Sunday
Feb282010
Sunday Sweets: Alice in Wonderland
February 28, 2010 In honor of the impending movie, some curiously wonderful Wonderland Sweets:
(By Cakes By Lynette)Love the heart sprinkles, and that pocket watch is perfect!
(Found here, but the baker isn't listed.)
(That whisker 'stache is hilarious!)
(By Ken's Oven, who reports that this was his very first sculpted cake. Sweet!)
I've had a soft spot for the Queen of Hearts ever since John and I made elaborate Queen & cards costumes one year for Halloween. (We roped a gaggle of guys into going as cards, too, so we made quite the impression marching en masse through Disney.) So naturally, I had to find some Queen cakes:
(By Artisan Cakes by E.T.)Such great detailing!
And here's the classic Disney version:
(By Socake)One of my favorite characters in the Disney film was the talking doorknob, so I love this:
(By Caxperiments)What a cute cookie!
And lastly, a fan favorite from the CW archives:
(By the always amazing Cake Nouveau)- Similar Sweets: Cake Nouveau
Have a Sweet to suggest? E-mail it to me at Sunday Sweets (at) Cake Wrecks (dot) com.
Reader Comments (51)
the first and the last cake were phenomenal!
I can't believe the Cheshire Cat was a first time sculpt! That was great! I loved them ALL! I especially loved the Dormouse cake. :) He's so cute.
I agree, I love the first and last cakes! the others were good too but they were exceptional. I would have loved to have seen you as the queen with your court of cards :)
These are absolutely gorgeous and adorable! Oh, this is so helpful!
I'm making an Alice in Wonderland cake for my friend's sweet sixteen [I'm sixteen, too. This won't end well.] next weekend. I've been lacking the drive to get anything done and designed. This is really inspiring!
Thanks Jen!
thank you so much for featuring my cake! i'm such a huge fan of the site and it's my birthday today and it was like a super amazing surprise birthday present to see my cake on Sunday Sweets! thanks for linking to my blog (which is empty at the moment, but will be filling it up soon!) but the website i use more often is flickr - www.flickr.com/artisancakes
again, thank you so much Jen for featuring my cake you have really made my birthday extra special!
- E.T.
Sort of related...
They have found and restored the first movie adaptation of Alice
It's from 1903!
http://www.neatorama.com/2010/02/26/alice-in-wonderland-1903-version/
Alice in Wonderland is my all time favourite book so thank you for those sweets!
stupendous sunday sweets!!!
and a very happy unbirthday to the rest of us!
Jen, I'd love to see your pics of you & John dressed up as Queen of Hearts & card(s) at Disney. Anything to please the fans, right??
Beautiful cakes, creepy movie! The doorknob is my favorite too!
These cakes give me hope. I love these.
Would love to see the halloween pics too!!!
Did the client really ask for the card soldier cake to say "In This Style 10/6" on the card? Or perhaps, did they want "10/6" in the style shown?
These are the sunday sweets, but has anyone else noticed the hidden wreck?
On the cake with the dormouse and the card soldier, look at the card on the Hatter's hat. It's suppose to just say 10/6, but they printed the whole instructions :P
For those saying the card on the Mad Hatter's hat is a mistake: this is a perfect reproduction of the original illustrations of the mad hatter. He wears a sign just like that on his own hat to advertise that people can purchase a hat "in this style" for 10 shillings, 6 pence. Here is a link to some of the illustrations of the hatter from the original book:
http://www.krepcio.com/vitreosity/archives/MadHatter-ALL-illus600.jpg
As you can see, the cake replicates it faithfully! Not a wreck at all!
Wow! Love them all but especially that caterpillar!
EEEP!!! The doorknob cookie is SOO CUTE!!! Also love the cheshire cat (my fav), caterpillar, original QoH ... Hell, they're all amazingly sweet!
The "In this Style" is not a wrecky bit. I'm sure a bunch of other posters are going to say this and it'll end up another Epcot but I'll take my chances.
The card is an order to make the style of the hat for 10 shillings sixpence. I learned that ages ago when I read Alice in Wonderland for an 8th grade project. The illustrator for the book Sir John Tenniel, drew the hat that way, with a card that says "In this Style 10/6". Disney eliminated the "In this Style" bit for simplicity.
I love love love this blog by the way. I have it in my bookmarks and check every morning for new wreckie goodness. I love Sunday Sweets as well. The cakes today are especially beautiful and close to my heart because I love everything Alice.
I would love to see the photos from Halloween!
Ohhhh, that doorknob. I just remember him annoying the hell out of me in Kingdom Hearts.
Interesting plastic figurines, but where are the cakes?
It's not a wreak. it's supposed to say that. check out http://childillustration.blogspot.com/2009/11/john-tenniel-mad-hatter.html
The problem I'd have with cakes like these is simply this: I don't think I'd have the heart to take a knife to them.
I also do the Queen of Hearts as my favorite costume. I'd love to get my guy friends to go as secret service/cards for me. XD
I love the last cake best.
Great set of cakes! Thanks for the Alice fix today! :)
My mistake. I've been so used to my Disney Hatter, I didn't realize it was suppose to say "In this Style." I mean, it looks like something a wreckie would do, right :P So, my bad.
I love Sundays. So beautiful.
My only problem is just knowing these works of art are going to be cut up and eaten. It's WRONG I tell you, WRONG.
"A little of that goes a l-o-n-g way!"
Wonderful cakes!! Such great work! Love the last one!
I figured there might be Alice theme coming up and submitted a Alice cake I saw on a Canadian site... :( oh well It was awesome!!!
Here is another incredible Alice cake:
http://meikiana.deviantart.com/art/Mad-Cake-114348788
When I see #5 and #6, they make me want to shout, "Off with their heads! Off with their heads!"
Impending movie...sounds like impending disaster. :-)
Lola et al are right, of course. In the classic illustrations, the tag on the hat says, "In This Style, 10/6" (i.e. the price is 10 shillings sixpence).
Take, for example, this one:
http://hatta-wiki.org/+download/mad%20hatter.jpg
I'm not interested in any of Disney's vandalizations of classic literature.
Anonymous said:
Interesting plastic figurines, but where are the cakes?
I've got to agree with Anony here. These are interesting ornaments, but none of them seem the least bit edible.
To qualify as a cake, I think it's got to be made of cake materials, like flour, sugar, butter, nuts ... and it has to be something a sensible person would want to eat. Plastic doesn't really meet either of these criteria.
To Anon and Gary,
The figurines on the cakes are made of either gum paste or fondant. While neither is especially tasty, they are made from completely edible ingredients. Nothing is plastic.
However, I suppose that if people tend to think these are plastic, than the artists who made them should be especially proud since a plastic figurine rarely looks handmade.
john
I can just see Alice looking at the Queen of Hearts cakes and thinking to herself,"Aha! Revenge! Off with HER head!" Ok so that's just me probably lol. But I blame my husband for inspiring that comment hehe. All of them are too lovely for me to even think of someone cutting into one.
Those cakes look too precious to eat...but I don't think the kiddies see it like that?
To John (thoJ):
OK, maybe gum paste and fondant are "edible" in the sense that it wouldn't cause you any immediate harm if you ate them. However, that doesn't make them food. As far as I know, it wouldn't hurt me to eat a few sheets of carboard. But a cardboard sculpture, no matter how good a work of art, is not cake.
I'm not a nut about cake purity. I've defended pictures of cookies and pies as being types of cake when they appeared on this site. But, again, cake means something most people would eat. I don't mind fondant creations as "wrecks," because, after all, these are presented as cakes gone wrong. But for the "good" cakes, I'd like to see more examples of what you can do with actual food ingredients-- not just modeling materials that happen to be non-toxic.
(Does anybody here know what "fondant" really is? I don't. It looks like some kind of neon-colored modeling clay, or malleable sealing wax.)
You know, I really get where Gary is coming from on this. To me, while impressive and pretty, these fondant cakes never look like something I would want to eat. It almost seems like there should be two categories: technical and everyday. I would love to see some recognition for everyday beautiful cakes, iced and decorated with buttercream. It is very difficult to do a lovely and creative job with tasty frosting (I know from experience!) so I think it would be neat to see some like that in the sunday sweets.
I guess this says something about my pop-culture associations, but when I looked at the doorknob cake, I thought it was Scooby Doo.
I would love to see pictures of these costumes!
Fondant has really gotten a bad name for itself... there are some AMAZING tasting fondants out there...I love the taste of the fondant I use. People say it smells like cotton candy.
Fondant is most certainly edible and can be very tastey!
I personally think you need to taste some fondants before saying that you wouldn't want to eat them. I've used and tasted many very good fondants, so if you use the proper materials, they are definitely edible. And I don't know about you, but once I have pictures of pretty cakes that use fondant, I have no problem cutting and serving :P
Okay, I have to speak up in defence of rolled fondant as well - granted, most adults aren't especially interested in eating large amounts of it, but most kids DEFINITELY ARE. I make fondant figures for most of my family's birthday cakes, and they are always devoured gleefully by any children present. And I cover cakes with fondant too, and the adults always eat that. Like anything edible, it's a matter of personal taste - personally I can't stand oysters, but I'm willing to call them food! :)
Fondant *is* food, and absolutely nothing else, as anyone with a third grade education and the ability to use Google could surely find out on his/her own:
Buttercream Fondant (allrecipes.com)
Prep Time:
10 Min
Ready In:
10 Min
Servings
45
USCalculate
Original Recipe Yield 3 pounds
Ingredients
1 cup light corn syrup
1 cup shortening
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon clear vanilla extract
2 pounds confectioners' sugar
Directions
In a large bowl, stir together the shortening and corn syrup. Mix in the salt and vanilla flavoring, then gradually mix in the confectioners' sugar until it is a stiff dough. If you are using a stand mixer, use the dough hook attachment. Otherwise, knead by hand. If the dough is sticky, knead in more confectioners' sugar until it is smooth. Store in an airtight container at room temperature or in the refrigerator.
To use, roll out on a clean surface that has been dusted with confectioners' sugar until it is 1/8 inch thick or thinner if you can. Drape over frosted and chilled cakes and smooth the sides down, or cut into strips to make bows and other decorations.
Sorry to be so snide about it, but...well Jeez, give me a stinkin' break.
So here's what I've always wondered - is there "regular" frosting underneath the fondant?
Thanks!
Sweet! love the caterpillar cake! i want one for my birthday! These also serve me as more inspiration for my jewelry collection. Incase you're like Alice and curious to check it out so far: http://www.blugrndesign.com/shop/aliceinwonderland.html
Thanks a lot for featuring my cake! The Cheshire Cat, I had so much fun working on it!!!
Was super excited when I was told today that they recognized my name on your site, I was thinking: "this is not possible, this person is mistaken"... glad she wasn't! hehe.
Thanks to Renee for her nice comment about my first ever sculpted cake!
Wow, awesome cakes! I love them!
I disapprove of this post! No original Disney version Mad Hatter cakes! D: Now pardon me while this rabid fangirl goes in search of a corner in which to curl up and cry. *pouts*
Or perhaps it's time to go to Google...
I love the original Mad Hatter... Much better than the orange-haired freak everyone knows of now...