Frank 'n Sense: My first 'How To'

So, just in case I ever have a fabulous blog that deals with things not 100% with my children I'm going to go through a 'How-To Make a Phineas Cake' because I recently designed one for my son's 6th birthday party. And I'm pretty dang proud because, well, I'm just not the most creative person. So here it is, a Phineas Cake to feed the whole party that you can do at home with limited cost and creative juices.

1. Bake a 9x13 cake...turn it into the t-shirt shown here at Family Fun:

http://familyfun.go.com/recipes/groovy-t-shirt-cake-686057/

As you can see, I made the shirt longer and the sleeves smaller/vertical. SAVE THE SCRAPS!--then wrap in foil and freeze

2. Bake another 8 x 8 square cake (they can be two different flavors to tantalize all tastebuds at the party!) Cut said cake in half diagonally (you might want to wrap in foil and freeze to help it cut smoothly) and rotate until you have one nice big triangle...arrange on top of the shirt cake. Note: I used my extra large wooden cutting board to arrange the cakes on, I just covered it in foil, but you could also use a piece of plywood etc...

Here we have a slightly more recognizable Phineas...he has a lemon flavored frosting shirt and a tub of white frosting (I happened to us cream cheese) colored. I borrowed the coloring from the book "Hello, Cupcake!" by Karen Tack & Alan Richardson. Take one tub (you won't use quite all of it, but hey...you don't want to run out!) and mix in: 3 drops yellow food coloring, 1/2 teaspoon cocoa powder

Frost!

Next for the tricky part...take a tub of white frosting and mix in 60 drops of red!!! I know, yikes, right? Make it as red as you can, but it will still look rather pink.

Mix in about 35 drops of yellow food coloring to your 'red' frosting and you've got your orange stripes! Okay, for an easier orange go buy some orange food coloring at the craft store and color to desired shade...I'm just too cheap! Looking at a picture of Phineas, he has three strips, bottom, middle, over the shoulders and a small splotch at the neck...carefully apply stripes.

So, here is where I forgot to take a picture of a step, please forgive me it's my first 'How-To' Tutorial. Somewhere between frosting the shirt and making the orange frosting, draw a two circles on paper and place under a sheet of wax paper (I used a regular mouth canning lid as a template). Then melt some white melting chips (vanilla, white chocolate, whatever the bulk bins at WinCo carry!). When slightly cooled, spoon into a regular plastic sandwich bag, snip the corner and pipe onto the wax paper over the template. Shake a little to smooth out lumps. Allow to cool (it doesn't take very long...thank goodness since my 3 year old managed to break mine an hour before the birthday party!) While they're cooling, remove t-shirt cake scraps and cut into 'hair' and frost with orange frosting. Again, looking at a Phinease picture add 'eyes' and mouth with black gel, place eyes on cake (the half eye was jabbed into the cake).