Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Blue Blossom Cake





This cake was made for one of Rodney's co-worker's wife. There wasn't much instruction on this cake, just that it have some blue in it and that it be "girly."

I decided on doing a cherry blossom cake because I absolutely love cherry blossoms (obviously!) and I think most girls do too.

This cake is red velvet with vanilla buttercream. The branches are made from modeling chocolate, the blossoms are made from a 50/50 mmf and gum paste mixture. The blossoms are also painted with white sparkle luster dust.

I'm going to add a plaque to the empty space later this evening that says "happy birthday," but I wanted to get some pictures taken without it.

I'm really happy with this cake, I love how the colors came out. They seem to compliment one another well.

Thursday, July 26, 2007

Mod Mom



This cake was made for a baby shower. This theme is pretty popular. In fact, we had this theme at my shower, so I'm kind of partial to it.

The cake is three layers of triple chocolate, smoothered between raspberry filling and covered in white chocolate buttercream. The decorations were made of fondant/gum paste and the plaque is fun foam!

I'm pleased with this cake, I love how bright the colors came out (in fact, I made sure the flash was on for a few of the pictures I took just so I could capture it's brightness!) and the fondant looks pretty good. (thanks to rodney for making the fondant for me! and cutting out the mommy!)

Rylee and I will be delivering this cake tomorrow morning!

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

RJ Tools

This cake was made for Rodney and James to celebrate their birthdays at Tango. They usually share a cake for their birthday since they are only a few days apart.

I decided to make a toolbox cake for the both of them because they are the ones that everyone turns to when something needs to be fixed up there. Sometimes I'll talk to Rodney while he's at work and running cables. Not assisting his editor or working on a commercial, but running cables. They're both pretty handy guys so I guess that explains it!

This cake is actually 6 cakes. All are 8 inch squares, three carrot and three chocolate. The toolbox handle was made from a 50/50 fondant gumpaste mixture, as was the name plate. The tools were made from white chocolate and candy molds. I colored each portion the way I wanted it and then painted the silver parts with luster dust. I'm pretty pleased with the outcome of this cake, specifically the tools. The one thing Rodney said while I was making this cake was, "I can't wait to take a bite of that wrench!" I'm pretty sure he did too!



Superman


I made this cake for one of Rodney's very close friends, Aaron. It was for his birthday party which we were unable to make :(

I forgot to take a picture of the cake before I sent it off so this is the best one I have!

Chocolate cake with Vanilla bc!

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Sabrina's Cake




This cake was made for Lisa's daughter, Sabrina. She's off to South Africa and France for a few weeks with the Texas Girls Choir and Lisa wanted to send her off with some yummy cake!

Lisa asked that I incorporate South Africa and France into this cake and this pretty much the only thing I could come up with that worked well together.

The cake is all chocolate with vanilla buttercream. The flags were made from vanilla buttercream as well and if you can't see, there are music notes on the sides of this cake!

I hope Sabrina has a great time on her trip!!

Longhorn Cake




This cake was made for a little boy's 6th birthday. His mother requested a Texas Longhorn cake because he absolutely loves the Longhorns. This is the design I came up with!

It's an oreo cookie cake with vanilla buttecream and fun foam plaque on top. I think I came pretty close to the correct colors for this cake and was pretty happy with the overall outcome.

Friday, July 6, 2007

Margaritaville



As promised, cake # 2!

The inspiration for this cake also came from CakeCentral (so many great cakes)! I decided to make a cake like this because we are going to a restaurant called, "Margarita Ranch" for Rodney's birthday. I thought this would be fun and appropriate!

I bought the glass from Michaels and lined it with red/pink tinted vanilla buttercream. In the middle is two layers of a vanilla cake with strawberries sandwiched in between. Once the cake was in, I added more buttercream and then added the "sweaty stuff," as Lisa would call it (edible glitter). I put piping gel around the edge of the glass and sprinkled on some sanding sugar for the salt effect! The lime wedge was picked up at a candy store and the only thing real on this cake is the straw!

Hopefully it looks this good tomorrow!

Have a sip!

Blooregard Q. Kazoo



This is cake #1 of 3 for Rodney's birthday. I'm currently working on cake 2.

I was visisting CakeCentral one evening a few months ago when I found a cake that was made to look like Rodney's favorite cartoon character. He saw it and went crazy, saying I HAD to make it for his birthday.

This cake is four 6 inch rounds with half of a sports ball pan on top. They are alternating layers of chocolate and vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream. The person who designed this cake did her's in fondant. We attempted that but it was nearly impossible. I made mmf which didn't work and we used wilton's fondant, which didn't work either. It's a very odd shape to cover in fondant. I've never had so much trouble, not even with the airplane cake!

We opted for buttercream - which is fine with me because I'm not a huge fan of fondant anyway. I really like marshmallow fondant but I HATE premade (unless it's Satin Ice, that's okay) so buttercream is cool with me. The entire cake is covered in "bloo" colored buttercream, the accents are fondant. I made the eyes using a cookie cutter and some edible marker. The cake was suprisingly easy to smooth, despite it's odd shape.




I snapped these pictures just before I messed the cake up. That's right, I messed it up. This almost never happens. Usually someone else messes it up. Ahem, ahem. It was me this time though - I nudged it with one of my knuckles when I was placing it the box, which caused it to crack on the side. It's not TERRIBLE but I hate that it got messed up. I started to fix it but Rodney said he doesn't want me to change it because he's VERY happy with the placement of the eyes and mouth. Cracked Bloo it is!

Stay tuned for birthday cake #2.

Cupcakes for Jake


These cupcakes were made for Jake, an employee up at Tango. These were sort of a last minute request so I had little time to come up with something. He likes chocolate and toffee, so I made chocolate cupcakes with toffee pieces and caramel filling.

I decided to try these party cups instead of regular cupcake papers because I feel like they look nicer -- bad idea. I'm not sure what I was doing wrong but the edges of the cups kept browning and almost burning. I had to double a few up so that it wasn't noticeable. I really like the way they look but I don't think I will use them again.




I wanted to do something on top of the cupcakes because I felt like they looked too plain, so I put either a dark chocolate (brown) or a white chocolate (green) disk on each cupcake and then placed a "J" on each in black buttercream. It's all I could come up with at the last minute!