I love food, as im sure you're aware... My husband, B, and I also love to go off roading, especially after a nice heavy rain.
We are Jeep people... Thats just the way it is. So when B had his "25th" bday last week (his age is relative ;) ), i decided to go all out for the big three-oh, and i made him a Jeep Cake.
It was a LONG process involving many props and supports under its frame. To give you the run down of how I did it, ill start with the base.
First I baked all the cake slabs i would need in 15"x15" pans
I hot glued some supports that were just the right height so that when i put the wheels on, the Jeep wouldn't be too tall or too short (no one likes a short jeep these days).
Then I started to assemble the cake on a cake board. I used two and 1/3 layers for the hood area, and the cab area goes up almost four whole layers. Each layer was nearly 2" thick.
After I got the general shape down, i started shaving off the parts I wouldnt need like the back of the cab where the Jeep soft top curves in. My husbands jeep has what is called a frameless top... Beyond the roll bar, there are no additional brackets and braces. This gives the back of the Jeep a more slanted look than in stock jeeps. There are a lot of companies that make them but ours is a rampage.***********
After the jeep got a slim down to be just the right size, I put refrigerated it for about 20 min, then put a crumb layer on it.
After the crumb layer it went back into the fridge to firm up.
I decided to use sugar sheets for the windows rather than trying to use two different shades of black for the windows and soft top canvas. The end result was INCREDIBLE!!!
Okay back to frosting it. I frosted the blue body of the Jeep first and let that set up in the freezer before adding the black for the soft top canvas.
After I got the whole thing frosted i smoothed it out using the viva paper towel method combined with my silicon spatula (which worked better in some cases).
After it was all smoothed out i started adding the details like the sugar sheet windows. I also used the sugar sheets for the grill i front as well as the body armor on the back fenders and side step areas. There are two sides to sugar sheets: a shiny side and a matte side. In the end they don't end up looking too different so i wouldn't worry about it.
After the windows and body armor, i added things like headlights, license plate, body armor rivets, and even a fondant Hi-Lift Jack.
Another thing about Bs Jeep is that it has after market fenders. The front ones don't hug the wheels like stock fenders do. This allows greater rang of motion, but also looks super cool. I made these out of triangular poured slab of melting chocolate. If I had the time, i would have tempered some real chocolate because it tastes better, but alas time was running out.
Once all of that was put together I slid the cake to the edge of the table and used a serrated knife to cut away the excess cake board so that it did not show. Then i put the cake on top of the cake board I had prepared with the hot glued supports (with the supports underneath pointing down toward the table). I then trimmed the excess from that cake board and put the whole shabang on top of yet another board so that there was a base, supports, and then two cake boards between the supports and the bottom of the cake. I did this to reinforce the cakes main platform to avoid any potential folding.
Anyway, after that I added the wheels. i made the wheels out of 4.75" sugar cookies. The original cookies were about 5.25" but i trimmed them with a cookie cutter so they would all for sure be the same size and there would be a crisp edge. I frosted them with black and plunked them on, securing them with toothpicks.
Oookay so after all that. I frosted the base with brown for mud and covered any visible supports with grey frosting for rocks! I splashed a bit of "mud" onto the jeep, wrote a happy birthday wish to the birthday boy, and called it good!!
If I had to do it again(which Im sure I will because it was a MAJOR conversation topic at the party), I would get the soft top angles closer to the actual thing. I feel like they're too slanty and it came off looking a little Jeep Liberty ;)
Another Jeep cake!! This one was awesome! It was patterned after a nearly black four-door wrangler! I am so proud of myself, and I even let B help with this one!
I used over five lbs of fudge for the base. This was preferable to frosting because the fudge did an amazing job of keeping the supports in place. I was unhappy that I had to glue the supports down before I frosted everything last time around. The supports were glue to the underside of the cake board that was holding the main cake, and then stuck down into the fudge for a secure hold. I did half of the fudge using toffee bits to add to the dirt look, and the other half had peanut butter chips for those who do not like toffee.
