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....

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.

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!