So I Bought A New House!

I've been consumed with being a first time homeowner.  I have four colors of paint in various places on my body and my fingers are still sticky from epoxy from my nightly task - one hour gluing pennies to the floor in our Jack and Jill bathroom.  I'm maybe 1/20th of the way there and it's been well over a week.
Here are the few cakes I've done since we last met:
Karate cake for 8th birthday!

Toy Story cake, fondant with plastic figures on top.

Ombre petals cake with gumpaste medallion.  I really need to use a better camera than the one on my iPod, which used to seem so awesome but now it just seems to be lacking in the resolution department.

I feel like I should be posting pictures of my amazing home makeover, but perhaps waiting for more to be accomplished first is better.  Brief summary for those who care:

New pot rack is up on the vaulted ceiling!

Dearest hubby installed the best ceiling fan evar in the kitchen!

The bearded dragon has a new 75 gallon terrarium!

The walls in the den are Intense Teal, the kitchen is called Tango, but it's really a bright warm orange, the living room is a light sage green, and our bedroom is on its way to having dark gray walls!

I decided on a steampunk bathroom, hence the penny floor you've probably seen on Pinterest.  I still need ideas on this!

Front porch got stained to match the shutters before it started raining again!

There's a hammock in the back!

I bought a new throw pillow.  It really ties the room together, as the den has a few Moroccan accents.

Stinkie's little room off the den (little means LITTLE, it was a storage space) is becoming more of a fort with a few installations.

Hubby mounted the flat screen to the wall with a full motion mount and ran the wires through the wall so there's no unsightly mess!

We have plans on so much more as time and finances allow.  This is really the coolest thing I've ever done.

Stinkie is going to be starting school this September.  I'm excited and scared and nervous and proud all at once.  We did school shopping at Target and it was the most interesting experience, participating in the rush instead of just grinning at it.  I ordered a (hopefully) really cool backpack off Amazon for him with spikes all over it.  Oh and I made his little clipboard awesome with some scrapbook paper and DIY modpodge-ing Calvin and Hobbes.

I suppose that's it for now!  Till next time!

Hey Richmond Parents! Summer's Here!

  Just a quick note to spread the word about a great little program I found out about on Richmond Moms this week.  It's RichmondSummerCamps.org  and it's a wonderful way to get informed about all the great options out there for Summer camps in the Richmond area.  It was started by Richmond mom Jennifer Ertl and her husband.
  Clicking the link will take you directly to a page full of information in an easy format to read, complete with links to all the information you need to keep your little one(s) busy this Summer.
  Thanks Jennifer for the great site!

Butterflies and Pills

I made up another batch of the Key Lime Cupcakes for a small celebration with the neighbor girl, who is always helping me with things like what Disney Princess is worth creating on a cupcake or just generally stroking my cake ego with oohs and aahs.  Such a sweetie!
I had bought some of these tiny butterfly cutters and I am really enjoying them!  These ones are white gumpaste that I let dry then airbrushed a few different colors.

I made the letters using Tappits Funky Letters lowercase set.  I found the best way to get the letters out was to use some marshmallow fondant with Gum-Tex, then roll it into a very thin sausage shape.  I'm talking thin enough to read a newspaper through!  Let it sit for a minute like that, then cut the letter you need with a very well sugar dusted cutter, then smack the cutter on the counter edge very hard.  The letters should pop out.
Anyway, I attached the letters to toothpicks with royal icing and stuck them in.  And found out I'm in love with Tappits and butterfly cutters.  Ah the joys of new cake toys!


I was given the opportunity to recreate a wedding cake in a cupcake for a ten year wedding anniversary.  This is what I came up with:

Basketweave buttercream with fondant rosettes and little pearls.  It's not the greatest photo, but you can see the custom cupcake box I make for my cupcakes a bit.  Guarantees they don't slide around and mess up the design!


This cake is for a graduating pharmeceutical rep.  It's what's known on the street as a "Perc 30" but is actually a 30mg Oxycodone and a yellow Paxil bar.  Strawberry cake with marshmallow fondant, and the Paxil bar is Rice Krispie Treats with fondant.  The prescription slip is just painted fondant.

I found a very cute picture of Dora online and made her out of fondant for the top of this tiny 6" round cake.  I got to use the butterfly cutters again!  This time I wanted a more simple look so I just used colored fondant, but I did airbrush the base cake to give the illusion of sky and grass.

I really love this little figure's cute little face!  At first, I didn't have Backpack and Map on Dora's back, but my kid came downstairs, saw the cake, and insisted that Dora ALWAYS has Backpack and Map and I had to include them.

This cake is a Baby Minnie Castle cake for a sweet little girl turning 1!  The mama gave me the candle topper and I worked around that for the colors and design.  I used the Wilton castle set for the towers and covered the spires with fondant and little vines and flowers.

And I got to use the Tappits again!  Yay!

And Now, For Something Completely Different

Buying a house.
For the first time.
I'm completely terrified and completely thrilled.
  This journey started and stopped abruptly a year ago, when we had a junky agent who refused to show us short sales or anything she didn't "like".  We gave up a couple months into the process and figured we'd wait to move across the country and buy a home there.
  Then our apartment complex took a weird turn for the worse and we looked at our lives and realized that we needed someplace to call our own, someplace quiet, someplace where there weren't gunshots and loud car stereos.
  Commence finding a home.  We knew nothing at all about the process, even though we had looked just a year before, nothing had looked good enough to consider buying.
  We have pretty much no money down, so our lender said the FHA (specifically VHDA) loan would be the best option.  What's the difference between an FHA and a Conventional loan?  Put shortly as I understand it, FHA won't let you buy a home that needs repairs.  Our agent said "it can be God-Awful ugly but can't have wood rot on the windows or damaged siding."  The idea is that the bank has to know you won't have to come in and spend money right away.  This includes TINY things that, if necessary, you come in the middle of the night to fix before the FHA inspection.
  Now for something called the GFE (Good Faith Estimate).  When you go to a lender to get pre-approved, you can ask for or they will give you a GFE.  This lists ALL fees associated with them lending you money.  There's something called Junk Fees  (that's the clickable link to Investopedia, where there's a lot of good information) which is fluff matter that they don't really have to charge but they will because you don't know what the hell it means.  What the junk fees mean is they just get a little more money out of you in a contract form.  You NEED to read about the mortgage contract!  Learn what the terms all mean.  Ask the lender guy (or gal) to explain things to you AFTER you've spent a few hours learning about them so you can ask knowledgeable questions.  Click around at the Investopedia website I linked above for a couple hours and you will learn a ton.
  One very important thing I learned about is Private Mortgage Insurance.  This is $141 a month that you pay because you don't have 20% down.  It's a VERY BIG DEAL.  You pay this insurance until you owe less than 78% LTV (Loan to (assessment) Value), then you have to pay for an assessment to get it taken off.  Our broker said that after June, PMI will be PERMANENT for the life of an FHA loan (but I'm not certain on a conventional loan).
  So we are currently at the point where we have put a bid on a house and the other agent asked for $1000 more and we agreed, so we have a verbal agreement.  We will find out today if they signed the contract or not, and we go into a whirlpool of getting to closing in 34 days.

 Here's the house we picked.  There is no picture of the large back yard for some reason.  I don't know if the listing will stay up at that link after closing though.  If this is meant to be, it will be.  Keep us in your thoughts!

100!

This is my 100th blog post.  It seems like such a large number and I am coming to grips with how many stinkin' cakes I've made!
This week's cupcakes were pulled from Southern Living's Big Book of Cupcakes (same place I got the recipes last week for the Key Lime Pie cupcakes).  That book is amazing.  Say what you will about the internet being a great resource for recipes, I've never had a recipe from a published book go awry.
These cupcakes are a Scattered Lavender cake (fancy way of saying there's lavender flowers in there) with a Honeyed Mascarpone frosting, topped with lavender brittle (SO fun to make!) and a few lavender flowers.

So happy with this recipe!  Instead of using the regular butter cake recipe as the book suggests, I added about 2t crushed lavender to the mix during creaming.  It really added something.  The brittle looks awesome in the pictures and is fun and delicious to eat by itself, but as part of a cupcake, for me, it was a bit annoying to have basically a piece of sugar glass messing up my creamy frosting!
Happy caking, happy eating, happy Spring!

Key Lime Cupcakes

I decided to try out a new recipe, and thus I present to you Key Lime Cupcakes!

SOOO yummy!  White Citrus cake with Key Lime filling and whipped cream frosting, dusted with graham cracker crumbs and a few strips of lime zest!
This was so good.

More Princess Dresses!

So you remember a few posts back when I made some Disney Princess Dress cupcakes and fell in love with them?  I had another chance to make some so I did that with a few changes.  I didn't manage to take any pictures of the finished cupcakes myself but the client was kind enough to take these for me!

Snow White and her apple.  I think this one is my favorite.  You can see Rapunzel peeking out from behind her a little bit.  I didn't get a picture of Rapunzel by herself.  I like the little ruffled lace at the top of her corset and the painted scrollwork on the skirt.

Belle, a close second.  I love the draping.

Cinderella, a classic princess!

Aurora from Sleeping Beauty.

Tiana from Princess and the Frog, with her cute little leaves and vines!

My original thought was to make little items to go with each cupcake, like the apple on Snow White's dress.  However, I did the apple, then spent 20 minutes trying to make a tiny high heel out of fondant and just gave up.  I would put the slipper with Cinderella, a rose with Aurora, a book for Belle, a frog for Tiana, and a frying pan for Rapunzel.  Wouldn't that have been cute?  Yeah.  I think so too.  However, the client didn't ask for it and I just lost the inspiration trying to make that stinking little shoe :)

This is a great picture of the top view that I love!

Pastels and SpiderMan Cupcakes!

I think I'm really getting into doing cupcakes recently, which is something I always thought took more time than they were worth.


This first cake was...difficult.  I know it doesn't look like it, but for some reason everything went wrong!  I ended up finishing the cake at midnight and when I woke up in the morning at 5am, I hated everything about how it looked so I tore off all the frosting and made it all again!  Both the cakes and cupcakes were airbrushed to be pearly.

The Spiderman Cupcakes were a surprise.  We went to visit relatives down in Virginia Beach and through a series of miscommunications, I didn't make cupcakes to bring.  Then commenced a fun filled rush to the store with a packed car of family, including two teenage girls and two five year old boys :)  It really was fun!  The girls (who are my nieces) helped me pick out the design for these cupcakes and helped to decorate them.  I had more fun with these little cupcakes than I thought possible.  The picture was taken by my Niece's Instagram and I think there's some kind of filter on it but you get the general picture.

I heart my nieces!

Cascading Flowers Rush Cake

I received a call at 9:15am asking for a cake for a 21st birthday - needed before 4:30pm today!  I got to work, baking 8" rounds of Decadent Chocolate cake and putting butter out to soften to room temperature for the buttercream.  By 3:15pm, I had finished putting together this pretty little cake!

I like the cascade of flowers, but I really love the swirly numbers.  I used the same sort of technique from my last post with the striped number.  I am so very much in love with doing lettering this way!  I had been in such a rush all day with the different things I was doing (I also had previous engagements already scheduled that I had to work in) that I forgot to take a picture of the finished cake.  The customer was very kind and took a photo for me, or this one might have falled into the black hole of cakes I've made and will never see again.

Eric Carle's Very Hungry Caterpillar!

I set out to make a cake for a one year old girl for her birthday.  This book has quickly turned into a classic and it was pretty easy to figure out where to go with this cake.  On the last day before the caterpillar turns into a chrysalis, he eats 10 foods.  Those are the foods around the base of the cake.

The cake itself is only 6" round as it was for a small family gathering.  That made making those little fondant foods very meticulous!  It's pound cake with vanilla buttercream frosting and filling, covered with marshmallow fondant.  As a cool sidenote, I found an amazing fondant recipe on CakeCentral.com!  I am just SO in love with how it works (so smooth, so stretchy!) and how it tastes!  I am able to get it pretty stinkin thin so it's not like getting a mouthful of chewing gum, it just melts in the mouth.

Anyway, here are the shots of all the different foods:

 I used a cool little technique for the number "1" on the front that I got off this amazing lady online.  I can't find the link for the life of me!  She did stripey letters and checkered letters and even some swirly letters.  She is awesome!  EDITED:  I found her website!  It's here!

Two Birthday Cakes At Once

Two women in one family have their birthdays on the same day, so I had to make sure the cakes were both beautiful in their own right, but didn't outshine the other.  I was only given that one lady loves birds, purple, simple but pretty, and glitter.  Nothing on the other lady.  I think I did pretty well picking out cakes that were simple and equal in beauty!

The Blue Ruffles cake is Vegan Chocolate with Silky Caramel Sauce filling, coated in milk chocolate ganache, and covered and decorated in fondant.  The flower is gumpaste and is actually gold but the picture didn't pick up the colors very well.

The Purple Birds cake is Vegan Chocolate (gosh, it's just my favorite recipe!  So tasty!) with Fresh Strawberry Filling and milk chocolate ganache, covered in fondant and decorated with fondant.  I used my airbrush to color the fondant.  The silhouettes are cut out of fondant, and the balls on top are glittery fondant (again, the prettiness didn't come through on the pictures!)

Pink Ruffles Cake

I underestimated how much buttercream I would need for this 10" and 8" two tiered cake.  It was OVER FIVE POUNDS.  Let that sink in for a minute.  Because it is a LOT!
The cake itself is Vanilla cake with pink buttercream frosting and filling.

I found the best thing to do was to crumb coat the cake and let it sit in the fridge for about 30 minutes.  Then I used the biggest petal tip I had to create the ruffles.  It was tedious but overall an easy technique.  I think on the next one I'd like to add a large ruffled flower made of gumpaste, perhaps out of black, and perhaps add a black ribbon of some kind.

Pulp Fiction Cupcake Re-Creation

As my husband's birthday quickly approached and I found myself swamped with cakes, I went online in search of something to show him that he deserves cake love too!  I found these amazing Pulp Fiction cupcakes that featured Samuel L Jackson and John Travolta, and I had to re-create them!

I think I did pretty good copying the originals, for dealing with a fussy kid and not feeling too great today. The original creator of these was Jemma at Sugarsugar, I think.  So far as I can tell.  Here's the picture I used to go off of:

Aren't they incredible?  This Jemma person is awesome.  I love Pulp Fiction!

Also, how neat is it to be John Travolta or Samuel L Jackson right now?  Being immortalized in cupcake like this!?

Tiara and Bow Cake

This is "All Chocolate, Hold the Gluten" cake, smothered in ganache and filled with vanilla buttercream, then covered in marshmallow fondant.  The crown and bow are gumpaste.  The ball border is fondant, as well as the banner.  The board is covered in fondant as well.

I enjoyed doing the quilting on this cake.  I'd only done quilting on buttercream before and it is really different doing it on fondant.  SO much easier and cleaner, and you are able to really make it "puff" like it should.  I had to airbrush the non-pariels silver, since the silver dragees are deemed inedible and not locally available.  I found they are ILLEGAL to sell in California.  So weird.  I ate those things like they were going out of style back when I was a kid.

  So Happy Birthday Princess!

Princess Dress Cupcakes

When I set out to make these cupcakes, I didn't know if it would be as simple as it seemed or if I would be pulling my hair out by the end of things.  I ended up being really satisfied with how they came out and really enjoyed making them.  I've found myself really liking my new fondant recipe.  It's still marshmallow fondant, but the ingredients are tweaked.
One little tip I found out - real vanilla extract, while exceptionally expensive at Food Lion, is cheaper for twice as much at Costco.  I don't ever use vanilla flavoring or fake extracts, so it was great to see they carry a good quality vanilla for surprisingly cheap.
So, back to the cupcakes.  They are Chocolate Cake with vanilla buttercream and fondant.  I used a flower cutter to cut two shapes out of thin fondant, then rolled the edges to make them frilly for the skirt portion.  I used the same shape but larger cutter to make the top.  Then, it was just a matter of decorating, which was really fun!  I love Aurora's bust.  Of course, Tiana's dress was fun to make with the vine, leaves, and little yellow flower.  Cinderella's dress is simple and elegant, while Belle's dress (which is actually a shimmering gold) has a pretty tiny flower.
  I am so happy to be doing more cakes recently!  I can't wait until this weekend!

Monster High Cake

Fun little cake!  This is a Topsy Turvy Vegan Chocolate Cake with Double Chocolate Buttercream (so not completely vegan!) and marshmallow fondant.  The Monster High doll and skull are freehand painted gumpaste.

I made good use of my airbrush gun on this one, using the great colors I ordered off Amazon.com.

Cakes of Winter so far!

Since I have been posting mostly to my new Facebook page, I suppose it is fitting that I am slacking here.  Just to make sure I keep things current, here are some pictures of the cakes I've been doing since last I posted!

This cake I made for an awesome boy named Eshan who is battling Neuroblastoma.  He was so grateful and sweet and his family was amazing.  I was connected to them by Icing Smiles, an amazing organization that puts volunteer bakers and families facing major health crisis together.

This Dinosaur and Crayons cake was designed to match the invitations.  Everything is edible, including the 60 crayons I hand rolled and painted!

These next three photos are gross, but they tasted amazing!  The cake was tie dyed inside, yellow cake with vanilla buttercream, airbrushed.  The flies and corn and toilet paper are fondant.  

The cupcakes are gluten free chocolate cake (this recipe called for coconut flour and tasted OMG wonderful!), soaked in syrup, topped with ganache and melted double chocolate buttercream.  The maggots are airbrushed marshmallow fondant.  I am loving my airbrush!

The next cake is just a little smash cake I made up this morning.  I broke my tooth yesterday and I've been a little out of sorts with the pain, but somehow managed to pull this off anyway.

This is my first time trying to do flames on a cake.  I cut out a stencil from parchment paper with a razor blade.  It was pretty easy, but I am glad I tried it today because I learned a lot.  The cake itself is vegan chocolate with double chocolate buttercream, covered in ganache, with marshmallow fondant around the sides and vanilla buttercream for the "grass".

Well, I think that's all for this year so far!  I have a few cakes coming up so check back in and I'll try to have everything updated on time!