R2D2 cake

What a fun cake!

Fun because we lovelovelove making cakes for kids around here and fun because this cake was made for a very good friend of mine from highschool!

Facebook/Myspace and Blogger sure do have a way of reuniting friends. You never know who is out there reading your blog ;)

Brandon and Mindy's oldest son, Dylan, is turning 5 and wanted a Star Wars themed cake. It's half chocolate/half vanilla, iced in buttercream with fondant details/accents.

Rodney did a great job of carving this cake out and getting the right shape. I'm not going to lie though, it was incredibly difficult to ice. I don't know if I did the best job of getting it iced but I think it turned out okay in the end.

Fun cake! Thanks to The Kennedy Family for asking me to do this! I'm so glad I was able to see you guys!




Side:

Liberty's 1st Birthday

These cakes were made for some very good friend's of ours, for their daughter's first birthday! Mommy Marissa pretty much gave me creative freedom with these only asking to match the invitation print as best we could. This cake is especially special to me because I also made the cake for shower thrown to welcome Liberty! I'm pleased with the results but their are definitely some changes that I would make in hindsight.

The main cake is a 1/4 sheet vanilla iced in buttercream with fondant and buttercream accents. I love how the cake turned out but I'm not sold on the paper I chose for the board. I think the two different blues are a little too much. After thinking and thinking about how I wanted to add the "swirly" design, I finally decided to carefully brush some brilliant silver luster dust in different patterns on the buttercream. I'm very pleased with the results.

The cake from the side:



The original print:



From the front:



The Smash Cake

This is also a vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream. It's a 5 inch cake, the "1" on top is fondant that I painted with teal luster dust. Love the colors on this one!



The original print:



Liberty is such a cutie and it was a ton of fun watching her dive into her cake! Happy Birthday Liberty!

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!

Starbucks and Spaghetti Cakes

This Starbucks cake was made for the director of our MDO program. It was actually made for both the director and the assistant director, but the AD is currently out of town. ( in appreciation of all their hard work during the summer )

Both are big time lovers of all things Starbucks and can almost always be seen with a cup of coffee in their hands.

This cake is 5, 6 inch round chocolate cakes (baked with coffee grounds) slightly carved to resemble a cup. It's covered in fondant with buttercream piped on top to look like whipped cream. The logo, the paper holder, napkin, stirrer and sugars are all fondant.

Close-up of the logo:



I piped the "lady" in the middle of the logo freehanded (I also piped the letters around the logo). It's not totally perfect, but you can certainly tell what it is - I guess that's all that matters!

The Napkin:



I'm pretty pleased with the outcome of this piece! I googled a Starbucks napkin image and then tried to replicate it as best I could. I cut a piece of brown fondant out and then, with my small santuku knife, I lightly tapped on the fondant. First vertically and then horizontally. I cut in two lines on the left side and upper part of the fondant piece to give it a more realistic effect. I painted the leaves on the left corner using a small amount of green coloring (avocado) and a little bit of vodka.

I wrote the words on with a fondant marker.



I really, really love how the napkin turned out. Literally every person who saw the cake today thought it was real!




The sugar packets were made with fondant and buttercream. They were perfect but someone accidently sat a bowl on top of them, causing them to smear. I tried my best to get them back to looking decent but I know they are not as good as they were!

One last picture!



I painted the lines on the holder!


Such a fun cake and everyone got a big kick out of it! Rodney and I had a lot of fun on this one ( he covered the main cake in fondant for me)!


Spaghetti Cake





This cake was made tonight for the August birthdays up at Charlie Tango! I thought it would be fun to do something kind of silly this month - I decided to choose between making the spaghetti cake or doing a pot of beans cake and the spaghetti cake won.

This cake is 2 layers. The bottom layer is chocolate topped with vanilla buttercream/ fresh strawberries. The top layer is vanilla cake.

The meatballs are chocolate Rice Krispy Treats that I made and formed into balls. The marinara is strawberry preserves and the cheese is grated up white chocolate!

My hands were THROBBING from piping so much tonight!

Here is the completed cake, with the "garlic bread." (toasted angel food cake, painted with a little bit of watered down, yellow food coloring)




This cake really neat to put together, I had a lot of fun and I really got into it! Hopefully it tricks some people tomorrow!