TCU Graduation

This cake was a last minute cake made for one of my brother's room mates, for her graduation from TCU.

It's a carrot cake with vanilla buttercream and fondant accents. The bottom of the cap is made from a 5 inch round cake covered in fondant. The top is a piece of foam core covered in fondant and is the only non-edible piece on the cake!

Pretty happy with the results of this cake considering we did it very quickly!


Close Up of the horned frog:

Oh Christmas Tree...

We made this cake for Tango, to celebrate the birthdays for the month of December.

I always get "creative freedom" when it comes to their cakes but this month that worked in our favor especially considering I might need to make another one of these next week. I thought I could use the practice and make it on a smaller scale - and it actually ended up being a lot of fun!

I made 3 eight inch cakes, 3 six inch, 1 five inch and 1 two inch. (assorted chocolate and vanilla) Rodney stacked them all and carved them into the cone shape. The leaves are overlapping diamond cutouts (fondant) and I made the ornaments by melting down jolly ranchers and shaping them into balls. I also added silver dragees for the "twinkle" effect. The "gifts" at the bottom of the tree are petit fours that I dipped in either milk or white chocolate.

We were pretty pleased with the outcome of this cake. It's got a nice clean feel to it, which I like. I'm not a huge fan of super busy cakes. I guess I'm the same way in every day life, I like straight lines and things that have a modern feel to it. (pertaining to my home and even my clothes!)

This Weekend

Here's what we did this weekend!

Ornament cupcakes



Ornament cookies:



Ace Cash Express:



Treasure Map Cake!



And here's another angle because I'm super happy with the way it turned out!



Other cookies!

Weekend Pastries

My gosh this was a busy weekend!

Aside from the 11 cookie cutters and three parties, we had 2 intense cakes and a cupcake order!



This first cake was probably one of the hardest cakes we've ever worked on. Our really good friend Ryan is a LOTR fanatic and mentioned to me a few months back that he wanted a "ring" cake from the books/movies. I told him we could probably do it and then brushed it aside, thinking he would forget it.

He did not forget it.

He asked for the ring cake and wanted the elvish inscriptions. But he did not want fondant.

Needless to say we had a pretty big task ahead of us.

I baked two 10 inch cakes and cut the middle out. I then split the cake in half and iced the inside of each ring. We had taken the inscriptions and blown them up and I used a straight pin to push through wax paper I had placed underneath. I tried pressing the wax paper into the cake to use as a transfer but I could only get parts of letters (is that what they call them in elvish? I have no idea). So I ended up free-handing about 85% of it. Once I had the inside of the ring piped, I pushed the cakes back together, iced the outside and piped the inscription. I brushed super gold luster dust on the entire thing to give it the gold effect. It's not my prettiest cake but you can definitely tell what it is.

(close up of the piping)



I would really love to do this cake in fondant at some point.

The second cake of the weekend was for our very good friends' daughter, Kaitlyn (she's Rylee's friend too). Kaitlyn is turning 5 and really loves all things princess. Her birthday party was a girls only affair and there was tea and lemonade to accompany all of the princess-like activities.



Kaitlyn's Mommy (hi Desiree!) chose a cake that she really liked and asked if I could make it. I was excited about this cake because, and I know I have said this time and time again, but I REALLY love makings kids cakes.

I made 5 (strawberry) cakes and after they were stacked, Rodney carved down the top to resemble a castle. Earlier in the week we had covered the board in green and blue fondant. We wanted it to look like there was grass and water around the castle.

Everything else is pretty self explanatory. The pillars are paper towel rolls covered in fondant. The tops are sugar cones also covered in fondant, the top walls of the castle are sugar cubes, I piped the flowers and vines with buttercream, the door and bridge are fondant.



This cake was very labor intensive but it was totally worth it. I loved the way it turned out and I can't wait to make another one!

Melinda's cupcakes:

These cupcakes were for a couple that we attend church with. They are having a baby in January and this has to be their 6th or 7th shower! They are having a boy and decorating the room in a Harley theme - they asked that I come up with something that went along with that a little. This is what I came up with!



Busy busy weekend! we don't have as many cakes this week but we do have one and a large amount of cookies to make! We haven't even started Christmas shopping yet!

Amy's Wedding Cake

This is the cake that we drove to Vegas!

Our very good friends invited us to come celebrate their marriage and asked if we would mind bringing along their wedding cake.

We'd been planning this for months and months! How to transport, how to keep the cakes cool, when to bake the cakes, when to make the icing...so on and so on.

Rodney and the groom (Tyler) came up with a ice chest/refrigeration/coolant system. They built an ice chest out of styrofoam and included chambers for the cakes to sit on (with dry ice underneath) to keep them cool the entire car trip there.

I baked the cakes the afternoon before we left. We leveled and got them all crumb-coated and set them in their places for the trip, with the dry ice below. We made it to Vegas with all of the cakes in tact, including the dummy cake that I iced a week before we left.

We arrived in Vegas around midnight (their time) and settled in for the night. The following morning I woke up and immediately got to work. We set the mixer up on the dresser and started plugging away.









The cake! The bottom tier is the dummy, the middle is key lime with strawberry buttercream and the top is vanilla with strawberry buttercream. The entire thing is covered in vanilla buttercream. The board was covered in fondant before we left and embossed with an overlapping oval pattern. The pattern was used in the invitations that the bride and groom sent out so it was nice to be able to incorporate that!





Some photos from the "cake party" in the suite the bride and groom had!





I did have some issues with the icing. The weather is much drier there and I think traveling through all of the different climate changes might have affected the shortening a bit. Regardess, I think we were able to make it look half decent for traveling 20 hours from Texas!

We had a blast with this cake and a blast in Las Vegas! Thanks so much and congratulations to Amy and Tyler!

Bisola's Cakes

These cakes were made for a loyal customer of mine this week. I didn't think we were going to be able to do the turkey cake but we decided to rush back (drove straight through from Nevada to Texas without stopping) to get it done. We'd done the same turkey cake for her last year and she asked for the same this year.




It's a marble cake with vanilla buttercream. The stuffing is cake, the vegetables are fondant and the legs/wings are rice krispy treats. I painted the entire cake with a piping gel/cinnamon mixture.



Priela's cake

This cake is a duplicate of a cake that was made in a very popular bakery in the UK, The Cake Shop. It was made in celebration of a second birthday.

It's a marble cake with strawberry filling, covered in fondant with fondant details. This cake came out beautifully!!

Pierson

This cake was made for the son of a friend of mine, from high school. Our kiddos even have the same birthday!

The idea was taken from another cake decorator, just changed some colors around a bit. Once it's home (since they are picking it up while we are in route to Vegas) they will add the gold coins and maybe even a little brown sugar sand. The cake is all chocolate with vanilla buttecream. The skull on top is made from rice krispy treats, covered in melted white chocolate and marshmallow fondant.

Hopefully I'll get to see some pictures once it's complete...hint hint!


Wish me luck with my cake decorating adventures in Vegas!

CUT Anniversary/Wedding cake

Hey there out there blog followers!

This is shortshortshort post about two of the cakes I have worked on this week. I'm currently finishing up the 3rd cake and baking the 4th. The 4th cake is the wedding cake that we'll be traveling to Las Vegas with!

This cake was made for Charlie Tango for their yearly anniversary celebration. I think it's the 12th year -- I might be wrong on that though. I know this is the third anniversary cake I have made for them!

It's have milk chocolate, half vanilla with vanilla buttercream and fondant accents!




This wedding cake was made for a friend of the family. They wanted a red velvet cake covered in white buttercream with a simple border! Voila!



Hopefully I will have time to update with the 3rd cake and I'll definitely take a lot of pictures and give a detailed account of how we transported the 3 tiered wedding cake!

Rylee's cupcakes

These cupcakes were made for Rylee's birthday (which is actually today)!

I made them for her to take to her gymnastics class (she goes on Mondays with her a few of her closest buds), to take to school tomorrow and to eat tonight after we go to dinner with the family(s).

She said she wanted lemon cupcakes with vanilla icing and flowers on top. This is what I came up with in a hurry last night as we were also working on all of our other orders for the week!

Happy Birthday Rylee Kate!

Amanda's Wedding Reception

These cakes were made for an old friend of mine, Amanda.

Amanda and her hubby had a beachside wedding last week and a reception here, this weekend. They decided to keep the beach theme for the reception and requested a treasure chest and a simple ivory cake with seashells.

The treasure chest is 2 quarter sheet German chocolate cakes covered in chocolate buttercream. The lid is rice kripsy treats and the accents are fondant and candy. The sand is a mixture of crushed vanilla wafers and golden brown sugar.

I really love making these cakes. I would totally make a treasure chest every week if someone wanted me to!



The bridal cake's bottom tier is vanilla cake with cream cheese filling. The top tier is vanilla cake with coconut cream mousse. The entire thing is covered in vanilla buttercream with white chocolate (tinted brown) seashells. I also made an additional 50 shells so that everyone could have a shell. This cake had some issues. The temperature changes from day to day is killing my dependability with my buttercream. I iced this cake when it was in the low 40's and today when we drove it to the reception site, it was in the high 60's. This changed the buttercream and caused it to slide and crack slightly. It drives me absolutely crazy when things like this happen but seriously, no one else ever notices. Also, this is a big reason most wedding cakes are done in fondant.





Fun cakes, I enjoyed making these!

Getting ready for 4 major cakes this week, including 2 wedding cakes...1 of which we are driving to VEGAS!

Curious George!

This cake was made for one of Rodney's co-worker's son, Wilson, for his 2nd birthday.

Wilson is having a Curious George themed party and this was our take on a cake that I found online. The original cake was yellow with brown stripes but Mom wanted more of the primary colors incorporated into the design. This is what I came up with!




The cake is vanilla with vanilla buttercream and fondant accents!

Happy Birthday Wilson!

Rylee's birthday party!

My baby (who told me today that she was NOT a baby) turns 3 next Monday but we had her birthday party this past weekend.

I did her theme in cherry blossoms and tried to incorporate that as much as I could into the party. For a more detailed look at the celebration, please visit madefromtickytacky.blogspot.com.

Now, on to the pastries!

The cookie favors:

Every year I do a cookie favor or two to give out to the guests as a way of saying thanks. The kids get their little favor boxes but we have plenty of adults who come to celebrate Rylee's birth (and several that don't even have kids!) and I feel like they should walk away with something as well.

This year I did cherry blossoms and silhouette cookies.

Unwrapped:





Wrapped/tagged:





Many thanks to Rodney who did a great job with the silhouette cookie cutter! Such a talented guy that husband of mine is...

The cake!

The idea for this cake came from one of many hours that I have spent perusing the cake-lined pages of CakeCentral (even though I have not been able to upload to that site for a year and a half because I have a Mac and they refuse to fix that bug, I still get inspiration almost daily from the many pictures that ARE able to be put up on that site). I wanted something that was a little more modern and bright than just regular cherry blossoms on piped on a cake so I based this design off of one that I'd seen that was similar.



The bottom tier is vanilla cake with whipped lemon curd buttercream and the top is vanilla with strawberry buttercream. The entire thing is covered in vanilla buttercream. The "R" on top and the leaves are fondant and I piped all of the details in vanilla b/c as well.

I'm very pleased with the way this cake turned out and Rylee absolutely loved it. She was so excited. I think this is the first year she actually understands what a birthday is and how it works. And I'm pretty sure this was a big deal for her because cakes are a dime a dozen around here and NONE of them are ever for her. She constantly asks if the cake I am working on is for her and the answer she always gets is, "No baby this cake is for so and so." This week the answer was, "YES! Rylee, this is YOUR birthday cake!" She was proud.

There were a lot of other things I did with this party so if you want to check it out, please head on over to my other blog!

Phillies Fan

This cake was made for a Phillies fan, for his birthday!

This is a vanilla cake with fresh strawberries in the middle and vanilla buttercream.

Love the way this cake turned out!

(sorry for the short post, frantically working on Rylee's cake and another cake at the same time)

Weekend cakes

This weekend was crazy! Aside from the two parties we attended, we took care of 4 cakes (one of them being the Jack cake)!

This first cake was made for my Dad, for his birthday. We took two 1/4 sheet vanilla cakes, put them side by side, and then carved the Longhorn shape. It's covered in strawberry buttercream that was tinted burnt orange. Rodney did such a good job carving this cake but I seem to have lost some of the definition in it after I iced it. I had to put three coats of icing on it to keep the crumbs in! My dad is a huge Longhorns fan and this was a big hit while we were celebrating ... it helps that Texas won yesterday too, hook 'em!



This cake is a different version of the margarita cake I have made in the past. It's for my friend, Tricia, for her birthday. I wanted to make a chocolate martini and tried to find the martini glass but they were completely out of them and I had to settle for the margarita glass. You get the point!!

This is a chocolate peanut butter cake with peanut butter buttercream filling and chocolate buttercream on top (and around the sides) The rim was done with piping gel and chocolate sprinkles. I tasted a bit of this cake and it was great!



The final order made this weekend was for our pastor's wife, Claudia. They were in the middle of a big move this weekend and I wanted to make sure her birthday was recognized so I decided to bring these in with me to church today!

These are chocolate cupcakes with chocolate buttercream and white chocolate candy molds on top! These were super fun to make! (my apologies for the lackluster photo, it was a very busy weekend)

Jack's Whiskey

This cake was made for Rodney's boss, Jack.

If you have been following this blog for a little while now, you'll recall that last years cake for Jack included an explicative that had to be blurred out.

This year no profanity but instead, a personalized bottle of whiskey.

This is a carrot cake with vanilla buttercream, covered in marshmallow fondant. Rodney carved the cake, though this was our second attempt. The first was way too high and didn't look right at all. We were both very pleased with this one.

The label was piped on by yours truly and it was very time and labor intensive! I'm happy with the way it turned out but some of the things are not exactly the same on both sides, which drives me crazy.

Fun cake!

Storm Trooper, Care Bear, Cupcake Assortment

These two cakes were made for a dual birthday party for a brother and sister!





The clone trooper is milk chocolate with raspberry filling carved out of two 1/4 sheets and covered in fondant. Rodney carved this cake out, he did such a wonderful job!

The care bear cake is obviously from the Wilton character pan line. The only thing I changed regarding the original design is that I added the cloud detail around the sides of the cake, which I ended up liking a lot! This was a plain white cake with vanilla buttercream.



These cupcakes were made for a cake testing I did this weekend for our very good friends, Amy and Tyler. I got a few ideas as far as flavors go from the two of them and then sort of came up with a few ideas on my own for them to try that I thought they might enjoy.



The flavors from left to right are:

Row 1:

Orange with vanilla buttercream, vanilla with vanilla buttercream, vanilla with strawberry buttercream, vanilla with vanilla-mint buttercream, lemon with vanilla buttercream,

Row 2:

lemon with strawberry buttercream, chocolate with vanilla buttercream, chocolate with chocolate-mint buttercream, key lime with vanilla buttercream and key lime with strawberry buttercream.

I have to say the key lime and vanilla with strawberry buttercream were exceptionally good. This is the first time I have tried making a strawberry buttercream and it really exceeded my expectations. I didn't really follow a recipe so I'm glad I wrote things down as I went! It really was good. Amy and Tyler agreed, Rodney liked the bowl!

Little Einsteins

This cake was made for one of Rylee's friend's that she takes ballet with!

It's 3, 6 inch vanilla cakes with vanilla buttercream and fondant accents.

I just love the way the little faces turned out!

Closeups: