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!