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.

Frog and Monkey Girls

This cake took two cakes and smooshed them together into one cute little (or should I say large) cake.  The cake is yellow cake with vanilla buttercream filling and frosting.  The animals are made of Rice Krispie Treats (RKT from now on, readers) and fondant.  The bottom tier is 2-12" cakes and the top tier is 2-6" cakes.
The frog(ette)'s body is made of RKT covered in MMF (marshmallow fondant).  It was a fun little piece.  The lily pad is just fondant rolled thin and frilled about the edges.  Isn't her bow just the cutest thing?  I used shimmer dust for her cheeks, as this little frog knows how to apply her blush just so.  The fly is made out of gumpaste.  The wings were pretty tricky to attach, since using the gumpaste glue made the very thin things flop over, but I persevered and was able to make it all work out.  The spring is just wire wrapped around a pen and pulled a bit.

The little monkey is made of RKT.  The body, head, ans ears were made separately and fitted together with toothpicks.  I cut out the pale fondant for the face and the belly and "glued" them to the RKT using just a little water.  I piped some chocolate buttercream on the side of the monkey closest to the 6" tier so that I wouldn't risk screwing up the BC (buttercream from here-on-out).  Side note here, I haven't learned how to make a good rich chocolate color without using cocoa.  I tried, goodness, I tried, but in the end, good ol' cocoa won over.  I shoved a dowel into the underside of the monkey and used that to hold the weight of the RKT.  I have learned in the past year how important it is to support your basic cake structure.  Anyway :) I piped in the rest of the BC with tip #17 and placed the arms, legs, and tail.  Looking back, it would have been easier to put the tail on before putting the BC on the monkey, but it came off without a hitch.  Then I drew on the face and there ya go! 

  Both bows were made out of fondant.  If you look at the frog in the monkey closeup, you can see her blush.  She really is too dang cute.

  Instead of doing the dots out of fondant, I did buttercream.  They don't look as polished as I would have liked, but I think they look okay too.  I very much enjoyed this cake.  I find that I love moulding fondant ever so much.  It really is my favorite thing about cakes.

All in all, this was a really fun cake and I look forward to the next challenge this amazing and consuming activity brings me.

Two Dino Siblings on a Cake

A good friend of mine wanted me to make a cake for her kids' birthday party.  There's a five year old boy and a three year old girl, and their birthdays are very close together.  She had SO much on her plate, getting stuff ready for the party, and I just honestly really wanted to do this cake for them (it was my birthday gift lol).  We looked at a few different inspiration photos online and picked the best one, and I went to work.
The cake itself is just chocolate cake with strawberry filling on the bottom 12" tier.  The top tier is just one 10" layer of chocolate cake.  The frosting is vanilly buttercream.  The dinos are completely made out of fondant and coloring gels.  I was a little worried that I wouldn't be able to pull off this look, but I think I nailed it!  This cake had me giddy for a whole day.
I did mess up the strawberry filling, but I salvaged it (we had no more strawberries in the house and I had no way to get to the store, so salvaged filling it is!)  I tiered the cakes and covered them with light green frosting, let it crust (read: waited 20 minutes) and smoothed it with Viva paper towels.  I had leftover fondant from the wedding cake on the 24th and that's what I used for this cake.

I wanted it to be obvious that there was an older boy dino and a younger, very girly girl dino so that her daughter would be able to tell which one was hers.  I just had a blast with this cake.  I got the shine going by smoothing quite a bit on the counter with a little shortening.  I plopped the bodies on, then the necks and heads, then the tails and paws.  I rolled some half and half (colored and white) balls for the eyes and eyelids, and painted on coloring gels for eyelashes, pupils, and mouths.

Note the cute little lipsticked girl!  The spikes on the boy dino were next.  The four largest spikes were fashioned on wires and inserted into the cake.  I did the boy spots and called that dino finished.  I then piped on the moss/grass with the grass tip so I wouldn't have to deal with going in-between the spikes of the two dinos.

The girl dino's spines were next.  They are just triangles of fondant, attached with my favorite gumpaste glue.  Then I did her spots.  Girly girl accomplished!  I glued on some claws and painted the girl's "fingernails" red, then filled in with the darker green grassy/mossy stuff.  For some reason I liked to look at it as moss, I don't know why.  I piped their names and ages on the side of the cake, ran electrical tape along the edges of the cake board (I know, tacky, but you can't tell and honestly who cares?!) to finish it off and called it a cake.  I am so pleased with how this cake came out and the kids loved it.  Stinkie ran around like crazy and started to have mini meltdowns because we were cutting into his nap by hanging out at the party, so we had to leave early, but we had the BEST time!  It is so wonderful to have friends, isn't it?

My First Wedding Cake!

My Aunt-in-Law wanted me to do a wedding cake for a portfolio she's helping me put together, so I needed to do a wedding cake...FAST!  I posted on Craigslist in the free section that I'd make a wedding cake at cost (ended up being $65 delivered and set up).  I received quite a few responses, but many of them were for things like baby showers, or birthdays, or things of that nature.  I really wanted to do a WEDDING cake so I could get that kind of experience.  After reading through a few responses, I got an email from a couple getting married on the 24th (of April) that had not ordered a cake yet.  We met up, had some cupcakes, and talked about what they wanted.  The chose a calla lily and roses cake.  Their colors were candy apple red and white, the lilies white and the roses red.  This woman had a seriously beautiful dress picked out!  They were just a very sweet couple and I enjoyed making the cake for this special day.  The stakes were high, so I was a little stressed and it seemed that everything that could go wrong with the fondant, did.  It wasn't stretchy, then it was too humid, then there were little sugar clumps in it, then it tore, etc etc etc.  But I'm getting ahead of myself...

I made the calla lilies by starting with the pistils.  I cut wire the length of the pistil and stem, then rolled out thin, long cones of yellow gumpaste and shoved them on the wire.  I set those in that florists' foam to dry completely overnight.

The next day I cut out about 30 hearts out of white gumpaste and wrapped them around inverted sno-cone cups, flipped the edges, and let them dry for two days.  They were difficult to take off and I broke a few of them.  The gumpaste dried onto the cups themselves.  Next time I will make sure I rotate them a few times during the drying process.

Then I took the petals off the cups, put on a dab of "glue" (gumpaste dissolved in water), and stuck the wire through the hole at the bottom of the petal so the pistil was properly placed.  I then hung them up, upside down, for three days (just to be sure they were dry).  The roses were fairly easy, but time consuming.

I found a tutorial on YouTube that was helpful.  I placed the rosettes on precut wires and stuck them in the foam to dry, then the next day I cut out the green leafy bud stuff that goes on the bottom (I'm too lazy right now to look up the term, so I hope you know what I mean!)  I let those dry.  Flowers were pretty much done.
The fondant was difficult for some reason.  Maybe it's because it's all white and there's no room for error, I don't know.  But it was a PAIN!  I finally got it all stacked and placed the red ribbon around the tiers.
I got some florists' tape and bound the lilies together in a pleasing fashion, bound the rosettes with them, and placed them on the cake, holding them into the cake with wires inserted into the cake itself.  It came out surprisingly sturdy.

The couple had dropped off a cake topper, so I put two rosettes in it to tie the cake into it and placed it.  I wasn't too sure I liked the topper, so I took a picture with just two lilies and two rosettes on top as well.  I did use the topper for the wedding, but I'm putting both pictures on here.  I'm not sure why the picture of the cake with the topper is coming out funky, and I wish it wouldn't do that, but I'm too pooped out right now to figure it out.  Please forgive me!

All in all, it was a fun cake, but I think I'll stick to birthdays and fun stuff for now.  I just love to giggle when I'm making a cake, it's like an extra ingredient.  I know, I know, wedding cakes are where the big bucks are, but perhaps I'm just a silly little doe...I'm okay with that!

Wu-Tang parties with SpongeBob

 This week I had two cakes on my agenda. There was a SpongeBob smashcake for a little boy's 1st birthday and a Sweet 16 cake for a big party!  SpongeBob first, because I'm just aching to write about the Wu-Tang  cake and it's such sweet expectation!

  Dean is turning 1!  Grandma wanted a special cake just for him.  It's nothing incredibly outlandish, but it was a fun little cake.  It measures 7"x5".  I never watch SpongeBob so I had to go completely off of pictures, but I think it came out well.  The original cake we decided on was out of fondant, but of course, the one year old doesn't want fondant!  So this is me trying to make buttercream look more fondant-y.

The Wu-Tang cake was a MONSTER cake!  It weighed about 50 pounds.  The tiers are 12", 10", 8", and 6".  It took over 15 hours to decorate this cake (without baking times included).  It is all yellow cake with two layers of buttercream filling and two layers of strawberry filling.  There were five pictures we took inspiration from when the clients came to order.  From those five we came up with this concept drawing that became the Wu-Tang cake.  Why Wu-Tang?  Do you see the tops of the Wu-Tang symbol?

Well, I do!  It was truly wonderful working on this cake and I was so happy to see it's completion.  It feels like I haven't done laundry or answered emails since Tuesday!  On this cake I tried out a new technique of covering the cake board with fondant.  It was fairly simple and I really enjoy doing something new.  The stars were difficult to figure out how to put on.  I made the stars out of gumpaste and pressed two together to sandwich the wire, then painted them and let them dry.  I was going for a more "puffy" kind of look to the positioning of the wires, but the gumpaste proved to be just a little too heavy for the gauge of wire I selected.  I think it looks pretty good anyway, though!  The clients loved it, and that was the best part!
Well, my back aches and I'm ready to cuddle on the couch with my hubby for a while.  Long days and pleasant nights, everyone!