Tutorial: Chocolate Felt Cake

Here’s a little something I’ve been working on for the last month.

I wanted to have it finished for my little girl’s second birthday, but better late than never, right? Besides, it’s not strictly a birthday cake, anyways. The candles are detachable.

Did I mention that it’s sliceable, too?

It’s easy to make using some simple geometry principles. You can sew it by hand, like me (I’ll let you know how I did it) or you can use a machine (you’d be kind of on your own with that one). And you can embellish it any way you want.

For some fun hand embroidery stitches, you could go here or here. I used the granitos stitch for the flower petals, open Cretan stitch for the frosting strips, and the buttonholed herringbone stitch for the scalloped edge, but you could use some fancy stitch on your machine, or use ric rac or beads or anything else you want.
You can use velcro to hold it together, or sew in some earth magnets like I did. Really, this project is very versatile.

Want to make your own cake? You can find the tutorial here:

Or you can go to the tutorial tab and find it with my other tutorials.

My little girl loves this cake. She keeps picking off the candles and watching them snap into place when she drops them. She also carries the cake around singing “happy cake to you” (to the tune of “Happy Birthday”). Very cute. So help yourself to a piece of cake (or the whole thing) and enjoy!

By the way, I almost didn’t post about this because a week before I finished my cake, I saw this. I thought, “Are you serious? That’s my idea” (and not in a “you stole my idea,” copyright infringement sort of way, because I’m sure she’s never heard of me, and even if she had, she would have no way of knowing I was making my own little felt cake).  It was more of a “wow, that’s so much better than the way I did my idea” kind of way. I love the ruched (is that a word?) frosting and that you can store all the pieces in the cake. So I figured that anyone wanting to make felt cake would choose her way because in a lot of ways it is superior to my own humble method.

But then I thought that I would post it anyway, because even if it’s already been done, and done better, it doesn’t hurt to share my cake with you, and maybe I can add something with my version. I don’t know, the pressure to make something completely new, fresh, and unique is a little much some times, don’t  you think? So I say, all I can do is create what I’m inspired to create, and not worry about what’s already been done. That’s all for my two cents. Let me know what you think.

p.s. I’m linking this at 30 Days and
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Felt Food

I’ve seen examples of this all over, and I thought I would give it a go, since one of my toddler’s favorite pastimes is playing in her toy kitchen (it’s just a hand-me-down Fisher Price once, but someday I’ll make a cool remodeled one for her).

**Warning: Felt food is almost as addicting as real food.**

The very first thing I made was the egg, and it just snowballed from there. I ended up deciding that I must make a full meal for breakfast, lunch, and dinner (easier said than done).

Here’s breakfast:

My favorite part is definitely the bacon (also true with real bacon!):

I started on lunch but ran out of felt before I could make a full meal. I got this 100% wool felt from here about 8 months ago for another project that I have yet to finish, but I got more colors than I needed to at that time, so I used some of the superfluous colors to make my food.

Here’s what I have for lunch so far:

The apple pieces stick together with little rare earth magnets that I sewed into them where the seeds are.

I’m thinking I’ll make a sandwich for lunch and maybe a steak dinner with a baked potato. I’ve been thinking about doing some Ecuadorian foods, too (patacones? caldo de salchicha? not sure yet). We’ll see. One thing is sure: I see more felt food production in my future.