Compound Hulk Cake

A year ago, a friend of mine told me that her friend Leanne was looking for a cake decorator, since the lady she had gotten her cakes from before had just moved. I sent a message to her and found out that she had just celebrated her son Luke's birthday, but would definitely want me to make a cake for his next birthday. When the time came, I was super-excited to get started on it. Leanne told me that Luke loved comic books, but mostly the lesser known characters that you don't hear about much. Like Black Spiderman and Red Hulk. I found a picture of a really awesome Hulk cake that would work with their party needs. She then told me that the theme they were going with was Compound Hulk. If you don't know what that is, it's basically half the regular green Incredible Hulk, and half the bad Red Hulk, split right down the middle. A bit challenging to frost the cake half and half, but I love a challenge!

The cake itself is yellow cake with buttercream filling and frosting, and fondant accents, including some yummy chocolate black fondant for his crazy hair.

The delivery of this cake was the best part - the party was at a roller rink! Having grown up going to many rollerskating parties, it was awesome to go inside the one near where I live. I drive by it all the time, but have never been inside. Now I'm definitely going to have to go back.

Happy Birthday Luke - Hope you had an awesome day!

Monkeys!

After making mostly birthday cakes for the past few months, I was happy when my nephew Tom's wife Tasheena asked me if I could make a cake for her baby shower. I had made the groom's cake for their wedding, so suffice to say they are long-standing fans of my cake creations. I talked to her mom, and after a while we agreed on a super-cute design for the cake, and for some cupcakes that would look awesome with it.

I had initially wanted to make everything with banana cake, but since the mom-to-be has a food aversion to bananas, I decided to make the cake chocolate and the cupcakes banana. The cake was decorated with buttercream with fondant accents and a cute ball border that went along very well with the picture of a juggling monkey that was on the front of the baby shower invitations. Then I made a palm tree out of a fondant-covered pretzel, just like the ones I made for the topsy-turvy cake back in October. And in front of the tree, a cute little fondant monkey. Honestly, I love making these little creatures - it's so much fun. As I mentioned in my topsy-turvy cake post, it's like playing with playdoh. And who doesn't like playing with play-doh?

For the cupcakes, I had some help. My son's first reconciliation was the night before the shower, and then the morning of the shower I had an extra choir practice at church. I knew that if I tried to decorate all of them by myself, I wouldn't have enough time, so I called over my sister-in-law (and grandmother-to-be) Monica who brought over one of her sons, Raymond (who happens to be a big fan of anything having to do with cake decorating), and Tasheena's sisters Mari and Angaline, to help me decorate them. We had a lot of fun and got it done in a fraction of the time it would have taken for me to do it all myself.

Everything turned out so cute - and I hope everyone at the shower enjoyed them!

B is for....

Brian . . . and Banana . . . and Birthday Boy!

Yep, today is my husband's birthday! And of course what kind of cake decorator wife would I be if I didn't make a treat for him to bring to work on his big day? I asked him last weekend if he wanted cupcakes or cake pops. He said, since I had made cupcakes for halloween, he wanted cake pops this time. He decided on banana cake, which I mixed with cream cheese frosting and then dipped in milk chocolate before decorating with sprinkles and a letter B for his name. And of course, since it's banana cake, yellow was the obvious choice for an accent color! I gave him a sample cake pop last night and he loved it - and I hope everyone where he works enjoys them just as much!

Happy Birthday Sweetie!

Welcoming Baby Owen!

For anyone who doesn't know, I an not only a full-time mom and cake decorator, I am a part-part-time Medical Technologist as well. I basically pick up shifts as they become available, which is a pretty sweet deal. One night this past summer, I was talking to a co-worker about the wedding cake that I would be making (ahh . . . memories!), and Winston, one of the third shift techs who had just come in, overheard me. I showed him a few of my cake pictures that I had with me on my phone, and he said that he and his wife were planning an open house/baby welcoming party that fall. They are both from Africa, and it is a custom where they are from to have a celebration like this when the baby is around 6 months old. Well, you can't have a party without cake, so he told me right then and there that he and his wife were going to order a cake from me for the event.

Well, several months later (and a few communication gaps along the way thanks to my not working for two months!), I finally got all of the details ironed out and whipped this up. Pretty good considering I had finalized the design only three days before the event! The cake is a simple yellow cake with chocolate buttercream frosting and filling and lots of colorful fondant decorations!

Congrats to Winston, Emi, and little Owen!

Happy Birthday Monica!

I have many sisters-in-law. 8 to be exact. Yep... EIGHT. Gotta love that big family!

My sister-in-law Monica (who is the wife of my husband's brother Ed) turned 50 last month. Her son Matt is the one that I made the wedding cake for this past summer. So when I heard that her family was planning a birthday party for her, I offered to make cake pops. Everyone in her family that was at the rehearsal dinner for Matt's wedding loved the cake balls I made, so I went with the same cake flavor - yummy chocolate! And of course, being that it was a 50th birthday party, I had to put some awesome decorations on them too! I made 3 dozen cake pops with three different decorations. I had some with silver sprinkles, some with black fondant dots, and some with black fondant stars brushed with silver luster dust. Here they are at my house, all ready to go.

I put them in a big box for the party and actually brought the glasses too, since they worked so well to display them at home. Little did I know that my brother-in-law had already ordered a sheet cake for the party. A full sheet cake! No problems though - everyone was more than happy to eat my cake pops too (and luckily, the cake was yellow cake, so no OD of chocolate!) and several of my nieces, nephews and other in-laws brought cake pops home with them for their families.

Happy Birthday Monica, and here's to the next 50!

Halloween Cupcakes!

Last year in the middle of November I was grocery shopping and right there on the clearance table was a box of Halloween funfetti cake mix for 75 cents. I looked at the expiration date and saw that it didn't expire until December of 2012, so I bought it, figuring that I could make cupcakes for one of my kids to take to school for a Halloween party.

Well, fast forward to the beginning of September this year, when I discovered at the school open house that my daughter's K4 teacher is anti-cupcake. Gasp! Well, I guess I can understand where she is coming from. After all, I know all too well the mess that comes with giving a 4 year old a cupcake, and when you multiply that by 15, it would be quite a lot for even two adults to clean up! My son, being in the 2nd grade, is too old for silly kid parties at school (how is he growing up so fast?), so I had to come up with a way to use that cake mix and do it fast. I thought of making cake pops, but by the time I volunteered it to the teacher, she had already gotten offers from two other parents to bring Halloween treats and wanted to keep it at that.

So back I was at square one... what to do with this cake mix? Well, my hubby mentioned to me a few days ago that one of the ladies he works with, who did cake decorating when she was younger, was asking how my cake decorating was coming along. Bingo! I baked them up, decorated them last night and sent them to work with my husband this morning. He came home with an empty tupperware container, saying that "They were a big hit!". And of course I left out two for my kids to have after their dinner tonight. What kind of mother would I be if I didn't? :)

Here's the entire assortment:

 And a close-up of the mummy cupcakes - lots of fun!

Happy Halloween!!

A cake fit for a king!

Or rather... the king of the jungle!

Now, have I mentioned how much I love referrals? Because I do! This cake order came came to me by way of Nekia, who I made the whale cake for at the end of August. Her friend Ratna wanted a cake for her son Zarek's first birthday at the beginning of October. (If you are beginning to see a pattern here of first birthday cakes . . . never fear, I can make cakes for any occasion!)
She sent me a picture of a very cute topsy-turvy cake with a fondant lion and elephant, and after researching how to make a topsy-turvy cake, she sent me another message with a few changes to the design, all centered around the party decorations she had bought. Instead of a lion and elephant, she wanted just the lion, and a palm tree. I, being the roll-with-the-punches type I am, said, "no problem!" After all, it was still a few weeks before her son's birthday. And I made a few suggestions to make the cake even better!

The cake itself is chocolate with oreo buttercream - my first time making it and I had some left over so I used it on a 6 inch cake I had in my freezer. It. . . is. . . divine!

The top tier is covered in chocolate fondant, the bottom with plain green fondant, and all of the dots and stripes were fondant as well. One of my favorite parts of this cake though, was making the lion. All gum paste, and it was a lot like making something with play-doh! And since it's gum-paste, it dried hard and can be stashed away in a keepsake box for years and years. The trees are pretzels covered with chocolate fondant, and then I stuck gum paste leaves on the top with a little extra fondant to hold them in place. I had to do a little bit of "digging" to get them in the cake itself, but the end product was pretty cute. I even got to use my favorite decorating tip to pipe grass around the trees and lion on top and and around the base of the top tier. Ratna provided the candle, which I stuck onto the front of the cake since it wouldn't have fit on top without falling over.

When I delivered the cake, I was greeted by this adorable sign, so I knew I was in the right place

And here we are, all set up and ready for the birthday boy!

And of course, a first birthday wouldn't be complete without a smash cake! Same cake flavor and filling, but with orange buttercream since that was the other main color in the theme of the party, and fondant polka dots to tie in to the main cake.

Happy Birthday Zarek! I hope your birthday was wonderful!