Torting and filling! Not so much....

September's office cake was a disaster in the making - at least in my mind.  First off, the cake was a french vanilla one.  So far, so good.  Loved the flavor, cake baked up real nice.  Tried a new leveling method from the cake forums I followed and it worked well!   The problems occurred when I went to torte and fill. 

It all started out okay - I torted, used a buttercream dam and put in my filling of white chocolate mousse.  Let the cakes settle.  Covered the cakes in white chocolate ganache.  Which, by the way, was the first time I have ever used ganache - I was always afraid to try it.  It sounded super chic and I figured I would probably mess it up!  Melissa convinced me to try it - thanks Melissa! 

Anyway - cakes have settled, looking good.  Next day I take the cakes out and cover with the fondant.  The hula girls are drying and looking more like girls and less like mismatched torsos.  Then... I get sick.  Here I am having to finish this cake and I feel horrible.  Oh well - figure I can work a little, take a nap.  Work a little, take a nap.  It was a good plan!  Sometime between a nap and pulling the cake out of the fridge to work on the roof, the cake settled more!!  Yikes!  Now instead of my beautiful tiki wood walls, I have bulging walls. 

I don't know if it was the ganache that caused the cake to settle more or if the cake was too moist to hold the ganache, filling and the weight of the fondant.  My research since leans towards the cake being too moist and therefore to "frail" to hold itself up.  Sigh.  Just when I thought I had the best fondant work to date! 

The good news - the cake made it in to work all in one piece.  The birthday girl raved about it - couldn't believe I was sick but still made "a fantastic work of art"!  The flavor was good and obviously we didn't have to worry about a dry cake! 

You want what?!

Back in January, I made the office birthday cake with an igloo and penguins.  My sister saw the cake and promptly informed me that for her birthday she wanted surfing penguins..... um, ok....

Several different design ideas went through my mind.  I know how to make penguins.  I can make a surf board.  But how to execute??  I thought about a tiered cake with the penguins surfing down the side.  I wasn't sure I wanted to make a sheet cake.  I thought about "beach cakes".  Then I thought about penguins on a beach  (on vacation) - wondered if it was possible to make a wave.  So - google to the rescue!  And the result.....

The cake is a box cake mix - Funfetti flavor.  It was cute when you cut it as they had all kinds of colored sprinkles in it.  The penguins, surfboard and wave are all made out of gumpaste.  The wave was actually double that size, but I ended up breaking it in half so it would fit more to scale.  Easy, easy to make!  Colored gumpaste rolled thin and draped over a liter pop bottle to dry.  I painted the surfboards with food markers.  The tree was a pretzel rod with royal icing piped over it using the leaf tip.  I put my mom to work making the sand for the cake.  Crushed graham crackers with brown sugar - sifted and then applied to the cake.

This was a really fun cake to do.  Thanks to my sis for wanting something different!

Birthday cake for a guy

I always struggle when it comes to cake ideas for a guy.  I want to do something cool, with a wow factor, but it always seems like those kind of cakes are more for women than men.  With my hubby's birthday coming up, I wanted a cool guy cake more than ever.  Thought process went like this:  hmmm, guy cake.  Guy cake colors.  Blue, browns, blacks maybe a little white and gray.  My hubby likes games - card games, board games, computer games - you name it, he's probably played it!  So the winner this year was:  a backgammon board. 

I modeled this board after his actual backgammon game - taking liberty with the colors!  We had someone attending his birthday party that was allergic to chocolate, so I had to make sure that I didn't use my chocolate fondant.  Instead I colored the fondant blue, brown and white. The colors turned out a little more retro than I liked and if I do this cake again, I think I will use the different shades of brown and white instead. 

Overall, I am happy with the execution of the cake.  It is probably some of the better fondant work I have done - very smooth.  I know there has to be a trick to make the seams disappear, but I haven't figured it out as of yet!  If anyone knows the trick - please share!! 

The cake itself was a white velvet cake - very yummy!  Again, due to chocolate allergies, I wanted a cake that everyone can enjoy.  Not only that, my hubby loves white chocolate cakes.  I paired that with a raspberry butter cream filling that had a consistency of mousse.  Thanks Melissa!  That was a yummy recipe! 

Dessert Cakes!

The office birthday cake for August was more of a dessert cake than a "decorated" cake - at least in my opinion.  The doctor whose birthday it was requested something different - a less sugary cake, more like the kind they make in Europe.  With that thought in mind, I researched cake recipes and came up with a pound like vanilla cake from Debbie Brown.  That thing used 7 eggs and hardly any sugar! 

Once that finished baking up, I turned to a new book that I got from Nicholas Lodge - International Sugar Crafting which has 24 lessons in all - dealing with chocolate tempering, marzipan figures and much, much more.  The first lesson in the book was the jackpot for me.  I had found the perfect cake that fit the birthday boy's request.

The nice thing about this cake is that it has a "wow" factor.  It just presents so nicely with the white frosting, dark chocolate and the red strawberries.

I tempered the chocolate and poured it out on to wax paper.  It took almost a full 24 hours to fully set before I was able to cut the triangles.  I also discovered - hot hands is NOT good when working with chocolate!  Once I cut the triangles, I put half of them aside to cover in powdered sugar.  The left over chocolate slab - for lack of a better term - I chopped up to put along the base of the cake.

The cake itself was a vanilla pound cake, which as mentioned earlier, was very dense.  I was actually disappointed with the way it turned out.  The flavor was good, but it was a bit dry.  Maybe I have been spoiled with "American" cakes, but I really like my cakes a bit moister.  The cake was torted and filled with a cooked meringue and fresh chopped strawberries.

From there - more meringue on the outside of the cake, apply the chopped chocolate and position the triangles, alternating with whole strawberries and powdered triangles. 

Oh!  And a shameless plug for my friend Denise - a wonderful glass artist who made my beautiful cake plate!  It set off the cake to perfection!

Camping!

We love to camp! This year we broke down and purchased a pop up tent trailer, affectionately known at The G.R.U.B. We decided that since we made this purchase we would commit to camping at least once a month. In July we were able to go for a long 5 day trip with our nephew and some friends. During our camping trip, our friends little girl asked if I would make her a camping cake for her birthday this year.

Marble cake seems to be the most requested cake right now. This cake was a classic marble sheet cake covered in butter cream. The tent is made of graham crackers, covered in fondant and I made a little sleeping bag and pillow out of fondant as well. The trees are sugar cones covered with royal icing, using the leaf tip. Super easy to do and they look so cute on the cake! I put two of the trees on pretzel rods at different heights to make the tree trunks.

The rocks are chocolate covered raisins and chocolate covered peanuts. Funny, I found "chocolate covered rocks" at Wal-mart in the candy aisle, but didn't think they looked enough like rocks. The wood pile is just regular pretzel sticks cut to various lengths.

My favorite thing about this cake though were the lady bugs. These were made by taking red jelly beans and "painting" them with black royal icing. I think they turned out really cute and just added enough to the cake to make it a little girl's cake.

What to do for a 21 year old male.....

My oldest boy just turned 21. What to do for a fun, atypical male birthday cake. Once again, Debbie Brown came to my rescue! I just love her cakes and her instructions are so easy to follow!

What did I do - why the 21 bum salute! Debbie Brown is from England, for those who don't know. In England, they refer to the tushie, bottom, etc. as a bum. With her excellent instructions my son Geoff and I made 21 bums and designed underwear for each of them. This is the final product:


Bryan requested a strawberry chocolate marble cake - the easy part. As you know, I still have trouble with that darn fondant! The bottom two layers went on pretty well - for a change - but I still had puckers on that top layer. This is the better side, hence it is the front! LOL - its a work in progress - but when I compare it to my first fondant cakes, there is an improvement! I promise!

Anyway - back to the bums. These are basically fondant blobs that are rounded and then covered in fashionable underwear. Geoff and I spent the better part of a night making the underwear and trying really, really hard not to do the same designs. Things I never thought I would hear myself say - "Make sure the underwear is down low enough that you can see the bum crack"! Yikes! My favorite - the sexy little thong with the heart....

The Web Slinger!

One of my co-workers wanted a birthday cake for her grandson's 5th birthday. He really, really likes Spiderman. She really wanted a brownie ice cream cake. This is what we came up with. Square brownies with a Neapolitan ice cream filling in the middle. Chocolate buttercream was the icing of choice. I wanted to try and recreate the city that Spiderman stands guard over with the fondant panels and the web of course in the center would later be sporting a toy Spiderman for the birthday boy.

I used fondant impression mats that were brick and wood textured and impressed them onto the fondant. To make the dark fondant, I combined black and white fondant to make it the gray color. The lighter fondant was white that I later "spray painted" with a silver edible spray. That took A LOT of spray just to make it a darker color. Next time, I think I will try coloring the fondant itself. The spray mists all over the place and was pretty messy!

The web I made out of royal icing and made sure to leave the center for the action figure. It was tricky trying to frost, panel and construct this cake as it had to be kept frozen for the ice cream. I molded the ice cream in the same pans I baked the brownies in, that way I was able to keep everything the same size. It took some time to keep the panels attached to the sides of the cake but once in place and then frozen, it was no problem.

I do enjoy the brownie ice cream cakes - something I will do again! This design was a much better "super hero" design than the one I did for my nephew. Still a few design kinks to work out, but I think I'm getting better!

3-D cakes.... not so sure about them!

The office birthday cake for June was a special request. The girl who's birthday it was turned 21 this year. She requested a naked man cake.... Well - since it was going to the office, that wasn't really an option. Instead.... I ordered Debbie Brown's Naughty Cakes and found the Greek God cake. Good option - mostly naked man with bulging muscles. That could work!

Next time I will use a petal cake pan to do this cake. I can not carve cakes. I have difficulty getting them equal and properly proportionate! Not only that - cake crumbs EVERYWHERE!!! With this shape of the base cake, it was difficult to get the fondant to lay smoothly - fondant being a challenge for me anyway!

Making the figure was pretty easy overall. Debbie Brown has marvelous instructions that make it easy to do!

Overall, this cake did turn out pretty well - The birthday loved it (and yes, under the toga it was anatomically correct!) ;-)

Geoff's Creation

My son, Geoff, wanted a say in the design of his birthday cake this year. After all, a guy only turns into a teenager once! That being said, Geoff designed his cake to reflect his interests. Then it was up to me to try and re-create his sketch. Here's what happened:



Geoff's favorite color is purple, so the butter cream had to be that color. He is interested in magic tricks, so we made the wand out of black and white fondant. He is a trombone player, but unfortunately I lack the necessary skills to pull off a trombone, so we placed a Christmas ornament on the cake. We attempted to mold a chess piece out of chocolate, however our molds just didn't turn out right. Finally, after making several molds and failing miserably, we decided that a chess piece from an actual set would work just fine!

The game controller in the back (propping up the trombone) was made from our first ever attempt at modeling chocolate. I love the flexibility of modeling chocolate and that it can be made very easily! I don't care for the "oily" residue I got while I manipulated it though! I don't know if this is a normal for this medium as I haven't played with it enough! After it hardened though, I will say that those who tried nibbling on it really didn't care for the flavor.

So Happy Birthday to my teenage son! I think he has a great career ahead of him for designing cakes!

Confirmation

My youngest son was confirmed this May. Our church has a very special confirmation ceremony with a reception afterwards, so I thought it would be nice for me to volunteer to make the cake.

In my mind: 1/4 sheet cake with gumpaste chalice and loaf of bread. Congratulations confirmands written in script. A second cake on pillars in the shape of a Bible with all the confirmands names written in script, roses and a ribbon bookmark with a cross on the end.

The reality:
It turned out okay, just not what I had pictured in my mind. The gumpaste chalice was very cool, but as it was life sized, it just didn't fit on the cake properly - especially when I wanted to add the pillars. So - scrap it! The ribbon bookmark didn't work as some of the kids' names were very long and the ribbon would go over the names. So - scrap that too!

Basically - we have a 1/4 sheet cake done in white cake. The Bible was chocolate fudge (request of my son) with the kids' names. Red buttercream roses. I dry brushed some gold luster dust on the edges of the pages to jazz it up a bit. The tilt was achieved by propping the back of the Bible up with clear pillars. Yay! Got to use my pillars! :-)

As a caker - I saw the flaws and was disappointed by not being able to use my original plan. However, cake muggles who saw the cake were amazed and awed!

Between a princess & an ice cream cake....

was a quick birthday cake for a 6 year old. I seem to be destined to make cakes for little ones! That's not a bad thing, because it certainly allows me a little more creative license.

This little guy is a big fan of the Rooty Jr breakfast at Ihop. He only ever orders this breakfast and that's all he wanted for his birthday. Mom decided that instead of the actual Rooty Jr., she would order a cake that looked like one.

This cake was a simple strawberry marble cake - (which tastes a lot like the new Starbucks raspberry swirl pound cake) covered in buttercream. I made the sausages (because he NEVER orders the bacon) and strawberries out of fondant. The pancakes are made from the scraps I had after I leveled the cake and then covered in fondant. The scrambled eggs I made from modeling chocolate. I had never made modeling chocolate before, but found a recipe that was very easy and simple to do! A friend of mine recently went to the Washington State Sugar Show and saw an exhibition on modeling chocolate. After hearing her reviews (Thanks Melissa!) I had to try it! She was right - its super easy and lots of fun. A whole new medium has opened up for me! Is it bad when you look at something and think.... wow, I could make that in modeling chocolate! :-)

The plate itself was more of a challenge. Originally I was just going to put the food on the top of the cake - it was white - but I really didn't like that idea the more I played with it. I covered a plate in plastic wrap & powdered sugar and draped gumpaste over the back of it. I let it dry a couple of hours and then removed it, turned the plate over and draped/molded it to the top of the plate. Next time, I would put a band of color along the rim of the plate just to break it up a little, but my client only wanted a white plate - just like in the picture at the Ihop!

Brownies & Ice Cream

What a sweet dessert! I love brownies and I love ice cream. So what to do but pair them together for a sweet cake!

Ok - what really happened! I WAS planning on making my first carved cake for the office birthday cake. I had made the sails and mast out of gumpaste for the sailboat, but unfortunately I discovered the broken sails when I went to assemble them for the cake. I hadn't started the carving yet, but without the sails, it just wasn't a sailboat! So I improvised.

My kids had gotten me a brownie decorating book which I hadn't really done much with. I was at crunch time coming up with an idea for the cake due in 3 days.... my weekend had been spent in making a Confirmation cake for my son and entertaining the guests. Looking through the book, I found the brownie layer cake. Ah hah! Inspiration has struck! A quick run to the store for brownies mixes and Tillamook vanilla ice cream and I was set!

I baked the brownies in a round cake pan and put the softened ice cream in a round cake pan lined with plastic wrap. Once the ice cream was hardened it was a simple matter to stack the layers. I found out a couple of things though. 1) You can't crumb coat and ice cream cake. 2) Ice it fast because it melts really quickly! I spent most of my time putting on a layer of chocolate buttercream and sticking it in the freezer. Pull it out, ice another section, back in the freezer. Rinse & repeat until the cake was completely covered. I put Whoppers around the base, did a basic shell border on the top and put more Whoppers around the top and in the center. The circles are left over colored fondant (from various projects) that I cut out with the back end of a piping tip.

The verdict at work "the best one evah!". It must be so, because I got an order for a 6 year olds birthday cake for the end of June. :-) Best advertising evah!

A Cake Fit for a Princess

My bosses granddaughter was turning 4. She is in love with anything "princess" - so naturally mimi wanted a princess type cake for her! We decided on a princess castle - which I was dying to try! I have a couple of books that show how to make castle cakes, so after much thought decided to incorporate the two. That way I could use the pieces of the cake I liked and skip the details that I wasn't so crazy about.

This was a multi-process cake! Very simple to decorate once all the pieces were made, but time consuming in the beginning. Time management skills were put to the test!

The main stipulation of the cake was that it had to have pink in it! Every self-respecting princess has pink on a birthday cake! With that in mind, I first made the turrets for the towers. Basically these are sugar cones covered in pink fondant, then trimmed so that the edges were straight and flat. I cut out some tiny pink fondant flowers in light pink and some tiny hearts in a darker pink. I found out later - Wilton sells them in large jars - all I would have had to do was separate them out! Ah well - lessons learned! I did find the white flower centers from Wilton, those were in a jar filled with yellow, pink, white and green flowers. I didn't have a cutter that small, nor could I find one in time. I also filled in with silver dragees. These are difficult to find, however I found that the Decorette Shop in Portland has many different sizes and colors of these for sale.

The towers themselves are a mixture of fondant/gumpaste. I rolled these out very thin and wrapped them around empty toilet paper/paper towel rolls that were covered in plastic wrap and powdered sugar. These took about a week to dry. I did lose one when I was removing it from the "mold" so that the insides could dry - so glad I made extras! I failed to completely smooth the edges on these, so after they were dry I discovered that I could use a dremel on the edges to smooth them down. The windows on the towers were just black fondant I cut in the shape I wanted and then piped with royal icing.

Once the pieces have dried, its time for assembly. The turrets are placed on top of the towers and held in place with a layer of royal icing. I let these dry for a day before I started on the assembly of the cake.

This cake was a yellow butter cake with french vanilla buttercream. The cake itself is an off set stack (the top layer is placed towards the back of the bottom layer instead of the center). I did this so I could make the "balcony" look. After the cake is iced, the fun part starts! The two towers on the top are placed and settled into the cake itself. Using a rope of fondant, I wrapped it around the bases of the towers to help stabilize it. The bottom towers are also placed into the cake, on the sides. I made the doors out of chocolate fondant, used a scoring tool to make them look like panels and a silver dragee for a door knob. The balconies were made from a fondant rope which I cut into squares and then topped with more pink hearts. Borders were piped and voila! One princess cake!

I hear the birthday girl loved the cake - went straight for the pink turrets! This one was one of my favorite cakes to make. My niece saw the pics and told me that she wants this cake - I can't wait to make it for my niece when she turns 4 in December!

Next up....

The monthly office offering! This month I really wanted to try making some of the gumpaste flowers from the instruction book I got for my birthday. One of the birthday girls' favorite flowers are tulips, so that is what I worked on. Let me tell you - making flowers is not a quick process! Those darn tulips took me 8 hours total to make. I also discovered that gumpaste flowers are very, very fragile.... broke a couple in the process. I did discover that I do enjoy making the flowers and can't wait to try some of the others in the book!

The final cake ended up being a basket of tulips. The cake itself was a marble cake - also going on the business menu - with the Oreo cookies & cream filling. I did a basketweave with chocolate buttercream. The handle I made from some sprinkler tubing - wrapped it in chocolate fondant - which tastes just like fudge if you've never had it! - to make it look kind of leatherish.

I love how this cake turned out. It is one of my favorites, however, as always I would do at least one thing differently! LOL - the artist is never satisfied I guess! Anyway, I think in order to make the handle more rounded, instead of pointy, I need to cut the length just a little bit. Unfortunately, after drying, when i bent the tubing to place it in the cake, it creased and became pointy.

I think this cake was a success from the comments I received just taking it into the office. One staff member had to leave the meeting early and was disappointed that she didn't see the cake.... not realizing that the basket of flowers WAS the cake!

April cake #2

My aunt moved back to the area this year after a long time of residing in New York. Since she is now "local" , relatively speaking, I was able to make a cake for her birthday this year.

This cake is from the Wilton idea book and was very fun to make! I experimented with cake flavors on this cake and found a recipe for a lemonade cake that turned out very yummy. This one will go on my flavors for the business.

Basically, this cake is a 1/2 of a round cake covered with buttercream. The mouth is black fondant and the rays are sugar cookies, lined with buttercream and sugar crystals. The sunglasses were purchased, however the original idea has you make the glasses from sugar cookies. Even though the glasses aren't edible, I think they are much cuter than the cookie would have been!

April is a busy month!

I had four cakes to do this month - my nephew's 6th birthday cake, my aunt's birthday cake, our monthly office birthday cake and my bosses' grandaughters cake. The last one being completed this weekend. I'll try to make separate blogs for them, but keep it short & sweet! :-)

First up is my nephew's cake. His request - Justice League and chocolate. Not too hard, right? Well.... the chocolate part was easy - this was a triple chocolate fudge cake with Oreo's cookie & cream filling. Yummy!! The difficult part was finding the figures for the cake - finally purchased online from a toy store.

I liked how this turned out, but I would design it completely different doing it again. Next time, I would make it a round tiered cake, covered in blue fondant (like a dusky evening sky). Then I would cut out a city skyline to put around the cake, positioning the super heroes to look like they are defending the entire city. Food for thought and always thinking on how to improve! My nephew thought it was awesome though - so that's all that matters!

Wow! I'm a slacker!

I didn't realize how long it had been since my last post! Since my last blog, I've done a couple of other cakes and learned some new things....




This cake was for a "paying customer" - I put that in quotes, because it was for a friend of mines husband's surprise birthday party. He is a fisherman and his wife asked for a cake that had to do with fishing. I've learned since then - ask for more details! This was - whatever you think would be cute and go for it! While I really enjoy that freedom, at the same time it is difficult to please the customer without knowing really what they are looking for.

Overall - I think this cake turned out very cute! One of my favorites, just because it's different. Sometimes I think my niche is character cakes - if you look at some of my faves they are not the usual stacked, tiered beauties, but are hamburgers, boxes of chocolates, etc.

This cake was my first attempt at modeling figures - the fisherman, the seagulls and the rocks are all fondant figures. They were really a lot easier than I thought they would be and I really enjoyed making them. There was wonderful instructions from a Carol Deacon book that broke the instructions down piece by piece.

So - things to improve on - covering a round object with fondant. That was a little sticky! :-) Otherwise - I really liked this cake.

Spring Cakes

March is the time for new beginnings - the first day of spring and cakes that look like fun, springy days!

I tried to incorporate all of these ideas into the office birthday cake this month. I had purchased a Lindy Smith book a few months ago which featured this cake in it. It looked simple enough to do, so I figured why not! Since it looked fairly straight forward I thought I would finally start attempting cakes with fillings..... This cake ended up being a huge challenge!

The top layer - carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. The problem I had with the frosting is that is isn't a good one to use underneath fondant. It was too soft and caused my fondant to crack and rip very easily. I also had issues with it absorbing every little bump, poke, etc whenever I would try to smooth the fondant. The cake was good - nice and moist, the frosting was very yummy as well! Just not a good experiment to put under a fondant layer.

The middle layer - chocolate cake with a raspberry mousse filling. The filling was incredible! I dammed the layers before putting in the filling - ended up with four layers total. I used the tile method to settle the cakes and only ended up with a slight bulge where the buttercream "oozed". Once it was covered with fondant I stippled it with yellow food coloring and a artist's stipple brush. Yes - that is actually yellow - "Golden Yellow" to be exact. I think I used too much of the gel food coloring and not enough vodka to dilute the color. Either way - the color ended up being orange, versus yellow, but still pretty. I really like the stipple effect on the fondant - it has a nice finish to it.

The bottom layer started out as a french vanilla layer, however when I took the cakes out of the pans, one of them cracked into four separate pieces! Plan B was to make a yellow cake layer instead and I used french vanilla buttercream. This had the effect of making the fondant taste like marshmallow - at least to my co-workers! :-)

I premade the flowers a week in advance, so they had time to dry. Doing it this way though - I discovered that I didn't like the royal icing that shows when you "glue" the wires into the flowers. Next time - I will make the flowers, put a fondant blob on the back and stick the wires into that. The orange strips were the worst part of doing this cake. They are very easy to do - just time consuming! All the strips are cut by hand and then applied one by one with a paint brush and vanilla extract around the edges.

I really learned a lot doing this cake - things NOT to do i.e. soft frosting under fondant! As well as things that I did enjoy. One of the great things about this cake is that it is/will be easy to change the look of it, just by changing the colors. I look forward to trying this cake again.

February's Birthday Cake

Once a month, I make the office birthday cake. It is a job I love - I get to pick my own designs and practice a cake! This month (being Valentine's and all) I went with a traditional box of chocolates. This cake was inspired by another blog I follow as her Valentine cake for 2009.

The whole thing is cake! The box, the chocolates - all of it! I made a red velvet cake (recipe courtesy of a co-worker) and covered it in red fondant. I have discovered Satin Ice fondant - which has a very good flavor and rolls out very nice! I purchased it online in red and black (and a chocolate one too!) since coloring fondant these colors can be very difficult. Mostly, I would end up with pink or grey!

The chocolates themselves are actually cake balls - made from scraps of cake that I have left over from other cakes I made. Once I level or sculpt a cake, I throw the scraps into a ziploc freezer bag until I have enough to make cake balls. The cake balls pictured here are chocolate and red velvet covered in melted chocolate. I piped melted chocolate on some of them, topped some with nuts and others with sugar. To make it look realistic I purchased some candy foil wrappers and placed them on the box.

I figured I had done a great job when a co-worker went to the break room, thinking someone had brought a box of chocolates to work to share, helped herself. She confessed to me - Oh my gosh! I just ate the birthday cake! I thought i was candy until I ate it! And - those cake balls are the best! :-)

I sent leftover cake balls to work with Jim - evidently they were a hit there as well.

Forrest is right - "Life is like a box of chocolates - you never know what you're gonna get" - you might even get cake balls!

Done with physical therapy!

Finally, finally, finally! Hoping that my back issues stay away and that I really don't/won't have to go back for surgery or PT! That being said - my PT (really manual therapist) is THE BEST! I have been going to them for over a year now - first with a shoulder issue and then my back. It will be very strange not to see them every Tuesday and Thursday.

Because they are the best - at least in my "book" - I wanted to do a special thank you for them. So what do I do? I make cakes, ergo a book cake. Because it is a fairy tale come true to be doing so much better.... by the way - in case you were wondering - the "Princess" is me! :-)

Smash cake!

My physical therapist's son is 1 year old today! I wanted to surprise his mom and dad with a little smash cake for him - especially since they were going to wait until next month to celebrate it with his grandparents & various other family members in Arizona. You only turn 1 once! You GOTTA have a smash cake for your birthday!

Baby A's first word was "car" - so.....



I couldn't find the chunky looking toddler car toys that I remember from when my kids were toddlers, so I drew one out as best as I could remember - remember I never said I could draw! I rolled out the red fondant and put the cutout of my car on it and cut that out. The clouds are made from five petal flower cutters and the wheels are circle cutters. The cake itself is a two layer torted chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream. Just the right consistency to make a wonderful mess for a 1 year old!

Baby A's dad and mom really liked the cake and were totally surprised! Tonight - let them eat cake!

"Final"ly done!

With my cake final coming up, I had to choose one of the cakes out of our instruction book to replicate. Well - they are all beautiful and I had a difficult time choosing. Brilliant inspiration struck! Take the book to work and let THEM pick it out! So - the winner - but by a very close margin was:

I have to say - I think its one of the best fondant jobs I've done. This one just turned out so smooth!

I did discover that you CAN put the petal dust on the flowers after they are secured to the cake, but I won't next time - I worried the whole time I was doing it that I would spill the dust or that the sparkle would get where I didn't want it!

Over the weekend - Jim purchased for me a Lindy Smith book. It has 15 different cakes, complete with instructions and pictures. I'm looking forward to trying one or all of them in the very near future! But first - - - the office Valentine cake!

Happy Caking!

Many steps to the final project!

Sometimes I get a cake idea and think "Gosh - that will be so simple to do!" Then I start the process and realize, "Gosh - this takes many, many steps to complete!" Case in point was the office monthly birthday cake for January. My thought process was - January, winter theme, penguins and igloos! Very cute, right?

I started the process by making the penguins. Since I was attempting my very first fondant figures, I knew I needed to get going on them so they would have time to dry. The first guy turned out to look like a "sumo penguin" - cute, but just a little super sized!(That's him on the far left!) He also lookes like he is wearing some kind of hood, but he was a good starting point for making the other two.

Next step was making the trees - I used sugar cones and layered royal icing over the top of them to shape them like evergreens. My first problem was my royal icing blended together, forming a solid sheet of green. NOT the effect I was looking for! I adjusted that by making lines of icing with a space in between - after that dried, I went up a row and did the same thing between the existing lines. Probably an easier way to do this, but it ended up working for me! The worst part really was the drying time. Overall it probably took me about 5 hours to finish all three trees!


I had made the igloo a week before, crumb coated it and had it waiting in the wings for final assembly. I rolled out the white fondant and then used a garland measurer (it was flexible to go around the curves) to press the "ice blocks" into the fondant. Once the sheet cake was frosted, I positioned the igloo on the cake. I decided it would be cute to make it look like a stash of snowballs was ringing the igloo.

The office loved the cake - I'm so lucky they support my efforts each month! The final product?





Now to start working on the February cake idea......

Getting better

All that practice is starting to pay off! This last week kept me busy baking and decorating my grandmother's 91st birthday cake. My grandmother has commissioned me to make her 100th birthday cake - I love that she is looking so far ahead! I decided that she didn't need to wait that long though for me to decorate a cake for her. Since I was going to see her this past weekend, I figured I would surprise her with a birthday cake (her actual birthday being Wednesday). Overall, I am pleased with her cake. The fondant was nice and smooth and looked very pretty. The flower turned out well - however I do wish the gold luster dust edging had been a little more visible. After seeing the finished project, I would have added some kind of curly type things around the flowers - kind of like gold sparkly curls.

I compare this cake with another fondant birthday cake I did last year - I can see where I have improved! It is important for me to look back and see where I was and how far I have gotten. Otherwise, I have a tendency to get discouraged when something doesn't turn out the way I have envisioned it.

The best part though - my grandmother liked the cake so much that she saved it to serve (and show off) at the birthday party her widow's group is holding for her later this week.

Fondant or Buttercream...

...that is the question! I've always loved the look of fondant cakes - they look so pretty and you can do so much more with them. That being said - I have to say that I really want to get to the point with my buttercream smoothness that you can't tell if it's buttercream or fondant!

Whenever I start to decorate a cake, for my workplace or hubbies, I have to ask myself am I doing fondant or buttercream? Both have their challenges. Buttercream, for me anyway, can be a pain the neck because I never can seem to get the edges of a cake covered. I've been told not to worry about it too much since it will be covered by a border. It's frustrating because I have seen numbers of "how to" videos that show a buttercream cake (sans borders) that do not have this issue. I switched to an icing tip, which helped a lot. I think I wasn't getting enough icing to cover the cake - my layer was more like a second crumb coat.

Fondant's challenges can be numerous as well! I've had issues, with this cake in particular, with not enough fondant to cover the cake, pleating and tearing. I had to take off the fondant and redo it four times before I was able to achieve the perfect look I wanted.

Practice.... I'm starting to hate that word.... and patience is what I need. It will get better and it will be awesome.

Why is that dog wearing a wig?

.... Is what my husband said looking at my practice cake. The good news is - at least he recognized that it was a dog. The bad news - I really am not a free hand cake decorator! The writing turned out ok, for a first attempt. I think I will be investing in a set of alphabet presses though - from everything I have heard it makes the writing much, much simpler to do. The practice cake, although admittedly not one of my best, did make a favorable impression at the physical therapist's office. Ironically - everyone on staff recognized the dog as being Rufus, the office mascot, and didn't think the ears was a wig! LOL

Things to work on: The bottom edges of the cake. Still work on the writing and figure out a way to keep the cake from cracking in the fold. (You can't see it as it is under the ribbon bookmark!)

Favorable points on this cake: my buttercream was nice and smooth. The borders went on easily and looked good. The page edger process is pretty easy to manage.

Overall - I think this cake is ok. Not one of the worst, not one of the best. The practicing must continue!

Practice makes perfect!

My youngest is being confirmed in May of this year. His confirmation class is the largest the church has had, with 13 kids being confirmed. As a caker, I look for opportunities to expand my caking experiences and stretch my boundaries! With this thought in mind, I volunteered to make the cake for the confirmation reception. I have in mind to make a 1/2 sheet cake that will have a chalice, loaf of bread and wheat stalks made of gumpaste. Included in this masterpiece I am planning on an open book (Bible) with each of the kids' names written on the pages. Sounds very grand and large! The large part I can handle, its the writing part I'm worried about! So - practice I think! Yeah, I can do that. So now everyone I know will be getting a book cake of some sort so I can practice my writing.

This week the lucky cake winner is my physical therapy group. I'm discovering, however, that its not just the writing I will need to practice. The open book pan has some very odd angles to it and I had a difficult time getting the icing to cover the cake and then smoothing the icing. Today, the cake is a plain white surface, smooth, but not quite enough icing. I'm hoping the decorating part of this will cover all that up and it will turn out, if not a work of art, at least a good practice!

How hard could it be....

to bake and decorate cakes! After all - Duff (on Ace of Cakes) makes it look so easy! Boy, was I in for a big wake up call after I finally signed up for my first cake decorating class. I had decorated cakes before, mainly for my boys, copying designs I found on the internet to match the birthday boy's theme of the year. Most of them even turned out pretty good! Nothing says cake like a ton of sprinkles and frosting. So, now, after a few months of classes I am prepared to eat cake...and admit that it is not as easy as I thought it would be. On the other hand, it is also much more addicting and satisfying than I had ever anticipated. I am learning the trials and tribulations of smooth icing, working with fondant and stacking cakes. I look at some of my earlier cakes, ones that I thought were so wonderful, and compare them to my cakes today and realize what a long way I have come. I look at the cakes I am making now and look forward to a long and exciting journey to creating my "Ace of Cakes".