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:

Welcome Home

This cake was made for a welcome home party being thrown this weekend!

The honoree has been deployed for over 14 months and is finally home! (here's to hoping none of them check this blog today!)

This is a vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream and fondant accents. The anchor is fondant painted with gold luster dust.

Love the way this cake came out!

Bridal Dress

This update is late. It's late because someone (coughcough) broke our main camera late last weekend.

Anyway, this cake was made for a bridal shower last weekend - I based the cake on a design that the customer liked (good choice April!) and changed a few things to make it my own!

This cake is a vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream. The dress and roses are made of fondant (as is the white fondant border), with silver dragees used as accents!

I had fun with this cake but there was some added pressure because Jess was here while I was working on it. I'm terribly critical of myself as it is but having someone watch me made it so much worse!

Week ending cakes!

This cake was made for a good friend of mine, Christy, for her 30th birthday!

It's all white cake (she would have it no other way!) with vanilla buttercream. The flowers are fondant, the topper is white chocolate with silver dragees.

I love how this cake turned out!

Bella/Caroline's cakes:

These cakes were made for a teacher's kids whose birthdays are on the same day (I think)! They were having a small family celebration and needed two smalller cakes.

Bella's cake is chocolate with chocolate mousse and chocolate buttercream. The topper is fondant, as is the polka dots!




Caroline's cake is vanilla with strawberry filling and vanilla buttercream. Again, the topper is fondant (as is the polka dots)



I love the colors on this cake! Side note: I am having major cracking issues with my cakes lately. I'm not sure if has something to do with the weather changing around here but it's been the source of much stress in these parts recently. I haven't changed anything in the process of making the buttercream or the cakes so I'm not sure what could be causing it. The only thing that I can think of is that decided to try stacking the cakes differently a few weeks ago. I guess we'll go back to our old way and see if that fixes the problem. Seriously though, I have never had cracks in my cakes!!!

Lola's cake:

This cake was for the second cutest baby in the world (Rylee has to be my #1), Lola. Lola was in my class at MDO last spring and in the summer and we bonded pretty quickly. Lola's mom is also pretty awesome and we soon discovered that we had a lot in common! She found the cake that I made for my SIL last year and decided that she wanted the same for Lola's second birthday celebration!




I'm pretty pleased with how the colors came out on this one! It's a strawberry cake with vanilla buttercream. The cherry blossoms were piped on with buttercream as well!

We sure do love cherry blossoms around here!