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!

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!