Princess Birthday Cake

I didn't start out thinking I would LOVE this cake, and as things went together, I was suspect, but when everything was in place and I stepped back and checked it out, GOODNESS I really like this cake.  It's chocolate fudge cake with vanilla buttercream frosting and filling.  The crown and flowers are gumpaste and the draping is fondant.  I made the crown by rolling out the gumpaste and using a hand drawn template to cut out the shape, then rolling it around an empty and cleaned Crisco container to dry, then setting that in a bowl filled with flour (so that the points curved just the right amount of outward).  I learned to do this after much trial and error on the last crown I made.  I made the crown larger (last time I used an oatmeal container, which was smaller in girth).  The crown was pearlized using my airbrush machine.  I love that thing.

The flowers have inedible gem centers.  I just liked the look so much more than piped centers, it gave a certain pizzazz.

I think I like the back better than the front!

I have a lot of cake stuff coming up and I'm feeling the pressure!  Tomorrow is a Barney cake, then a Lightning McQueen cake for Dollbaby's birthday, and next weekend is busy busy busy too!  Everyone is having a birthday in February!

Ah yes.  I made this little smash cake for Stinkie's friend last weekend.  I also made another cake, but I lost my iPod so I didn't get a picture of it :(.  That's okay, everything was SO frustrating about those two cakes, so I'm not incredibly happy with how they came out.  It's okay.  Both cakes were loved by their owners, and this princess cake made up for it!

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.

Storybook Cake

M-Pie turned 3 just recently and I made her this fairytale storybook cake.  The cake is my yellow recipe with buttercream frosting.  I was expecting a very small intimate family gathering, so imagine my surprise when we pull up to my Mother-In-Law's house and there are easily 8 cars parked outside her house!  At a mere 1-layer, 9x13 inches, the cake was too small for everyone to have some, but the kids all got a piece and some of the adults got one too.  It was a really fun event and everyone raved about my "skillz" and how good the cake was.  It made me feel so great!

As I mentioned, I baked the cake in a regular rectangular 9x13 pan, then trimmed the short sides so there was a gentle angle.  The scraps I mixed with frosting and shaped the humped areas where the "pages" would naturally fall bowed.  I then frosted the top of the cake with pink and the edges with purple and did the Viva paper towel trick.  The princess was made out of a small wonder mold cake.  The body of the princess is fondant molded onto a dowel, then shoved through the top of the little half-egg shaped cake, then dressed in a gown of red fondant.  I hand rolled the hair thin and attached with regular water.  The crown and mouse are made of fondant as well.  The little princess gems were bought at the dollar store (admitted sheepishly).  It was very fun to make, even though the first princess I made was too big for the cake and I had to do it over again!
Happy Birthday M-Pie!

Catching Back Up - Part 1- Strawberry Hill Races

Hey everyone!  It's been a very long time!  I've slacked off on the cake thing for a while, just taking it easy and enjoying time with my kiddo, but I have done a few and I'm ready to show them off!  This one was a special order for the Strawberry Hill Races, the Preakness Race.  I'm not a horse racing fan, so when my Aunt-In-Law called to ask about this cake, I had to scour the internet for information.  I found out that each of the races in the Triple Crown have a special flower, so I decided to go with that theme.
The Kentucky Derby's flower is the Red Rose,

Preakness is the Black Eyed Susan,

and the Belmont Stakes is the White Carnation.

  To represent the Triple Crown theme, I made, you guessed it, three crowns out of gumpaste.  I messed up NUMEROUS times getting this right.  I think I should have gone with thicker gumpaste.  Then I needed the crowns to be, well, gold.  I tried a variety of things, and nothing worked very well until I used a lot of gold shimmer dust on top of yellow crowns.  Anyhoo, I made the flowers, baked up the cake (this cake is yellow and chocolate cakes.  Instead of one layer being yellow and one being chocolate, stacked on one another, I cut each cake in half and made the left side the chocolate cake and the right side the yellow cake.  The cakes on top were chocolate) and frosted it with buttercream.  I piped the letters and voila, there was a cake!