Laura's 3rd Birthday cake

Laura requested a princess castle birthday cake for her 3rd birthday!  I borrowed a castle kit from friends, and this is what I ultimately came up with!!

The top cake was lemon with fresh strawberries (as per the birthday girl's request!), and the bottom tier was chocolate with fresh strawberries.  Some of the fun touches were the sparkly pool of piping gel for Flounder, the food-spray paint on the pebble path, the sugar cube turrets, and the multi-colored sugar sparkles to give the windows a stained glass feel.  Oh, and swiping the princesses and their little friends from the toy box while the kid was sleeping ;)

Baby Shower

To date, this is the largest cake I've ever made!!  It was also my first delivered cake!

The bottom tier contains a 2-layer, 4" tall x 6" round cake, and 5 individual 4"x4"x4" 3-layer cubes.  The top tier is a 2-layer 8" round.  I made the baby on top with fondant and gumpaste, and then food writers to add some detail work on the face.  The decorative candies on the cubes are from chocolate molds, and the letters on the top tier were store-bought.  The only part of the cake that was inedible were the baby-themed candles around the baby.

Baptism cake

This cake was for a friend's daughter's baptism.  The name has been intentionally blurred for anonymity.

This was a 2 layer devil's food cake (bit of an inside joke from the mom) with dark fudge filling, and a rich cream cheese frosting.  The mosaic-style cross was hand drawn with a thin border of the cream cheese frosting and then filled with colored piping gel.

Tiered cake

This was my final cake for the Wilton course 4.  This was my first attempt with the push-in pillars, and my eye only sees the one pillar that wouldn't cooperate and stand up straight!!  It was a lemon cake with blueberry filling, lemon icing, and strained organic blueberry preserves drizzled across the surface.  The sides were coated in hand-grated white chocolate.  The fresh lemon slices were dipped in white sparkling sugars (note to self- next time, take the time to actually CANDY the lemons- sugar makes lemons turn juicy and drippy!!).

It was AMAZINGLY tasty!!!

Top tier:

Bottom tier:

Beach time!!

I made this cake for my friend's daughter for her 6th birthday!  The only inedible items on the cake were the umbrellas!!  It was a single layer marble cake.  I carved the top and rearranged the carved portions to make a flat "water" area and a raised "beach".  The beach is graham cracker crumbs with a little sugar (for some sparkle!), the water is blue piping gel.  The bridge was made of chocolate wafer cookies glued together with royal icing.  The bears are Teddy Grahams (regular and mini sized), with royal icing bathing suits.  I used peach rings and gummy life-savers as inner tubes.  The beach towels are tie-dye fruit roll-ups.  The 2 beach balls are made out of fondant and hand painted with food colors.  The trees are made of Oreo sticks with green fondant leaves (attached together with royal icing).  The "No Lifeguard" sign is actually made from royal icing and painted with a food writer.

A present for you...

This was my "final" cake for Wilton course 3.  It happened to coincide with my massage therapist's birthday, so I gave it to her :)  It was chocolate with strawberry filling, if I recall correctly :)  The purple fondant was painted with luster dust to give it some sparkle.

What in carnation?!?

I discovered that I LOVE making gumpaste flowers!!  The carnations were my fave flower from this course, so when the time came to put our skills onto a cake, I chose to use the carnation.  I tried something new with these carnations and put a little purple cake sparkles on the flower edges... not sure I really like it, but it was worth a try :)  Forgive the lack of cohesive design on this one- I was just trying a bunch of things at once... and also learned that purple turns kinda blue when it dries.  Good to know...

Violets, violets, and more violets!

I made this cake for my mother in law for her birthday.  It was a 2-layer 8" round chocolate cake with fresh strawberries, and a super creamy and rich cream cheese frosting (TOO creamy- it never crusted like a normal icing- ooops!!).  I placed an 8" mirror (with plastic wrap on the cake side to prevent a messy situation) on top of the cake.  I made a flower pot cake and iced it with the cream cheese frosting (maybe not the best idea... I'll explain in a moment), and then covered it with a terra cotta dyed fondant (Satin Ice brand)... the icing never set up, so the fondant kept trying to slide off the cake- ACK!  I hid the sliding fondant as best as I could with royal icing violets I had made for this cake.  All said and done, there were 147 violets in total.

My fondant may not have been flawless, but the cake was still super yummy :)

Flowers, baskets, and butterflies!

This was my final cake for Wilton course 2- it incorporates dried royal icing flowers, butterflies made using the "color flow" technique, and buttercream icing basket weave and piping.

For my BBCDO girls!

This was my first organic cake :)  I used our logo and colors from our message board to apply to the cake.