Classic NES Controller for Matthew

This cake was made on the fly (we had been home an hour from snowboarding in Colorado when we started it) for my youngest brother Matthew, for his 15th birthday.

Last year I made him the Wii cake, this year he gets classic NES!

It's 1/4 sheet cut down (french vanilla) with strawberry buttercream covered in marshmallow fondant. Rodney did so much work on this cake (I had the flu the entire time we were in Colorado), if it hadn't been for his help, I don't believe there would have been a cake! All of the details are fondant, with the exception of the words, which were piped on by me!

Love this cake!

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!

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!

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)

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!