I have only made/decorated 2 cakes in my life and both have been for my son (you can see pictures of both in my pictures). A coworker of mine has enlisted me to make her son's 2nd birthday cake and she would like me to use the wilton spiderman pan.

I am looking for suggestions on the following;

-How to bake a level cake in a character pan.

-What is the best icing for decorating purposes? (She would like a cream cheese icing but I am not sure that will work for a birthday cake unless it is carrot or spice and I am unsure if it works for decorating).

-Any ways to enhance a boxed cake (any flavor as I am unsure of her flavor choice at this point).

-How do I make the cake larger? The pan isn't big enough for the amount of people she will have attending the party and I need a creative way to add to it.

The party is coming up on April 4th and I need as many suggestions as I can gather in order to make this cake perfect. I don't want the first cake I make for someone else to turn out poorly. Any and all suggestions are greatly appreciated!!

Thank you in advance.

i havent used character pans, so i cant advise on how to get it more level, other than usual leveling tips - flower nail in the pa, bake een strips, bakng at a slightly lower temp.

cream cheese icing will work well, just make sure its the right consistency.

if you are using a mix, you should look up the WASC recipe on this site, apparently its great, theres loads of flavour variations too.

you could sit the spiderman on top of some size of sheet cake if she needs a lot extra. or cupcakes round it - more work though. a small round or square decorated in a similar way - either done 'properly' to be displayed, or more kitchen cake style, kept through back.

if you have a look for spiderman in the gallery it might help you too - recently theres been some good ones done.
xx

Wilton shaped pans bake very easily. if you have a hump just level it befor you flip it over on a cake board. use the edge of the pan to guide your knife. Take it slow. Don't rush when icing it. if you are using the star tip slow and steady works the best.
good luck.

if you need to feed more people do a 12x13 or whatever size is bigger then your spider man pan you can ice it blue or red put spiderwebs on the corner maybe write on the side. what i find works best to get any cake level is to make sure you level it before it goes in 95% of the time it works.

I recently made Spiderman using a combination of pans I already had. I used the football pan and one of my medium sized round cake pans, froze the cakes, then stacked and sculpted to form his face. It went really quickly and produced nice results. You can find that cake on my cake blog (listed in sig line) if you're interested.

I agree that the Wilton shaped pans are easy to use. Just be sure you grease/flour them well or use the product Wilton makes... I think it's called Quick Release... or something like that.