Saturday, November 29, 2008

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!!


Thursday, November 20, 2008

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!

Monday, November 17, 2008

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!

Sunday, November 16, 2008

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!

Thursday, November 13, 2008

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!

Monday, November 10, 2008

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!

Thursday, November 6, 2008

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)