It's been a while!!

It has definitely been a while since my last post... at least a year???


But I'm BACK!!


I've been a busy little bee... I went and had a baby, who is the most adorable little (almost) 3 month old :) He keeps me on my toes, but the cakes must go on!!  I will try to eventually back-post the cakes I did over the past year, but for now, I will post my latest creation- Ninjago Cupcakes!!


These turned out so cute!! Guess I should start getting used to all this boy stuff, huh? :P

These are half white and half chocolate, with a pillow of creamy buttercream under the fondant decoration :)

Sesame Street cake

Today we have an adorable Sesame Street cake made for a sweet little girl for her 1st birthday :)

Each character was hand cut based on a template I created, and Big Bird also had accents done with edible food writer.  The characters and embellishments were done using pre-made fondant, but the cakes were covered in homemade MMF (with a layer of buttercream underneath it).

The top tier was yellow cake, and the bottom tier and smash cake (with Grover) were chocolate.

This was the first time I used an airbrush technique to get a color gradient on each of the tiers, and I am quite pleased with the results :)

Laptop Cake

Given a strange combination of seemingly unrelated interests, I had this mini "epiphany" to make a cake that looked like a replica of the birthday guy's laptop, and to add to the "fun", incorporate a lolcats image.


I had never made a laptop cake before, so I tried to research what others before me had done... both the successes and failures... I'm always trying to avoid catastrophic cake events.


The "screen" was the only part of the cake that was not for consumption- I used a cardboard sheet as the base, used chocolate to "glue" huge wooden skewers  to the back (to later affix to the cake itself), and a handy dandy laminated printout of the lolcats image... then covered it in fondant (and even got a little "Apple" icon on the reverse side!)


The "keyboard" and base cake were yellow cake with vanilla buttercream icing.  The keyboard also had Satin Ice fondant as the main covering, and Duff's fondant for the little keys.  I typically make my own fondant, but since I would be "painting" the cake with edible silver spray, I used a pre-made fondant to get a perfectly smooth surface to spray.  The 77 (yes- I did count them all) typewriter keys were made from Duff's BLACK fondant and royal icing to draw the white symbols.  Making the keys perfectly proportioned and straight was my biggest goal- I had seen so many computer cakes that just looked really sloppy when it came to the keyboard, and that is just something that I knew I could avoid.


I have to thank K for sending me copies of the photos she took of the fully assembled cake- due to transportation concerns, I kept all three pieces separate until they made it safely to their destination :)  Good job getting it all put together, K :)

I was glad to hear that everyone enjoyed the cake- it's a very nice feeling to be able to make someone's day with something that I made :)  Happy Birthday... or should I say, Hapi Birfday? :P

Tom & Jerry

One of my favorite little girls is turning 4, and she requested a "Chocolate 'Tom  & Jerry' cake".  Originally I was just going to do a very simple sheet cake design, but I wanted this to have that "wow" factor... after thinking about how I could make it more special, I decided to incorporate the location of the birthday party into the design.  For those who have never heard of "Pump It Up", it's like an indoor bounce-house extravaganza.  Case in point- imagine a whole building FULL of this type of inflatable fun: 

So... there was my inspiration :)

I hand-made small figurines of Tom and Jerry (thanks to Julie for assisting with the body work!) out of gumpaste.  The cake was a dense sour cream chocolate cake on the bottom (which received RAVE reviews!) and a box-mix yellow cake on the top layer, all thinly coated with almond flavored buttercream icing, and topped off with homemade MMF (I used the new line of color gels created by Duff Goldman- WOW the vibrant colors were just SPECTACULAR!).  I was very pleased that the colors I made matched the location so perfectly- while it was technically intentional, I hadn't exactly gone to compare swatches or anything :P

Voilà!

And of course, when we walked in for the party and I saw my daughter climb up to go down the slide, I couldn't help but turn to a friend and say, "Hey, that looks like my cake!!" :P

Giant Cupcake

This cake was a 1st birthday for a sweet little princess :)  The Giant cupcake was multi-colored sprinkles with a layer of fresh strawberries, buttercream icing, and fondant decorations (the crown was handmade gumpaste).  To top it off, a miniature "smash cake" duplicate was made, identical in practically every aspect to the main cake :)  Not included in the photos is the additional undecorated cupcakes (the party guests were given bags of colored icing and sprinkles to decorate their own cupcakes- messy, but LOTS of fun!!).

Ladybug, ladybug, fly away home...

I made this lovely little ladybug for my daughter's God-mother for her birthday :)

The cake is devil's food, with a low-sugar homemade chocolate buttercream (uses only 1/4 of the confectioner's sugar in my typical buttercream).  The black fondant is Satin Ice's dark chocolate with black coloring added, and the red fondant is from Duff Goldman's new line of cake decorating supplies.

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 :)