Monday, September 14, 2009

Jungle/Zoo Cake

The birthday boy who was the recipient of the Lightning McQueen cakes has a younger brother, and for his 1st birthday he had a Zoo theme. His mom brought me a napkin as inspiration. I covered the cake w/ buttercream (most kids don't like the taste of fondant). The pond is piping gel, the sand is brown sugar & all of the animals are gumpaste. The palm trees are a combination of pretzel, royal icing & fondant. This was also a fun cake to make.

And this was the birthday boy's Smash Cake!!!!
Okay, that's it for now. If I can get everyone in my world healthy and out of the hospital I will probably be designing & baking either a Purse cake or Topsy Turvy cake (that is a lot of cake, though) in the near future just to warm up for the holidays, so stay tuned....

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Random Cakes

You've already seen my grandson's birthday cake, as well as a few friend's birthday cakes. Well, here are a just a couple of random cakes for birthdays & just because. The first was for my Mother's birthday. This was my first attempt at painting & making delicate 3D fondant pieces. The second one I made for Mother's Day. The Gator cake was based on a plaque mounted by our front door. I made a copy of it & cut it in pieces & used it for patterns. And the last cake was a class cake. It was a test to assess my skills in buttercream, color flow & royal icing.


Unfortunately, I don't get to design & bake as often as I would like so the posting here may come in bursts. I do have a few more cakes in my album to share so I will be back w/ a few more, but that will probably be it for a little bit.
Of course, the weather has started to cool down at night so you never know what might strike me....

The Holidays

I love the holidays! As soon as the weather starts to cool, I start to nest. Every year! I love to bake holiday treats! I am already planning this year's cakes. I'm thinking of making a cake that looks like a real baked turkey w/ dressing for Thanksgiving,  but I'm not absolutely sure of that yet.  Oh yeah, my Gingerbread House will either be birdhouse or a country store.

This was last year's fair. The turkey cake was the first real experiment, poor thing took me 8 hours (I've gotten slightly quicker w/ practice, but not much). I had a substitute Sous Chef for the snowman cake, one of my sons!! The Christmas cake was a gift from my mother-in-law to my sister-in-law to match her collection of holiday dinnerware. I also made a Gingerbread House before that to practice making the poinsettia's.The Easter cake was carved & covered in fondant w/ a fondant swag & handmade royal icing lilies.



Oh, and just in case I haven't mentioned it- everything is edible on all of my cakes. The decorations are handmade by me out of a lot of different mediums (buttercream, fondant, color flow icing, etc...) and are always edible!

Toy Story

One of my favorite people in world is my 3 yr old grandson!!! He went to "Dismey" World for his 3rd birthday (that's exactly the way he says it). He went on the "Buzz Ride" & talked about it for days, so when he came home we had to have a "Buzz" cake and this what my Sous Chef & I came up with....
The bed is chocolate cake covered in Fondant. The headboard & footboard are gumpaste. The floor is fondant painted brown w/ a pastry brush. All of the figures (except the army men) are made of gumpaste. I just took one his "Toy Story" books & mimiced the pictures. This was a very fun cake! Challenging, but Fun!

Brobee

A co-worker approached me one day & asked me if I could make a cake that looked like a character on his daughter's favorite TV show, "Yo Gabba Gabba." I immediately said I could before I even saw the creature (I always love a challenge). The character's name is "Brobee" & he is a green creature w/ orange horns coming out of his head, well see for yourself...
This was definitely one of the biggest challenges I had come across. I had never carved or stacked a cake before. Needless to say, this was the third incarnation of that cake. He was made of chocolate cake covered w/ fondant & fondant accents and his arms are rice krispies treats covered w/ fondant. He was 13" tall and 8" wide. If it wasn't for my trusty Sous Chef (the kids just call him "Dad") I don't think that I would have pulled it off (at least sanely).
Stay tuned for more....

Lightning McQueen

Well, I finally got a minute to try to get some of my pictures posted. So far, I have only designed cakes as a hobby, but would love to have my own cake shop one day. I will be probably be posting my cakes in random order.

I have only made a few character cakes for friends. This was one of the first cakes, Lightning McQueen. I made the first cake for a family gathering & then they wanted another one for a bigger party, hence the second bigger cake..
The next entry will be about "Yo Gabba Gabba" a show on Nickelodeon.

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Beginnings

Well, I guess I've joined the world of the blogger. I have had several friends & family ask me where they can see & show my cakes so I decided to bite the bullet & start blogging. In the near future I will be uploading photos of my cakes & writing commentary on each one. It probably won't be very interesting but you guys asked for it so here it is!