My cakes are now in Photobucket!

Hi! I lost my home computer a while back and now I have to use my iPod to post. It is very wonky and difficult to use, so for the time being, I am going to simply upload my cakes onto Photobucket. Here is the mobile site.  Here is the PC site.
Thanks everyone and have long days and pleasant nights!

American Girl and Calla Wedding Cakes!

It's getting late and I'm rushed to get this post written, so I'm sorry for my brevity.

The first cake here is an American Girl cake.  It's yellow cake with vanilla buttercream frosting and filling, and gumpaste and fondant topper and fondant diamonds.  The "pearl" necklace is non-pariels, painstakingly put in place one by one.  It was a fun cake and I loved making it!  The photo is a little blurry, but the bag says "American Girl" on it.

This cake was for my husband's Godmother's wedding last weekend.  It is Deep Chocolate and Yellow Almond cake with vanilla buttercream filling and marshmallow fondant.  The flowers are all hand made, about 40 of them, out of gumpaste.  Getting the dark blue color was difficult, so after making the flowers, I used Wilton spray to get them a more vibrant shade of blue.  For the berry colored flowers I painted over a more matte color after the flowers were formed.  The stenciling was done with matching buttercream.  This was my first attempt at stenciling and I was pleased with the outcome.  The wedding was beautiful and the cake was delicious.  The bride said of the cake: "That was the best cake I've ever put in my mouth!"  What a wonderful day.  Congratulations, April!

Thomas the Train!

Here's another cake I made for Cartwheels and Coffee.  Stinkie was dying to put the train on the cake...so I LET HIM!  He was so careful and did such a great job, don't you think?
The cake is Chocolate Sour Cream cake, a new recipe that I am in love with that bakes up like a dream and tastes lovely.  The filling and frosting are vanilla buttercream, with fondant accents.  Everything is edible except the Happy Birthday sign and the Thomas, which I got on sale at Walmart for $3!  It's not the regular Thomas train for the tracks, though.  It's...wait for it....MEGA BLOCKS!  It comes apart into 5 pieces.  Stinkie loved it but I wouldn't let him play with it.  I hope James has the best birthday ever!  The party is tomorrow morning.
  This was my first time doing a spiral carving on a cake, so it was a little nerve-wracking.  Thankfully, I had to carve out enough cake so there was a lot of "leftovers" to snack on!  The technique ended up being pretty simple and I didn't have too stressful a time with it.

The hardest part of this, believe it or not, was the mountains.  The funnest part was the clouds.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JAMES!

I haven't posted in a while!

I'm pretty pooped out from dancing all night last night at a FABULOUS wedding, so this is going to be brief.  I took a cake hiatus to prepare myself for this coming month.
Last night I did my second wedding cake...well, it was kind of my first since this was the first one I was paid for.  It was SO stressful but I did like that it came out looking like the picture the bride provided and that the tablecloth I made fit so well!

Hm.  Let's see, did I make any cakes since the Father's Day cake?  YES!  I made a cake for my Father-in-Law's birthday.  It was a fun little cake and it was completely custom.
I don't know that I can go into all the details that made this cake perfect for him, but I'll tell you what it is.  It's him sitting in his LaZboy with his headphones on, knitting a new car.  Around him are three of his grandchildren (he is raising the two girls with my Mother-in-Law) causing mayhem.  He is smiling.  It's like cracking a code...but MIL LOVED it and FIL saved the topper!  Here he is...see the resemblance?

Happy Father's Day!

This was a quick and fun little cake to do to show a certain special someone how loved he is!  I saw a cake with generic handprints on it while browsing Father's Day cakes on Bing images.  It's just a one layer yellow cake with vanilla buttercream frosting.  The decorations?  Actual handprints from his 3 of his 4 kids and wife (the youngest was sleeping when they came by).  I frosted the cake and let it crust, then pressed their hands into the finished frosting layer about 2cm deep.  Then I painted the buttercream indents with colors they chose beforehand.  It was fun and easy.  What a cute cake!  I didn't have a chance to photograph it, but I got a few pictures they posted for me on Facebook.

Happy Father's Day!

Congratulations, Class of 2011!

  This cake was inspired by another cake of mine from back in 2009 (maybe early 2010?)  The graduate-to-be's school colors were blue and green, and she informed me she is "In Love With Pink".  She was so cute!  She wanted yellow cake with fondant, so I got going on it and cranked out this fun, whimsical cake.

  It's been a while since I did fondant, and I realized yet again that while I don't ejnoy cooking with a microwave, they really are quite useful for warming fondant for easier rolling and for making it have more elasticity.  I think I will have to finally cave and buy one for cake use.
  My camera batteries died the second I tried to take a picture of this cake, so I was stuck with a very bad picture taken with my webcam.  Thankfully, my client agreed to send me a couple of pictures she took so I'd have something to show here.  Thank you!
  I tried to make up a decent sugar-free cake recipe for the top tier, but I fell short after two completely botched tries.  The second one wasn't as embarassing, but still pretty bad.  I did purchase a huge bag of granulated Splenda and I plan on finding something that tastes as good as my special yellow cake...it's just going to take time and patience.
  Congratulations, Class of 2011!  You Did It!

Elmo on Safari with a Monkey!

This cake was made for a birthday party for twins at Cartwheels and Coffee.  I was told to include a monkey and Elmo and the colors pink and orange, so I came up with the idea of Elmo on safari, looking for a monkey.  The flowers and the bow in the monkey's hair fulfilled the orange requirement, and the pink car took care of the pink.  The waterfall was so cute and fun to make.  The rocks are brown/orange fondant rippled with brown gel coloring.  The cake itself is vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream frosting and filling.  Everything else on the cake is fondant and entirely edible.

I made the monkey using a tutorial online and I was very happy with how it turned out.  I love the bananas.  And I'm getting better at Elmo, as I've made the little stinker about 45,000 times now.  He really is the epitome of happy and glee, isn't he?  I have a pair of binoculars tucked under Elmo's hand in this cake.

Toy Story Cake

This cake is vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream frosting and filling, fondant accents, and plastic figurines.  The Toy Story logo is fondant that I made a week in advance to let it dry and harden.
It was a fun and straight-forward cake and I really enjoyed making it.  I got to go to the birthday party at Chuck-E-Cheese's and I got to see the birthday boy's face light up like a Christmas tree when he saw the cake.
I must start remembering to carry my cards around with me.  I always forget and there were many people asking for my information.

Babybug Baby Shower Cake

Last week I released 1000 ladybugs into my aphid-ridden, tiny garden.  So it seemed fitting that this week's cake was a fun take on a ladybug.

  The cake is yellow cake with chocolate BC frosting and filling.  The face, antennae, and butterfly are fondant.
  I never thought much about how difficult it would be to sculpt a baby's face out of fondant.  I kept trying and failing miserably.  After an hour and a half, I had come up with a dozen or so ways NOT to do it.  Every face I made looked like an adult.  I watched YouTube videos and pulled up pages on CakeCentral.com but had no luck.  I just couldn't get the lips right.  So I finally tried something completely different and came up with the finished product here.  I think I can do better next time, but I think it looks pretty good and it's definitely a far cry from what I started with!

  I carved the cakes and did a crumb coat, which I usually don't do but this time I got the urge for ease.  I set the crumb-coated cake into the freezer for about 15 minutes before doing the final frosting.
  The antennae are fondant shaped on wires.  Pretty easy peasy.  The leaves the babybug is laying on are buttercream.  The butterfly was fun to make.  I love making butterflies.  This one I wanted to be simple and pretty, so I put a simple pattern on the back in a darker pink and sprinkled it with shimmer dust.  I added GumTex to the fondant so it would dry hard and set it to dry on balled up cotton.  It works well.

  My client loved it and said "It's PERFECT!" when she saw it, and made my day.  It was a fun little cake and I learned that I need more work with my sculpting.  I'm very much looking forward to this next few weeks and the cakes I'm going to do.

Tie Dye Cuppies and Mondavi

I've been on a cake hiatus of sorts, getting ready for a few big ones coming up and resting a little bit. 

Wednesday was Stinkie's last day of gymnastics class and he wanted to make cupcakes for all his little friends, so I let him pick four colors (pink, red, blue, and yellow) to make tie dye cupcakes with.  He helped me make the batter and spoon it into the muffin tins, then it was bedtime for him.  I took them out (they were so pretty!) and decorated them with a really simple swirl of buttercream using the same colors that were inside the cupcakes.  Then I went to the dollar store and bought a package of the little white wedding favor boxes, a package of spring inspired cellophane gift bags, and some foam stickers.  My original plan was to let Stinkie decorate the bags but it was late and I didn't want to hassle with it in the morning sooooo...I did it!  And dang it, it was FUN!  The cupcakes were just a little big for the favor boxes, but that made for a nice tight fit.  I just stuck the cakes in the freezer for 10 minutes to harden up so I could put them in without squishing the frosting.  Then I put the boxes into the bags and tied them up with the twisties.  I think they came out really great!

 
The Mondavi cake was a rush job.  I forgot about my brother-in-law's birthday until yesterday morning!  So I hurried to make two 9x13 chocolate cakes and frosting without even knowing what I was going to make out of them.  After talking with my hubster, I decided on a nice 1987 Cab Sauv Mondavi Reserve.  It's something like $200 a bottle.  The shape didn't come out like I wanted, but it would have been so small had it really been to scale so I went with oddly shaped.  I didn't even have time to cover the cake board...but I figured, it's for family, so that's okay! 

I thought I would have a really hard time with the label but it was actually really fun and I'm pretty proud of it, other than the little goof under the Mondavi title.

The Castle Cake that keeps on giving...

I have made a few of these cakes to where I now have them down to science!  The color for this was was to be Barbie Purple (or as the birthday girl described it, pink-purple).  Neither of the photos I took captured the color just right (flash and low light) but you get the general idea.
The shoes here were the color I was going for:


Yes, they are amazing shoes and the price is $129.  I looked them up.  Fabulous shoes.
Here's with the flash:

And here's without the flash in my low light house:

It was a pretty fun and easy cake and I loved making it!

Betty Boop-boop de doop!

Two fun cakes for one fun event!  This Betty Boop cake was requested by the client based on her photo.  It is yellow cake with vanilla buttercream filling and marshmallow fondant (MMF) frosting.  I thought the composition of this cake would be more difficult than it was.  It turned out to be pretty fun!  I have always loved Betty Boop!

The hardest part for me was getting the flesh colored fondant.  It was a total pain.  The red fondant should have been the hardest, but I made up a special batch just of the red and added all the coloring to the melted marshmallows before adding all the sugar.  That made things very easy there.  I used powdered red as well because it has no taste whatsoever and the Americolor Super Red because it has very little flavor.  I will never again use the Wilton no-taste red...it certainly DOES have a bitter taste!

I love her little eyelashes.

The second cake is yellow cake with vanilla BC frosting and filling.  I usually use the chocolate BC as the base for any black frosting, but this time I tried something I read on a caking website.  I used the Wilton Juniper gel color first (man is that an ugly color) and then used a bit of the Americolor black (just a tiny bit) and a package and a half of the Chefmaster black food powder.  It darkened overnight and turned darker still when it was warmed by my hands.  The hearts are simply fondant cutouts.

The picture I took used flash and it came out looking gray, so I took another quick snapshot of it next to my Adidas bag in natural lighting and it looks much more true to life.  YAY! Oh, and yes, that is one of my custom made, super sturdy crazy awesome cake boxes.  I rock.
These cakes were not as stressful as I had anticipated and I am very glad I got a chance to make them!

Sesame Street!

I have always loved Sesame Street.  Always.  Even now that they've changed the opening jingle and added such magical creatures as Abby and her flying faerie school, Rosita, and...yes, you guessed it, Elmo, among others.  Though I'm still in love with what was, I can absolutely appreciate what Sesame Street is still doing in helping little ones (like my 3 year old) and their parents have some quality time together talking about the letter Q and the number 17.

My client sent me an inspiration photo for this cake and I was beyond excited.  What a cute cake, what a great show, what a perfect 1st birthday party theme.
I used Americolor Super Red and Wilton Rose to get the red tint.  The yellow is a mix of Wilton's golden yellow and lemon yellow.  The cake itself is yellow cake, 2-10" layers and 2-6" layers with buttercream filling and frosting and fondant and gumpaste decor.  The smash cake is yellow cake with buttercream frosting.

Cookie Monster, Elmo, Oscar, and Big Bird are made out of fondant, and it was SO much fun making them.  The bow loops, spirals, and balloons are made out of gumpaste so they would dry nice and hard.  The little border balls are fondant rolled to (approximately) the same size and randomly stuck on.  The blue "ribbons" on the bottom tier are fondant rolled thin.  The street sign is fondant rolled thin and cut to shape.\ with buttercream lettering and border.
I would love to explain in more detail what I did with this cake because I did truly have the best time making it, but I am just now overcoming bronchitis (hence the long wait on posting this cake I made two weeks ago!) so this will just be brief.

Happy Birthday to you, Avery!

A few Tinkerbells for your viewing pleasure!

Dollbaby's birthday was this past week, and her birthday was this weekend.  I made her two cakes because, well, a girl only turns 5 one time, right?  RIGHT?! This is my "AGREE WITH ME!" face.

The first cake was a doll cake (duh).  It's yellow cake with vanilla frosting, and since I made it just for a very small family gathering at Chick-Fil-A, I used up my "old" buttercream for the filling.  It was pink and blue inside!  I even made the cake board out of scraps I had left over (you can see the flat spot.  I'm so embarassed!  But, it WAS just for family!)  I baked the skirt in a Pyrex bowl (I have as yet to actually purchase the Wonder Mold pan, to my eternal shame) and stacked it on top of a 6" round cake.  I used the trimmings mixed with some buttercream to mold the top to my desired height and shape because well, I just felt too dang lazy to bake another 6" cake!  Dollbaby loved it and we had a great time.  I love Chick-Fil-A.

The cake for her party was a little more involved and a little more fun to make.  I had seen the inspiration photo of this cake a long time ago and wanted to make it for forever, but I didn't have anyone wanting a Tinkerbell cake.  FINALLY!  I got to make it for Dollbaby's Tinkerbell party.  The lily is a fondant/gumpaste mix, as is the bow and grass blades.  It surprised me how little time this cake actually took to put together compared to what I thought it would.  Of course, the Tinkerbell on top is just a candle and not hand molded or anything, so that cut out time right there.  The little mushrooms were so fun and easy.  I molded them on toothpicks.  The candles are those trick sparkling candles.  I liked that they looked like bamboo or grass blades so they fit into the motif of the cake.

I made another cake this past week too, but it was a cake I've made before.  It was cute and the party was at Cartwheels and Coffee, one of my favorite places in Richmond.  There's always a good vibe going around there.  Anyway, I could not for the life of me find my camera, so I had to take this with my webcam and it came out all washed out.  It's a very fun little cake and I loved making it again!

A Bow and a Baby Shower

This is the first time I've done two cakes for an event, and it was pretty fun coordinating them without having them be too matchy-matchy.

This was also the first time I made a large loop bow for a cake, so it was a learning experience.  I mixed some GumTex into my pretty blue fondant and got going.  I wrapped a brand new (and clean) broom handle in wax paper and set it up near my work area and rolled my fondant, then cut strips just the right size and looped them and glued them on the broomstick.  Then I set the broom out of the way for the strips to dry for a few days.  When they were fully dried, I took them off carefully and arranged them into a bow pattern, and allowed that to dry for a few days.
  The letters are the same fast-drying fondant that I used for the bow, cut to shape and dried on the curled wires.  I put small straws in around the wires in the cake for stability during transport.  When I delivered this cake, the springs (of course) were bouncing around.  This was a fun cake but also stressful at times.

The baby and blanket were fun to do.  The fondant is chocolate fondant and SOOOOO yummy!  I broke off a piece at the beginning of shaping to set aside to nibble on later!  I just LOVE chocolate marshmallow fondant.

The most challenging part of these cakes (aside from the new experience with the bow) was trying to match fondant and buttercream colors perfectly.  I think I did pretty good!  The day before delivery, I baked up the cakes and clean frosted them (the coat of buttercream) and piped the little designs, let the frosting harden in the fridge for a few minutes, and wrapped them in Saran wrap.  The next day I put the fondant toppers on and sealed them up in their special boxes.  The box for the 10" round was a whopping 13"x13"x13"!  The smaller cake is a 6" round.  Both cakes are my super awesome yellow cake with vanilla buttercream frosting and filling.

Crown and Draping

I should have posted this days ago!  I am a slacker :)

  This cake is a 2-layer 10" round, yellow cake with vanilla buttercream frosting and filling.  The accents are fondant.  The crown is fondant with a smidge of GumTex mixed in to help it harden.
  The crown was a hassle to make, but I figured it out. I wrapped it around an oatmeal container after cutting out the basic shape and sealed the back edge.  I wanted the tips to point outward but without support they would just flop down, so I decided to place the fondant wrapped oatmeal container into a large salad bowl and fill it with flour, then mound up the flour where necessary.  I left it to dry for a whole day then carefully removed it and brushed off the flour.  I painted it with a thick mixture of vodka and gold luster dust (the alcohol evaporates completely).
  The quilting was much faster this time, as I'd done it on the previous cake.  It's time consuming but simple once you get the distances marked.

  This was my first time making a drape, and it was fun and informative.  I love the way it looks.
  I made the rosettes by rolling a thin strip of fondant, shaping and rolling it up, then forming the frills.
  It still needed a little something, so I cut out about 40 little flowers, shaped them, and dusted the centers with red and pink petal dust.  I attached them using a smidge of buttercream.
  This was a fun cake and I had a blast making it.  It still surprises me that I love doing this so much.  What a blessing!
  I took a bunch of time off to concentrate on family stuff, but now I have quite a few cakes coming up and I'm really looking forward to them.  This is a blast.

New Years Birthday Rush!

7:30pm:  I get a call from a great client and friend, asking if I can make a cake for 16 people at a little girl's 1st birthday party, the next day at 3pm.  I'm in the car on the way home from my In-law's house, it's my anniversary, and I have a bottle of Mango Rum that is calling hubster's and my name...but I LOVE CAKES!
8:15pm:  We arrive home, and I preheat the oven, get the ingredients together, put the cakes in and set the timer.  Then Hubby pours me a drink and we watch Psych.  We're wild party animals, I tell you!
8:50(ish):  The cakes come out of the oven, and just in time!  I'm about to start my third drink.  I wrap up the cakes and set them in the fridge.
The rest of the evening is filled with more Mango Rum and Louis C.K. standup comedy.  I was in stitches the rest of the night.  Midnight comes, we kiss, I flick the porch light on and off a few times, then the gunshots start and we scramble into our house as we hear a ricochet.  *Two more years until we buy a house!* I tell myself!  Up to bed!
6:00am:  Stinkie is up.  It's Hubby's day to wake up with him, so I lay in bed for a few minutes... then realize I have to go to the Walmartz for frosting ingredients!
7:30-8:00am:  Getting hit on by a weird guy in the Walmart parking lot...before AND after buying the things I need.

8:15am:  Make the fondant bow and the gumpaste curly ribbons so they have time to dry a little.  Make the cake board, mix the frosting, color the frosting, make frosting plugs, fill and stack layers, base coat the cake.
10:00am: Try to figure out how to do the quilted look and have it come out straight lines.  I marked 1" intervals around the bottom of the cake, then used a straight edge to copy the intervals on the top ridge.  After trial and error (this is my first quilted cake) I used a straight cake scraper to make the quilted lines, then painstakingly put in pearl non-pariels at each meeting point.  The bottom border went in about here.  Then I made the nameplate.  Side note...I love the name Lauren.
11:30ish:  I make the "1" on the top, fill, and outline.  Pipe the top border, then place the ribbon and the nameplate.

12:15pm:  I want to put my child down for a nap and he insists on Daddy.  I haven't seen the little guy all day and I MISS HIM!  Hubby has been entertaining and loving on him all day so much he hasn't hardly bothered with me.  I'm relieved...but a little sad too :(  He's getting so big now!  Daddy takes off afterward and...I realize I don't have tape to make the cake box.  I look everywhere.  All I have is blue and red electrical tape.  All my tape got eaten up with the Christmas wrapping.  EEK!  Since I don't have a car to use, that awesome client I mentioned earlier agrees to pick one up on the way over.  She is awesome.  I think I said that though!
1pm:  The kitchen is mostly cleaned and the cake is pretty much done.  All I have to do is take pictures.  I do that and wait for the pickup time (2pm-ish).  Then I rest for a few minutes.  My head is swimming and I realize I have the worst hangover I've ever had.  We have no Tylenol here and I'm stuck here!
The rest of the day is a blur.  We went to Outback and I got sick.  Hubby drove me home and took care of Stinkie.  What a great guy!  I took a bath and went to bed at 7:45.  Slept ALL night, and I feel much better now!