Guitar Cake....Rock On!!!!

My fiancee had been teaching Faith to play guitar when her birthday rolled around last year. She wanted a red guitar with black musical notes. I was out of Viva paper towels so my buttercream is, shall we say, less than smooth....hehe. I stressed and labored for weeks about how I was going to go about creating a guitar. I had never used fondant before at this point and was apprehensive about trying on such an important occasion. I went for the trusty star tip and it came out pretty good. I printed a template I found on the internet for the guitar and sized it accordingly, which means I printed it, held it up to the pan I was using and then trashed it three times before getting it right. If I were to do a guitar now I imagine it would turn out far more clean looking because I'm not afraid to try different techniques anymore. You just have to allow time to start over from scratch in case you completely screw it up! Here's the cake....

Oh yeah...I threw my brother's name on it too because my mom decided to combine the parties at the last minute. :)

Welcome Ryder :))

On Christmas Eve 2009 my brother, Ryan and Sister-in-law, Summer announced that they were having another baby. I can't even tell you how excited I was. In August 2010, our family was blessed with Ryder. He is every bit as beautiful and entertaining as his older sister. This is Rydie....

Nobody has any clue where those blue eyes came from...maybe it was the milk man. Hehe.

So, I got to make the cake for his baby shower. I had far more grand plans for the cake, to be honest. I did the bear shaped pan on top of a regular rectangular sheet cake. I ran out of time and was working on it at my parents house in August...if you knew my dad you would understand. He likes his house at a temperature that could easily sustain most species of desert life. Very bad for buttercream!!! Haha.

I'm glad I didn't figure the bear into the servings because I wasn't at all happy with how it turned out. The sheet cake was delish, but the bear had to cook for far longer than anticipated and the result was a yucky dry cake. If I ever use that pan again...and thats a big IF...I will do as I did with this one and make it in addition to the regular cake servings.

Here's the cake....



Kim's Bachelorette Party Cake....

This is the next cake that I made. I apologize if anyone is offended by it, but it was a bachelorette party for my cousin, Kim. This is a picture of us that night....(from left to right) Our friend Leah, Kim and ME!

We had a pretty good time...as you can probably tell. She wanted a penis cake and this is what I came up with. 

It is a little more on the cutesy side than some I have seen. I wasn't into making it too realistic....GROSS!! LOL. I was really happy with how it turned out and it tasted great too. It was a basic strawberry cake mix but it turned out really good. I do my best to not over bake my cakes. I hate dry cakes. The penis was a tin penis shaped pan that we found at Spencer's Gifts. 

In The Beginning....

Although I have improved a great deal since my first cake I'm going to take you back so that the progression will be more apparent. I have taken the first and second Wilton course and from there have just been experimenting on my own. YouTube is a beautiful thing! And because although elementary, I really did love this cake. I made it for my niece; Faith, two years ago on her birthday and it truly came from my heart. This is Faith...she's not a ham at all....

So I had seen what looked like mini loaf pan sized cakes at the Wal-Mart bakery and they were decorated to look like little long haired dogs and I immediately thought of her. They looked fairly easy and I thought I would give it a try. What a learning experience that was. This was before I knew that the Wilton pre-made icing needs to be thinned a little with water and beaten when you remove it from the carton...LOL. Needless to say I had a really hard time getting the chocolate for the brown dog to squeeze out of the bag. I only have pictures of the finished product on my first few cakes but in the future I'll be taking step by step photos and giving details...what to do...and what I've learned the hard way NOT to do. : ) Here is the cake that I was, and still am, so proud of.