Leaf wedding

This was my first wedding cake! (can we say pressure?) The bride wanted 3 tiers square, offset with a black ribbon border and cascade of fall colored leaves.

My squares don't have 100% sharp edges as this is the first time I've had to do buttercream only squares (I've only done fondant squares previously). Silly me, I set my best corners to be the front of the cake, forgetting that they'd be covered in leaves. Oh well, I think it turned out quite nicely and the bride and groom seemed very happy.

This was my first time working with gum paste (leaves) and it was fun. It was a lot of work to color the gum paste, cut the leaves, vein them and then paint them all with petal dust, but it made for a great effect.

Elmo

This is an Elmo cake I made for my nephew's 3rd birthday. I used Wilton's Elmo pan and all buttercream piping.

Sweet 16

Here's the Sweet Sixteen cake I did for my cousin/Goddaughter's birthday.
It was a friend party so I was instructed to make it cool and not too girlie.
Hot pink and black seem to be hot colors with the teen crowd so that's what I went for and did a trendy zebra and argyle print. Her name is Lauren so I did a monogram L on all 4 sides and a 16 on top.

The humidity and heat in the midwest this week has been INSANE. After 3 days of drying in my air conditioned house under a fan, my '16' fondant cake topper STILL was soft and sticky, but they said it held up for the party. Yay!

Zoo Animal Cupcakes

I was asked to make some zoo animal cupcakes with fondant faces for a 2nd birthday party. It took a long time to cut out all the features, (especially the 96 eyeballs!) but I think the results were worth it. The cupcakes are topped with buttercream grass and a fondant animal face.

..........I'm having a hard time getting all the photos to load so will try to get the rest up later.

5 Hours, 3 Cakes

Being organized and multi-tasking really does pay off sometimes. Some how I really cranked through these three cakes today, despite having allotted two days to the project. I guess now I have my Friday free. :)

The first cake is a domino cake I made for my Family Reunion on Saturday. My family plays a lot of dominos and cards so I thought this design would be simple, yet appropriate.



Next is a birthday cake for a friend who requested a 'hippie flower' in her favorite colors of orange and yellow. I hope I got it right.



Finally is a simple 6" round for a small 50th birthday. I'm still getting the hang of buttercream piping. I was a little off center and nearly sliding off the edge on this one.

Buttercream Roses and Basketweave

A friend asked for a chocolate buttercream basketweave cake. Apparently she just gets hypnotized by the basketweave design and thinks it's the coolest, so I of course obliged her. This is my second basketweave cake. My hands were a little shakey as I did this cake at 11pm after 2 full days on my feet of baking and decorating. This was my first time making buttercream roses. I only did one pratice rose before doing the 3 on the cake. The first one I had the tip in the wrong direction so quickly figured out what I was doing wrong and TADA!

WORLD CUP SOCCER CAKE

Finally, a sports themed cake to make! This is a birthday cake requested for a 10 year old who wanted a World cup cake. I made a field with a soccer ball (piped buttercream) busting through a fondant field with the FIFA 2010 WORLD CUP logo. Piped a grass border around the ball and base of the cake. Also added red, white and blue stars around the sides of the cake as Team USA was his favorite team.

Phil's 40th Fiesta

We have a Mexican inspired theme for this 40th Birthday party, so I decided to do a Chili Pepper Cake, a Sombrero cake and some fondant maracas.

The Chili Pepper was done using the Pasiley pan, covered in white fondant and sprayed with red spray color mist. This was my first time covering a cake in the color mist. It made a nice, deep red on the fondant when it dried. It worked great for the top of the cake, but I found it to be a tad runny on the sides and left a couple blochy spots. Didn't work well at spraying vertically.

The maracas are all fondant.

The Sombrero I made using a 12" round with the Wonder mold pan stacked on top. I should've had more layers in the middle to make the crown higher up. I think it ended up looking for like a safari hat than a sombrero, but oh well. This was my first attempt at doing a basketweave so I was very happy with how that part turned out. Especially since I was doing it on a curved surface which made it more difficult to line up the weave lines.

More Monsters!

So it seems that this year Dora is the popular girl theme and Monsters are the popular boy theme. Below you can see the invitation for this Monster theme party which I based the cake design on. I incorporated the monster and color themes from the invite. I also included some other details like the yellow dots and the color shadowing of the letters. For fun I added some green shimmer dust to the name and letter.

Purple Circles with Roses

Okay so I was asked to do a small birthday cake with free creative control and they listed a few colors they liked, purple was of course one of them.. They said they liked the circle cake I did previously in pink/orange. So I thought I'd do a monochromatic circle cake with 3 shades of purple and add in some roses for the topper and ribbon roses as the border trim (both two techniques completely new to me!)

I have to say that I'm really proud of how I did on my first try out at the roses. It took me 3 hrs to make 7 roses, but I think I'm starting to get the hand of the teqchniques and tricks to make them look good.

PHOTOS: The first picture didn't have the flash set properly, but I thought it made the colors look kinda cool and gothy so I left it in. Have a few angles of the completed cake and an aerial shot of the roses and a close up of the ribbon roses I did for the border. Just finished packaging this cake up as it has to make a drive from Rock Island to Des Moines, Iowa tomorrow. Hopefully it'll make it with all flowers and petals entact! Crossing fingers & saying prayers. :) I also have more pics of the base cake with all angles of the various circle designs before adding the roses if anyone is interested, let me know and I'll post them. I'm not sure if you all enjoy seeing just the finished product or the steps involved. Have a wonderful weekend!

PS - My camera is broken so had to borrow my Mom's which is not the most high tech. Out of the 30 shots I took with it, these are the handful I felt that weren't too blurry or color warped.

Backpack Cake (Dora 3)

I got another request for a Dora cake and to try something new I did a cake shaped as the Backpack character. I could tell Spring was in the air as the changing weather and moisture were playing havoc with my fondant. But as I heard said on one of those cake shows "sometimes fondant wins". I think it turned out pretty good though in the end. I left out the pictures of me rolling and re-rolling fondant and pulling my hair out. I added a Dora candle and a handmade pin-stitch banner.

Dora Cake #2 (for Cora)

Dora the Explorer is still super popular. I've gotten 2 orders for Dora cakes this month so I'm trying to do something new with each one. This one I took a spin on The Map character and how it plays interactively in the cartoon show. So in the show The Map shows them the path on where they are going....so this cake is the display of The Map showing the path. Which is thru a sandtrap walking on the stepping stones, over a bridge and to the Birthday present at the end. I added all the characters along the path, along with the dreaded Swiper who is in the process of 'swiping' the #2 off the cake. (I think I had a little too much fun making this one, I sang the "I'm the Map, I'm the Map" song way too much.) :)

Strawberry Shortcake

My niece requested Strawberry Shortcake this year. I decided to try my hand with buttercream and I think it turned out pretty well. I did a star tip to fill the cake and a larger one for the seeds. Made leaves, stem and vines out of fondant and also put fondant leaves for the border. My sister bought the Strawberry Shortcake icing decorations and candle so I added those as well as a few character dolls.