Shoe Cake and Garden Cake

November was that time again. My mom and my sister in law share a birthday. For the past two years I have made them both a cake but next year I might try to combine the two into one. For my mom I tried to do a backyard garden theme...my little brother said it looked like an Easter cake. Brat! Hehe.

I thought it was gosh darn cute and didn't get Easter at all...(as I stick my tongue out at my brother)...

For my sister in law I did a shoe on a pink and black girly cake. Although she isn't very girly...hehe....she does like shoes and purses and fashion.

4x4 Club Christmas Party Cake

I did this cake for my dad's Jeep club Christmas party. Unfortunately I didn't get great pictures of it. :(

Halloween/Office Party Cake

My fiancee's mom was having a potluck at work and wanted to take one of my cakes. It was originally for Halloween but she learned that her department head was also having a birthday so the cake became multi-purpose. Nancy gave me all of the key points about her boss, such as the jar of M&M's, the red umbrella, the papers covering everything and the things she would say to them every day. Here's how I put it all together.

Hunger Games Cake

I did this Hunger Games cake for my fiancee's daughter, Shannon. This is my favorite cake so far. I LOVE how it turned out. I'm still amazed that I was able to get the mocking jay even close to how it should look. Haha.

Shannon was very happy with it too.... :)

Safari Animals Cake

This is my nephew Ryder's second birthday. I loved this cake. And I loved doing it for him. So much fun! Well...aside from the usual frustrations along the way. Trying to make the figures look the way you invision them is a labor of love.

The gorilla was the most difficult but I was sooo happy with how he turned out.

Raiders Cake

I did this Raiders cake for my brother's birthday this year. It was sort of last minute so I got an edible image from a local cake shop. My parents got me a cannon printer for Christmas so I'll be doing my own images soon!! Yay!!!

I wish I had used the same border that I did on the bottom to trim the logo on top...it would have looked much cleaner.

Graduation Cake

I did this zebra with pink and green graduation cake for my cousin's daughter. I used electric pink and electric green gel colors. I used a shot glass to form the shape of the cap.

I was kind of in love with my zebra pattern. LOL. The top tier was only 4 inches so I had a hard time with fitting her name on it. I haven't mastered piping names so I made strands of fondant and shaped them and let them dry.

MAC Make Up Cake

This MAC cake was done for my co-worker's 30th Birthday. It was so much fun and such a challenge. Everything on the cake is made from gum paste...100% edible.

Sea Life Cake

I did this cake for my niece, Faith. My family takes a 10 day trip to the beach every year and the her birthday fell during the trip. I made all of the components before I left, as well as baking and covering the cake itself. I transported it in an ice chest with cold packs. She kind of got ripped off because there would have been more detail if we had been at home, but it still turned out pretty. Here are the pieces I made before I left.

I assembled the cake in my parents motor home and we had the party at a picnic table outside.

I used silicone molds for most of the pieces, including the mermaid. Iloved the way she turned out. Very whistful.

Mother's Day 2012

Here is a bird house cake I did for my mom on Mother's day this year. I cut a piece of gumpaste for the house, made it look like wood grain and used a circle cutter to add an opening. I wrapped it around a sherry bottle to dry...

Then I brushed on some color dust and added the top. The top wasn't exactly what I had planned. Sometimes the vision in your head is harder to produce than you expected. :) I was ok with the end result.

Here are a couple of pictures of the finished cake. It was lemon cake with white chocolate custard filling and it was the BOMB! hehe...

My Grandma was with us that day and she LOVED the cake. She passed away a couple of months ago so I'm so happy that I was able to share her last Mother's Day with her.

Easter 2012

My first Easter cake. Also my first and only time using ganache under fondant instead of butter cream. I loved how smoothly it turned out and the edge was really sharp. This is how it looked after the white chocolate ganache.

I read on another blog that you can color marshmallow fondant with candy melts, so I took a stab at it for this cake. I made a batch of MMF and colored it with yellow candy melts. MMF and I aren't on speaking terms. Its kind of a pain and although it tastes great, I haven't managed to master it. The color was exactly what I was going for but the cake was a little hard to cut into. I'm not sure if it was the ganache or the candy melts in the fondant, so I haven't tried either since. I know a lot of people use only ganache, which leads me to believe that the candy melts were the culprit. Note to self: use ganache again.

I was really happy with it...except for that I realized after the fact that I had forgotten the bunny rabbit's fluffy tail. DUH. Who ever heard of an Easter bunny with no tail?

Pregnant Belly Cake

This is a baby shower cake I did for my cousin's daughter. Her name is Bryttanie and she now has two little boys, Jordan and Teegan. I had a lot of fun with this one.

I used the Tappit Funky Alphabet set for the letters and dusted them with brown petal dust. There is definitely a trick to using these...you have to let the gumpaste dry out a little before attempting to cut them.

Here are the belly and boobs before fondant. I used the soccer ball pan and the pan with four cone shaped cavities...I forget the name but both are Wilton pans.

I used a wilton mold for the bow and I made it way too big originally. I ended up removing the two loops on the under side because it fit better that way. Here is the lettering all finished.

I used buttercream on the cake and fondant for the dress. I was pretty happy with my icing job on the base of the cake.

Tom's Birthday Cake......

I made my fiancee, Tom, a fishing themed cake for his birthday in 2011. I made the components for the cake using gumpaste and molds. This was my first time using molds and I have gotten much better at it since. I was really happy with how it turned out. I've learned that when you are trying to judge the size of the pieces that are going on the cake before you've baked the cake, there is a lot of room for error. It is a lot harder than you would think to get everything the right size. I do have a point here...my fish was way too big. The only place to buy molds where I live is the internet and sizes aren't always clear, unfortunately. Here are the components that I made to go on the cake.

I used pastel green and white marbled fondant on the bottom tier and pastel blue and white marbled on the top tier, then blended them together using frosting in light blue and white to look like water. Around the bottom I added grass and things that you would see growing out of the banks of a lake.

He loved it and I was pretty happy with it too!

Purse and Wine Birthday Cakes....

My mom and my sister-in-law, Summer, share a birthday...literally. Lol. Their parties are always combined into one shindig. This was my first time doing two cakes at one time...or even close together for that matter. Thank God the purse cake turned out to be fairly easy (or it just came together more smoothly) because the wine crate gave me all kinds of trouble. It's funny now, but at the time I was in tears over it. This is also when I started documenting my progress, rather than just taking shots of the finished project. I should have taken one of the purse cake when it was carved and naked, but I didn't. I will next time I do a purse. I did a zebra striped Prada with red trim. The logo was the hardest part and I was not happy with it in the end, but as per usual, I had to roll with it. I really loved the purse though.

Here is a close up of the detail on the side where the strap connects to the purse...

My mom's cake was far more technically difficult and took me forever. It was going to be a crate with a wine bottle inside but the panels I made didn't work out. I loved my panels...they were really nice....see...

When I tried to put them on the cake they fell apart. They were also not sized right so would have had to be cut down. I'm not really sure what I would do differently next time to make them work. I definitely should have allowed for the shrinkage when the cake baked. I didn't do that. Maybe make them thicker so that they would be more durable.

I did the wine bottle by laying gumpaste over a real wine bottle and allowing it to dry. I got the color for the bottle by adding a touch of black to green and brushing it on, then I sprayed it with shiny clear luster spray. Here it is with the color on it.

And here it is with the label on it...

The Label gave me some trouble too because I'm not good with hand painting writing on and I tried fondant pens and they looked like cap...lol. I ended up using lettering that is made for clay and found that when I pressed hard enough the green underneath started to come through and it looked good and was dark enough to read. Here's a close up.



The leaves were actually my favorite part..I LOVED the way they turned out. I cut them from gumpaste and colored them with lustre dust....here they are...



Plan B, after the side panel disaster, was covering the whole cake with marbled fondant to make it look like wood grain. Here is the finished cake.