Ok, I have just been asked to make a retirement cake for my office (also my husband's boss). We are Engineers with a wireless carrier.

The man is into home improvement and I found a cake on sugarcraft.com that I would like to make a version of. It has candy melt tools and a cool fondant looking tool belt. I'm so excited. I'm sure it'll be challenging.

Now, the scary part is that he wants it Italian. I was thinking of maybe making a normal white or yellow cake and maybe use Italian Cream filling or something to that effect. If I could find some Italian icing that would act and crust like regular buttercream, that would be cool too. I'm a little intimidated with trying new things at this point.

Does anyone have any ideas?

Don't you all think this would be the perfect cake?

Did you look in the recipes area? On the right hand side of the screen look for Italian, click on that and it will pull up all the Italian recipes posted on this site.
You will do a good job!

I did look there, as well on Wilton's site and a few others, but I'm not sure how those cakes would work. I also did not see an Italian cream filling and I don't know if the Italian Buttercream would crust like the regular one I use.

Does anyone know how you get that silver colors on the tools?? I've never seen food coloring that color.

I stumbled upon that cake on the sugarcraft website. If you go to their site and click on candy molds, then "men's", then go down to the near bottom of the page, there is a link that says "carpenter tools" you will see "Ashley used our highlighter dust to paint her tools" with a link to the highlighter dust. Also that is where I found the picture.

Here's the tools I made in preparation of making my tool cake.

Wow...you could fool a mechanic with those! Great job!

how did you do them?????

Thank you!!

I molded them with vanilla & chocolate candy melts and dusted them with highliter dust.

Those look Great!! What did he mean by "Italian"? Are you sure he meant in recipes/fillings?

Best of luck!

~Wendy

Yes, recipes and fillings. However, I talked to the actual retiree and he wants carrot cake, so I'm gonna make a sheet cake 1/2 carrot, 1/2 white cake (for those who don't like carrot cake). I think I'll ice it with crusting creamcheese icing. I think I found the recipe on this site. Sound good?

I hope the tool belt comes out as good as the tools. I think I'm also gonna make a "honey do" list out of fondant because I'm sure his wife will keep him busy.

clever very very clever!

What does it mean, molded out of candy melts? Do you just pour melted candy melts into a tool shaped mold? If so, where do you get molds in different shapes??

Yes, you melt the chocolate and pour into shaped molds. I found my molds at http://www.sugarcraft.com/ listed under Candy molds.

I know all about the "just in case"! I bougt a smaller tool set from somewhere...I'm not sure where. Then I got the smiley faces so I could make pops for my son's kindergarten graduation. Then I got the flowers just to practice. Any excuse! I can't wait to try and make this tool cake. I should drop the italian, because now it's gonna be 1/2 carrot cake, 1/2 chocolate cake. LOL!! I love the candy molds, it's too easy!!! After I finished my practice run, I thought, "man, is that all there is to it? No challenge whatsoever" Until I tried the tools, then I had several boo-boos until I got it right!!

Are you planning to bake your two flavor cake batters in one pan? The carrot and white cakes are going to be pretty different density and texture, you might want to consider baking them separately and icing them together. This is the voice of experience speaking, I've recently had a little difficulty with a two flavor cake baked in one pan.

The tools look great, and the idea is very good, sometimes it's hard to come up with a cake idea for a guy. Janice

yeah especially with carrot cake I would bake in separate pans...

Yes, my intentions are to bake each flavor in separate 9 X 13 pans, then put together to make a 13 X 18 cake. I guess one layer will be enough, huh? There are 46 people invited to this party, but there are another 30 or so in the office where the conference room is, so I'm sure they will stop by to get a piece.

Thanks for the tips!

I don't know if this is too late or not but you could have made an Italian Cream cake and used a crusting buttercream for the icing....it's wonderful.....I make them alot for my customers, it's one of my most popular cakes, and it can be make in a sheet cake pan too.

Well, I would appreciate if you would share the recipe with me. That sounds yummy.

The deal is that my husband's boss' boss is getting italian food and thinks that Gary likes everything Italian. However, I spoke to Gary himself and he is asking for carrot/spice cake. I chose the chocolate because it sounded like it would go well with crusting creamcheese icing.

What do you think?

Ok, finally finished!!! I finished it about 6:00 tonight and had to take it to my Mom's to refrigerate because it wouldn't fit into my fridge. Then had to cook, eat, get the kids ready for bed, etc, etc. I'm finally able to sit down....3 hours later, lol.

Anyway, I finished my "tool" cake. I think it came out well, but it seems to be missing something. What do you think? Maybe a top border or something?

It was fun to make and I'm overall pleased with it. The icing was kinda sagging on the sides and my cake board seemed to be a bit too small, but nothing major.

Thanks for all of the suggestions!

It's not missing a thing! You did an incredible job Looks like you could just lift up that tool belt and wear it. It's even better than that because you can eat it! You'll have to let us know what Gary has to say. I bet he's going to love it.

I hope so. His wife and I conspired on the Honey Do list. I think he'll love it!!

Thank you for the kind words, too!!! I love this site. Everyone is so supportive of each other!!

thats what it means....there are special molds for alot of things, but I cant help you there...

marknrox- I love your cake, good job!