Introduction: Wheel-Of-WOW!

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My daughter turned seven on 9/28, and for her birthday she wanted a Wheel-Of-WOW cake. In case you don't know what a W-O-W is, it's from Webkinz World(www.webkinz.com).

It didn't come out as well as I thought it would, and I will talk about some of the things that I would do differently in the last step. I'm still proud of it, however!

Step 1: Make a Turntable

All good cake makers have turn tables especially made just for turning their cakes as they decorate them. Unfortunately, I'm neither a good cake maker, or in possession of such a wonderful thing. Time to improvise.

First, I need something like a lazy-susan (why is she lazy?) to turn the cake on, and then something to put on top of the turny thing to put the cake on.

I took the wheel out of my microwave, and used a cutting board (mistake number one) to put on top of it.

It worked very well, but it was still a mistake. I'll explain why in the last step.

Step 2: Bake the Cake

This is just how to decorate a cake to look something like the Wheel-Of-WOW, not how to bake a cake, so I won't go into on the baking detail here. Basically, follow the directions in the cook-book or on the back of the box, using two 8 or 9 inch round pans.

When they come out, they will be "domed". You'll need to level them. Use the turn table from the previous step and turn as you cut.

You should end up with something like the cake pictured below (and lots of delicious left overs!).

As with all cakes, you want to ice the top of the first layer, then put the second layer on top.

Step 3: Making the Icing

The real Wheel-Of-WOW has ten segments in ten different colors. I'm not that adventurous. I went with six colors. Blue, Purple, Red, Orange, Yellow and Green. To make them, I used plain white vanilla icing and food colors.

Start by putting icing in a zip-lock bag. Then add food coloring. I started, as you can see in the third picture, with three drops of food coloring. NOT NEARLY ENOUGH. More like 10 or 15 a bag. Red took 30 drops. Remember that you can always add color, but can't remove it.

Close up the bag, and then start mixing. I rolled them between my hands to mix. Do whatever you have to do to mix the colors. Purple was red and blue. Orange was red and yellow. Green was one of the colors in the coloring.

This step is VERY messy, and licking your fingers will give you a major sugar rush! I also had a bag break on me, and some of the zip-locks did come undone. Very messy.



Step 4: Make the Outline

Put some of the white icing into a snack back and clip off a corner to make a small hole. This will be your home-made piping bag.

The Wheel-Of-WOW has a circle of white in the middle, where the word "WOW" is written, and then the pie segments on the outside.

To make the circle, I held the "piping" bag in place, and turned the cake on my turn table. Then I filled in the circle with white icing.

Next, I made radial lines to mark off six somewhat equal segments. I had these go down the side of the cake as my color was going to go down the side as well.

It came out pretty good, I think.

Step 5: Fill in the Segments

Take a bag of colored icing, and cut off a corner. Fill in each segment with a different color. The I went down the side as well.

Using the icing bags won't give you the "smooth" appearance kind of shown below, so you'll have to smooth each segment out with a spatula as you go along.

I would recommend two things during this step. First, decide on your layout ahead of time. I chose to go blue, purple, red, orange, yellow, green. That way I had the primary colors with their mixtures in between. Second, clean the spatula between colors. I don't mean with soap and water, but just make sure there is no left over purple on there when you go to do the red kind of thing.

Step 6: Add the WOW

The Wheel-Of-WOW has the word WOW in the middle of it, so we have to add our WOW. I chose to use red lettering, as I didn't have any yellow left. I outlined my WOW with white icing to make it stand out.

When I cut the corner of the red bag the first time, I made it a fairly big hole. I was going for coverage. Now I wanted detail, so I had to cut another corner off, making a smaller hole for the detail of the WOW.

Step 7: Add the Prizes

The Wheel-Of-WOW is all about the prizes, we need to add them to our cake.

Normal prizes include Kinz-Cash (the currency of Webkinz World), food, clothing, furniture, and toys.

We used chocolate coins for the Kinz-Cash, a chocolate soccer ball and a large gummy bear for the toys, a candy pumpkin for the food, and a Polly Pockets shirt for the clothes.

The Polly Pockets shirt was bought just for the cake, and was washed with dish soap and warm water before being placed on the cake.

Step 8: Lessons Learned

My first mistake was to use the cutting board as a turn table. I should have used the bottom of our cake box for it. The cake was going to end up in the cake box anyway, and having it on the bottom of the cake box would have saved me the transfer.

I covered the cutting board with the top of the cake box until it was time to serve the cake. I served the cake from the cutting board, and then moved the cake to the bottom of the cake box when we were done eating. By then it didn't matter if it got a little messed up.

My second mistake was with the WOW. I didn't plan this out at all. I started with the first W, and didn't look at how big I was making it, or where I was placing it, compared to the size of the circle in the center. I pretty much ended up covering the center circle of white with my WOW.

If I were to do it again, I would start off by buying some gel icing just for the WOW. Next, I would start writing it with the O in the center of the circle for size, then adding the two Ws on each side.