring is required, then whatever colors you want for decorations (blue, green, yellow are popular)
• Cornstarch (for rolling out the fondant)
• Extra cake/cupcakes, crumbled + extra frosting, for cake ball mixture.
• Optional:  white tootsie rolls or other similar candy to reinforce the ridge on top.
• Drinking straw

1. If your cupcake has a rounded top, trim it flat.  then turn your cupcake upside down.
   Using a sharp knife, trim out ‘cheeks’ on the side of the cupcake, as shown in the first photo above.
2. The top of the helmet is rounded, and our cupcake is flat.  So we need to add a little height.  Crumble several cupcakes, and mix with icing (like your making cakeballs) until you can shape into a tablespoon sized  ball that stays together.  Press flat, and shape to the top of your head (see photo 2)
3. Cover the entire cupcake (except the bottom) with a thin coat of icing.
   [not pictured – roll a small 1/4in wide snake of kneaded tootsie roll (or other pliable, kneadable candy) and place on the top of the head, to help form the ridge on the top of the helmet.]
4. Start with a ball of fondant about the size of your fist, coat it and the work surface and the rolling pin with cornstarch.  Roll out a 1/8″ thick circle, about 3x taller and wider than the diameter of your cupcake.*
5. Place your cupcake up on upturned glass about the same diameter as your cupcake.  Centering your fondant over the cupcake, CAREFULLY drape.  Let it sit for a while so gravity helps to stretch it around the cake to fit well, with minimal folding.  Make sure the front and sides are smooth, then you can  trim and remove any extra fondant from the back, making a seam.  Pinch the fondant at the ridge to help define the helmet ridge on top.
   Gently press in at the cheeks.  For any excess on the bottom, trim to 1/2 inch, then tuck under the bottom of the helmet.
6. Finally, add your finishing touches.  Knead black and colored food coloring into your fondant, and roll very thin.  You’ll be cutting it into shaped and adhering them to the face.
   You’ll also add some white fondant.  Add additional fondant to the ridge of the helmet if needed to enhance the look.  Add strips to either side for the ear areas (I have no idea what to call it!).  Press the end of a straw into the top of the ear sections to create the circle.  (See photo at very top to see ear areas)
7. Cut out your black eye/mouth section as shown in photo 7 (sort of a jagged hourglass).  Dampen the back, and press on to your face.  Then add colored fondant as decoration around the eye section, as stripes on the top of the helmet, and 1 or 2 chin stripes if desired.  Just look at pictures of clone troopers for inspiration.
8. Do not refrigerate, but store in a cool place.  The fondant gets softer overnight, and I had a couple that fell over and had a few scars, which I patched over with icing.  But be CAREFUL with them!  (Note, when viewing the group photos, some of mine were done on cupcakes with rounded tops, and I don’t recommend that–also I was running out of fondant (I used more than I planned for the Perry Cake) so my later clone attempts are not as good as the prototype shown in this tutorial.)

*For more tips on rolling fondant, see this.

Hope you enjoy this tutorial, and if you make these, I want to see!

• Phineas & Ferb meet the Clone Wars – Party Invitation
• Some photos from The Boy’s birthday party
• Perry the Platypus (Phineas and Ferb) Cake How-To!
• (See all Phineas & Ferb Meet the Clone Wars Party Posts!)

(See all Phineas & Ferb Meet the Clone Wars Party Posts!)

Click to view larger or as a slideshow…

So what’s in the works?  Cake wise we’ll be having a Perry cake, and also clone trooper cupcakes (assuming they work out like I plan!).  It’s at brunch time (to try to beat out some of the heat of early june) so I’m planning on brunch food & drinks– for both kids and adults (we do a very adult and kid-friendly kids birthday parties around here!). I’m brainstorming right now on some clever theme related food ideas — suggestions welcome!

For decor, the handy hubby is working on a Portal to Mars.  I’ll be showing you that (with hopefully a how-to!) soon. And we’re also going to have a Backyard Beach! I was thinking of doing a Death Star Pinata… but that’s really Star Wars, not Clone Wars, right? Anyone else have some cool ideas we should do?

PS, his birthday is today, so Happy #5 to The Boy!

Last year’s Party: Dragons!

2 years ago: Robot Spacemen!

The Boy has a birthday coming up, and I figured I’d better be early (ok, I’m reaching for an IF theme! edit: Another IF for Early is HERE!) drawing an illustration for his birthday party invite. (Previous year’s party invitations: Dragon and Robots.) His pick for a party theme this year? Phineas & Ferb AND Star Wars – The Clone Wars. So what was I to do? Well, I’m still not sure about the party itself yet, but here’s the invitation (he’d better appreciate it, it took me all day to draw)!

Whatcha think!?

Too bad it will be too hot to wear his Perry Costume…!