Housewarming Cake

This cake was one of my favorite designs. I'm very pleased with the way it turned out. Many people asked me if the flower pot was real. Nope. The entire cake is edible. This cake was my first for many things; such as making a ribbon out of gum paste, making a mass quantity of flowers, using my leaf tip and lastly a new cake recipe!! I'm happy to say the white almond sour cream cake was a success. I also want to add that all of my cakes are original designs. I do get inspiration from other's creations from time to time, but so far all of my cakes are creations I've thought up and been fortunate enough to bring to life in cake! I originally had the idea to put a simple flower pot on top of the cake...but what fun would that have been? I realized it was more my style to have the flowers falling off of the cake and appear to have scattered about on the cupcakes below.

Another Birthday

A very dear friend of mine asked me to make a birthday cake for a family member of hers. It was sort of last minute but it was something I really wanted to do, it would be my first fully stacked, 2 tier cake. I really enjoyed designing and creating this cake.

(The cake is white cake with butter cream icing, hand piped buttercream swirls and sugar pearls.)

Happy Fathers Day

I was contacted by a very sweet lady in Sumter, SC that requested a Fathers Day cake. Her husband is a big Dallas Cowboys fan. She asked me to make something Dallas Cowboys themed for his father's day cake...this was such a FUN cake!!:

(The bottom tier was french vanilla with buttercream "grass", the top tier was chocolate with buttercream icing. The footballs and "Happy Father's Day" circle are fondant with royal icing piped on. The football is fondant covered rice krispy treats!)

**Edited to add: I just got the sweetest email from the lady I made this cake for. THAT is why I LOVE making cakes!!! I love making things that others can really appreciate and enjoy :-)

1 Birthday Girl+2 Digits = 3 parties!!

Whats better than turning double digits?? Having 3 parties to celebrate!!! I was so excited when asked to make cupcakes and cakes to help celebrate the birthday parties of a sweet, young lady who turned 10 this past week. Her favorite colors are pink and green. Here are the cupcakes and cakes I thought would best suite a freshly turned 10 year old :-):

(chocolate cake with homemade buttercream icing and fondant decorations)

The second cake: (chocolate fudge cake with homemade buttercream frosting and fondant decorations)

French Vanilla Cupcakes with buttercream icing, royal icing flowers and sugar pearls:

Chocolate cupcakes with buttercream icing and fondant, royal icing and sugar pearl decorations:

Homemade Fondant

I took a few pictures of my homemade fondant experience, forgive me for not posting them just yet. I'm VERY pleased to say that it turned out GREAT!! Almost better than expected.
I am not a big fan of fondant, if you've never tasted it, it's not the greatest tasting stuff. As my brother "kindly" put it "it tastes like sugary play-doh!!". He wasn't kidding, it really did. Now, I don't know about you, but the last thing I want my cake to taste like is "the stuff I used to squish between my fingers and toes when I was a kid" hehe. So from then on out I started using only butter cream, with the occasional fondant decoration that I instructed people not to eat (I will say this, I KNOW that some bakers and cake decorators frost their cakes before putting a fondant covering on, that way the fondant can be peeled off and the cake is iced with the good stuff underneath...but come on, that's just calling for way too much work just to eat a piece of cake, hehe) . Recently I came across a recipe for "Marshmallow Fondant"...I decided to give it a try. What did I have to loose? If I didn't like the taste, I didn't have to cover a whole cake with it, I could just save it and use it for decorations like I had been doing with the store bought fondant. Let me tell you, it was a work-out, kneading and mushing and mixing and squishing that fondant!! However, it was well worth it!! I ended up with over 2lbs of fondant and not yucky tasting fondant at that!
I have yet to cover an entire cake with fondant, I'm still "fondant shy"...but it won't be long and I'll give it a whirl!! From this point on I will only be using my homemade fondant!

I'm in the process of working on 3 cakes and 20 cupcakes and I am loving every second of it!! I'll post pictures soon, so check back!!!

ps....is it weird to have dreams about cake?? At least its calorie free!!

Ladybug Cupcakes and a Quick "Bad Dog" Cupcake

A co-worker of mine had been asking me for sometime to make his daughters a ladybug cupcake. I finally got around to it last week. I had some left over cake batter and was able to make 3...okay 4 but my husband and I split one.....cupcakes. I made two ladybug cupcakes. With the left over cupcake I made a "bad dog" cupcake, my co-worker ended up taking that home to his girls too. I did them rather quickly, but they were fun and I wanted to share.

The cupcakes are lemon with homemade butter cream icing:

The ladybugs are 50/50 fondant/gumpaste:

The "bad dog" cupcake (this one was done last minute, rather quickly):

Happy Birthday Cake

I've always thought cupcakes were cute. Small, little, bite sized, mini cakes...whats not to love. I started playing around with decorating cupcakes right around the time I started my current job. I made fast friends with the other girl that works in the office. I soon found out she was a cake decorator...and a good one too!! She started teaching me bits and pieces about the cake decorating world. She fed my desire and ultimately helped lead me to this new addiction. On Wednesday I went to lunch with my boss and he informed me that my co-worker's (friend/cake decorator) birthday was yesterday. He wanted me to make her a cake. Yikes!! That was a tall order, it made me nervous. How do you make a cake for someone that has made cakes for much longer than you have? However, once again, not wanting to back down from a challenge and wanting to help celebrate her birthday...I told him I would, I would make her a cake. I had ONE night! Here is what I turned out:




I sketched my design out onto a piece of paper, colored my fondant/gum paste mix pink, blue and green and then cut out the flower shape I had chosen for my design:

I set my flowers upside down on top of coloring containers (and eventually I ran out of those and used wine bottles). I wanted my flowers to dry in a curved upward way. I glued (with sugar glue) white sugar pearls in the center of the smaller flowers:
I took a snapshot of the finished flowers on parchment paper:

I left my flowers to dry and started making the butter cream frosting:

I spread a layer of frosting between the two cake circles:

I spread a thin layer of frosting over the entire cake. This process is called "crumb coating" it peals up all of the loose crumbs. Then I let the cake sit for a minute or two in the fridge, so the frosting could set:

TaDa, an iced cake!

Added the bottom boarder:

The BEST part!! Decorating the cake:

The Finished Product!!!

This cake was really fun to make!! It's only my third cake...but I'm pretty excited with the way it turned out. The best part of cake decorating, giving the cake to the person it was intended for!!