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!

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.