The Walking Dead

Hey all!
  This Halloween I got to make a Walking Dead cake!  It was so much fun.  The cake itself is my favorite Vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream filling and painted vanilla fondant on the outside.

I love the zombies behind the fence.  I wanted to take a picture while I was doing it and kept thinking about it but I was in the zone and couldn't stop.

And of course there's Rick Grimes.

Icing Smiles - Jazmyn

I have been working at the deli in the grocery store by my house for about 5 months now.  I really enjoy it, but there is not much scope for the imagination, as I have to stick to certain designs and colors, and everything is either a 9" round or a sheet cake.  Bright side is I've gotten incredibly fast (60 cakes in 8 hours anyone?) and I've reached the expert level on piping buttercream borders.
There's just a few things I've done since the last post.  The one I want to talk about in this post is the last cake I did for Icing Smiles.

When I was contacted for this cake, Jazmyn wanted an Elsa/Frozen cake.  I was so excited and I started making her this bust for the top.  I had it all worked out and I made up many different types of snowflakes, bought some mystical snow sparkle dust, you name it, I got it.  I haven't made a Frozen cake before (other than at the bakery where I was working off someone else's vision) so I was super excited.

The party was postponed because Jazmyn needed to travel to another state to get medical care.  Poor baby.  When they returned, she had decided that Monster High was much more her speed, so I ditched Elsa (alright, she sat in my closet for about a month afterward, waiting for some little kid to want her, THEN I threw her out).

I got started on Jazmyn's cake with four days to go.  It was a three tier cake, Almond, Mocha Chocolate, and Strawberry flavors.

I was so humbled delivering this cake the day before the party.  Let me tell you folks - I have a kid, and he's rough and tumble, he's hale and healthy.  Nothing makes you hold your baby tighter than coming face to face with another parent's worst nightmare.

Jazmyn loved her cake.

I emailed my contact for the family about a week later for more pictures and was informed that she had passed during her party.  She didn't get to taste the cake, but I was told she was so excited and happy, taking all her guests directly to her cake and proudly showing it off.

Her funeral was packed with people mourning and the family requested that everyone wear something hot pink in her honor.

Fly high, Jazmyn.

Another Hiatus!

And I'm back!

It's been quite a while yet again but here I am, writing another saga of the cake journey that is my life!

Here's a brief sampling from 2014.  I was working at a bakery during this time.

2015 started off like any other year, with more cakes!  I did many more than these but these are a few of my favorites!

Happy Caking!

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!

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!)

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!?