Bright and Groovy cake

Apparently Chloe is a 'Cake Boss' fan, and she designed the cake for the girls birthday party.
She provided me with the design elements and colors - I think that it came out adorable! Way to go Chloe!
Hope they had a great time at the party - I had a great time making this cake!

Princess Castle Cake

This is a repeat of a cake that I've done twice before - but I love it!

Thank you so much to 'msauer' on CakeCentral for the design and help so long ago!!!!

This was a "funfetti" cake (white cake with rainbow spinkles) and chocolate buttercream. The chocolate buttercream makes for a nice design element too, I thought.

Since I'm not going to try an reproduce a Disney character, I bought the princesses - but they've been discontinued!!! why? are they crazy? I don't know, but it will make it difficult to do this again.

Happy Birthday Madison!

Happy Birthday to my daughter!
My daughter wanted Tinker Bell for her party. This is the cake that I made for her - not the one that I had planned on, but things happen...

I forgot to get a "Tinker Bell topper" so I painted one on fondant.
I love painting on fondant, but I haven't gotten the food-color-paint consistency down yet.

Chicago White Sox

Birthday cake for a White Sox fan. 8" chocolate cake, shaped and tapered.
For this one, I decided to go with the new thing in cake... rice-krispy treats. The hat and baseballs are RKT, covered in fondant. Wow, that worked great! no sagging and light weight!
Plus I got to eat the scraps... YUM!
For the cake nerds out there, I cut and shaped a piece of gumpaste to form the brim, then put a piece of chocolate/black fondant over it.

Birthday Slices

These we so fun and bright. For a neighbor's daughter's birthday!

Nonna's Venetian birthday

It was my mother-in-law's birthday, and her kids decided to have an Italian themed birthday party. She is from Treviso - near Venice, Italy. This is what I came up with for her. 6 and 8 inch cakes, buttercream frosting, and fondant details.
She knew that I was making a cake for her, but it was a surprise until after dinner. She loved it and started to cry - remembering her time growing up with her Nonna in Italy.
That is why I make cakes the way that I do :)

Double Birthday

This is the first of two cakes for a double birthday. This was for a first birthday. It was done similar to the "Duff" cake in purple to match the other cake. Stacked 3, 4, 5 inch square cakes. Vanilla cake with chocolate buttercream and chocolate ganache filling. I made balls on wires to put into the cake, but that is better done right before the event, so I didn't get a photo of it.

This was the second cake, for a second birthday. This was to match a previous Tinker Bell cake that I had made. Similar to the above cake, it was waiting for some stars on wires and Tinker Bell to grace the top. The original cake (right) was done 2 years ago. I think that my skills have improved since then, but I love both cakes.

Pumpkin spice cake with cream cheese filling. This is definitely my favorite cake to eat, but one of my least favorite cakes to decorate-- it's softer than most. I actually had my first cake not bake properly, and I had to bake a new one, ugh.

Finally, I made two mini - smash cakes to match the big cakes. Nothing fancy, but after they were done, I did get a kick out of them. 3x3 inch mini cakes with buttercream icing.

1939 Classic

This was a request for a replica of a special man's car. A 1939 Plymouth Coupe.

I thought for this one I'd photograph some of the steps so you can see how it comes together.

I started with a 12x18 sheet cake. I cut the cake into rectangles and stacked it with filling layers. It got a crumb coating, and I put it in the refrigerator to get nice and chilled before carving. I usually use 1" layers of cake and 3 layers of filling. But, because of all of the intricate carving, I decided to make thicker cake (and a thicker filling layer). I hoped that this would make it more stable. Notice that the board under the cake has cut outs for the wheels.

I printed out photos of the front and side of the car to the scale that I wanted the finished cake to be. When carving the cake, I held them up to the cake to help locate the cutting points. Notice that I cut out the wheel wells too.

It got a 'dirty icing' and went back into the refrigerator to chill before covering in fondant. I often use a thicker layer of buttercream, but I went thinner because I didn't want to loose the shape.



Here it is with the fondant. Covering it was easier than I expected. I think that covering a ball in fondant is much harder. After another chilling, I placed the cake on the board, with foamcore blocks under it. This suspended the cake, allowing me to put the wheels on the side. (The wheels were just thick pieces of fondant.)

Finally, I added all the detail. I used my clay extruder to make fine fondant ropes for the stripes. I wasn't sure that I'd be able to pipe a perfectly straight line on the side of the cake. The fondant turned out to be a little tricky to handle too. Since it was so thin, it kept breaking! The 'sticker' on the side of the car (that said "1939 Classic") and the bumpers were gumpaste. I cheated a little and used toothpicks to help hold up the bumper. I also used the toothpick boxes to hold the bumpers close to the cake as the royal icing dried.

little Sweet 16

quick little cake.
5 inch, chocolate cake. gumpaste bow. fondant "Duff" flowers.
I just thought that I'd do a different take on my last pink zebra print cake.

I love the colors on these cakes - so bright and cheery! (especially on a rainy day!)

Tender Heart

"Care Bears" birthday cake.
This was a favor to a cake friend who wasn't able to do this cake for a friend.
6" vanilla white cake with strawberry buttercream filling. I typically make vanilla white cake with raspberry, but the delicate strawberry flavor was really good too (had to make a few cupcakes with the leftover batter, darn :)
Cute and simple - inspired by an adorable cake on Cakecentral.com

Little birthday present

A present from husband to wife, how sweet is that?
5" square vanilla cake with raspberry buttercream. I was going for awesome taste on this one, so I used white-chocolate fondant, instead of the, also tasty, bright white. (The ChocoPan white chocolate fondant has got to be one of the all time best tasting fondant icings ever!) The flowers are Royal Icing, and the 'tag' is gumpaste written with an edible food marker.

I'm also a bit of a cheater with my bow. I don't like fussing, waiting and worrying about the royal icing drying and holding, so I use toothpicks. I think that toothpicks are pretty fool-proof!

Pink Zebra Birthday

Little birthday cake and fun treats for a very special friend. This was one of those cakes that put a smile on my face. The theme here, obviously enough is Zebra Print and Hot Pink. This is a 5" white cake, with the top cake cut to get the whimsical shape. Additional tapering was done with the icing. The white fondant was painted - I thought that that seemed more animal print like...



These matching cookies also made me smile. They were so much fun to do. I piped the zebra print wet so that I wouldn't have raised stripes. The monograms were piped separately and stuck on later so that it was less likely to make mistakes.

Happy Birthday Taylor!

This was for my niece, who amongst other things, loves pink and playing the piano! 7 inch Vanilla White cake with Raspberry buttercream. Just something fun!

Tea Cake - Take Two

Fun birthday cake, and an opportunity to make some improvements to my previous version of this cake. (The original cake was make as a Styrofoam display cake for the ZEF auction.) Making it in real cake was not quite as easy.... Anyway, I brightened up the colors and really liked it. Plus I got to photograph the MacKenzie-Childs inspired teapot on my brand new MacKenzie-Childs cake plate -- gotta love it!

Relay for Life Charity Auction

I donated a cake to the 'Relay for Life' event - charity silent auction, last June. The winning bidder requested this cake for her daughter's birthday. She liked some of my other polka dot cakes, but loves blue, so viola- a blue polka dot cake! I had intended to have more contrast in the blues but it didn't work out that way. I also loved the addition of the chocolate flowers. that little bit of almost-black gives the composition more depth and 'pop.' (my mom told me this, thanks mom!)

Lily's First Birthday

This is the cake that I made for my niece's first birthday. I made it to match the adorable invitations that my sister-in-law mailed out. I think that it was really sweet. Per her request, it was vanilla white cake with black raspberry buttercream filling, buttercream frosting, covered in fondant. The number "1" at the top is gumpaste painted to look like pink gingham.

The smash cake was also white cake with raspberry buttercream filling. I baked it in my little 4" pans. I trimmed one layer level and left the dome on the other. After it was stacked and chilled, I carved the bottom down a bit to make it more 'cupcake' shaped. I frosted the bottom in buttercream, and used my Icing Sculptor (for the first time!) to comb the bottom. I decided to frost the top in the raspberry buttercream, because I thought that the birthday girl would like the flavor! (The raspberry gave it the purple color)

My niece seemed to love the cake - and so did my nephew! He kept sneaking in to take some cake. She finally had had enough and squished buttercream in his hair!

In addition to the birthday cakes, I made some cupcakes with the leftover batter. I still had leftover chocolate buttercream and milk chocolate ganache from my church cupcakes. Instead of the #12 round tip, I decided to use the #32 star tip. I really liked the texture that it added. These were really good and everyone loved them.

Finally, I note about my cake construction. I torte all of my cakes so that they have 4 layers of cake and 3 layers of filling. It makes for a beautiful and tasty cake, I think. So, just in case you were curious what the inside looks like, here you go:

Birthday Gift

This is the first of my donation cakes and cookies. The lady who won the ZEF auction requested this cake for her daughter's birthday.

She requested 'chocolate frosting with white polka-dots.' I jazzed it up a little with the pink bow and dragies to look like a broach. The bow design is inspired by the incomparable Sharon Zambito of SugarEd Productions or 'SugarShack' on CakeCentral. I have used the dotted impression 'mat' on several of my bows. This was a plastic mat that is designed to line drawers to keep utensils from sliding, that I purchased at IKEA. Cake decorators seem to find creative uses for household items. {smile}

The cake was vanilla white cake with milk chocolate ganache filling, chocolate buttercream and chocolate fondant.

Jonas Brothers Birthday wishes

These were for my niece's birthday. Like all pre-teens, she loves the Jonas Brothers. Like most mom's without pre-teen daughters, I wasn't to sure exactly who the Jonas Brothers were and and to look it up on the Internet!
I printed out the logo from the web and hand cut all the cookies with a template.
I had wanted to try a new technique for tracing onto cookies, but I didn't have enough time for my icing to harden up, so I had to freehand all the piping.