Today is hubby’s birthday, so I decided to venture out of my comfort zone and look on the Wilton website at cake ideas. I came across a Poker Cake and thought ‘Hey, I can do that’… so I did. Well, not exactly how the cake in their picture was, but I decided to take the picture and play around with some ideas.

I started out with two white cake mixes and added some Jumbo Rainbow Nonpareils Sprinkles for color and fun.

I used a UltraGold 10 in. Square Pan and it filled that bad boy up. The remaining cake mix, I used in two smaller cake pans for the kids to decorate their own individual cakes later on.

While the cake was baking, I used White Solid Color Sugar Sheets Edible Decorating Paper to create poker cards. While I wanted to make a stack of playing cards, I was on a time restraint since hubby was away at baseball practice for only 3 hours, so I just made a full house. I really like the Rotary Cutter for the sugar sheets, but I (personally) found it easier to maneuver around the edges of the cards with scissors.

For the writing on the cards, I used FoodWriter™ Primary Colors Edible Color Markers.

I used the red and black to make the 5 cards that I wanted to use to create the full house.

I decided to add to the cake ‘Happy Birthday Daddy’ by using Ready-To-Use White Rolled Fondant 24 oz. Pkg. and I cut the letters out by using 37 Piece Alphabet & Number Cut-Outs™. What worked best for me was to use the Perfect Height™ Rolling Pin on top of Parchment paper and I let the fondant set for about 10 minutes to get a bit less sticky. Doing this made the fondant letters easier to cut and easier to work with.

One the cake was done baking, I let it cool on my 14 1/2 x 20 in. Non-Stick Cooling Grid.

Once my cake was cool enough to work with, I used a knife to cut off the hardened edges and then I used the Cake Leveler to cut the cake in to two pieces. Why two pieces? You will see.

I decorate the cake and serve it on, what I had on hand was some Show ‘N Serve Cake Boards. My cake was far from perfect as far as it being perfectly level, but hey – it worked! I flipped the cake over using the Cake Lifter and used the cut part on the bottom, then the bottom on the top.

While I normally use decorating tips, I didn’t use any for this cake. What can I say – I was on a time restraint. I used 3 Disposable Decorating Bags for this entire cake, one which I filled with White Ready-To-Use Decorator Icing – 4.5 lb. Tub (just enough to make a bridge from the outside, but I had some left, so I made roads in between. Yeah, I just said roads. (more like dirt roads that are far from even)

Who can have a double layer cake without something yummy in the middle? My almost 6 year old suggested pudding. I wasn’t about to deny him that. Who doesn’t love pudding?

Once I set the cakes on top of each other, I slapped some icing on and spread somewhat even. I was going to be using Sugar Sheets and Fondant, so I wasn’t particularly cautious how even my icing was. I know… shame on me.

Before I did anything else, I decided to let my icing harden just a bit, so I went on to the next project for the cake…. making the poker chips. I colored the fondant with Royal Blue Icing Color. Yes, my fondant is a bit tie-dyed, but I like the effect that it had on the poker chips. I used a Decorating tip (what size? I don’t know – whatever size the one was that I pulled out randomly that fit the size of a poker chip. How’s that for measurements?

On top of the cake, since my icing has hardened a bit, I used a single sheet of Green Solid Color Sugar Sheets Edible Decorating Paper and placed on the top of my cake. With the sides on my cake, I took some fondant and colored it with Black Icing Color, then I put it in between a piece of Parchment paper and wax paper and rolled with my Perfect Height™ Rolling Pin to get it to a thinness that I wanted. I created 4 pieces and just folded over on each corner. I am still learning fondant, so I am sure I will look back at this later on and say to myself ‘what in the world was I thinking?’ For now… it worked. Then I took some black ready to use icing and piled down the seam on each side between the green sugar sheet and the black fondant, then I rolled some leftover black fondant in thin rolls and placed it around the seams to cover it up.

With my poker cards, I had them set out to harden a bit, then I took some piping gel and a brush and brushed a tiny bit on the back of each card, as a glue.

I had set out my poker chips that I colored in royal blue, black and non-taste red and cut with a decorator tip out to harden just before I used piping gel to stick to the cake top, as I did with the lettering from above.

Here is my overall Poker Cake. While I wasn’t too thrilled with the unevenness of my layers, I think I did pretty darn good for only having 3 hours to bake and decorate hubby’s birthday cake.

He was happy when the kids presented him with his birthday cake!

And how was the cake? Here’s the middle. One word…. Yummy!