Crazy For Cow's

My sister-in-law was in town this year for her birthday, so of course she had to have a birthday party complete with cake! SIL collects cows, so it was a foregone conclusion on what the theme to her cake would be!

I made Ferdinand out of 50/50 about two weeks prior to her birthday. I wanted to give the cow plenty of time to dry as it was so big. I also made some daisies out of 50/50 to accent with as well.

The cake was a triple chocolate fudge cake with my basic buttercream.

I made the cow spots out of black fondant, just by making random cuts. They were placed on the cake and I then piped with a star tip instead of the grass tip, just as an experiment. I think I prefer the grass tip, but I did like the effect this gave for this cake.

Ferdinand was placed carefully on the top of the cake and the daisies were added, after I piped the border.

Cute cake! I liked the way this turned out and SIL did too!

Basket of Bones

Our vet keeps a basket of dog cookies on his counter for his patients.  Our boxer recently had surgery to remove a tumor.  As a thank you to our vet, I decided to make a cake for he and his staff. 

This is the same method I used for the other basket cakes I have made.  (See the basket of roses cake).  The difference here, was I made the "bones" out of sugar cookies. 

I have finally discovered a sugar cookie recipe that I love!  It is called No Fail Sugar Cookie - and it really is true!  I followed a helpful hint that I got a couple of years ago for icing the cookies - and it is a little time consuming, but worth it.  Once the cookies have been rolled and cut, I also cut fondant using the same cutters.  When you take the cookies out of the oven, use the cutter on them immediately - this will make them have crisp edges.  Then you take your pre-cut fondant and put on the top of the hot cookies.  The heat from the cookies will melt the fondant just enough that they stick to the cookies.  I don't know what it is - but fondant on cake has a VERY different texture than fondant on sugar cookies.  The cookies just taste super yummy and no texture issues.  I do this at Christmas time as well, with all the sugar cookies I mail out.  It doesn't have quite the bitter taste that royal icing can sometimes have. 

Once I baked my cookies, I stacked them on the top of my basket cake and attached them with a dab of royal icing. 

Delivery to the vet the next morning and now the staff had their cookies and the patients had theirs! 

Pink Fantasy

The office birthday cake was for me!  :-)  I have been experimenting a little here and there with adapting recipes and looking for unique flavor combinations.  For this cake I wanted to not only incorporate a girly theme, but also wanted to practice piping skills and use my office as guinea pigs for the latest cake I was trying.

The cake itself is a raspberry dreamsicle cake.  I basically took my orange dreamsicle cake and substituted raspberry guava juice instead of orange.  I really wanted straight raspberry, but it was difficult to find but you really couldn't taste the guava in it.

The cake was a basic design - as I said I am wanting to practice on my piping skills with the goal of one day being able to learn the Lambeth method of decorating.  Lots and lots of piping, bridgework and stringwork. 

The flower was a gumpaste fantasy flower, learned in the Wilton course I took.  I did flavor my basic buttercream recipe with a little of the raspberry/guava juice as well, just to keep it consistent.

Happy Birthday to me! 

Just Foolin' Around

Ah, February!  The month of love.... As you can see from this cake, I was feeling the love (and trying to get rid of extra buttercream and hearts!).  This is a single layer cake that I made for my family - yes, the ones who NEVER get cake since it goes out the door as quickly as possible! 

I had some fun making the Corelli lace pattern and then topping it with the pink hearts I had leftover from another cake.  The nice thing is that this cake a year or two ago would have taken me much longer to do.  My skills are getting better!