Curious Bryson!

A few weeks ago, I received a message from my friend Nicci, asking if I could make a cake for her son Bryson's birthday. I made his cake last year - my first vegan cake, decorated with the face of Mickey Mouse. She wanted another cake, same dietary needs (except this time there was no soy allergy like last year), and this time she wanted Curious George and balloons, since we all know how much Curious George loves balloons. I love that cute little monkey! And I had so much fun decorating this cake. My daughter watched me make the decorations and at one point she said, "mommy, is that playdoh?" She was referring to the fondant that I use, and I said, "yes, it's like playdoh you can eat. And that's what makes decorating cakes so much fun!"

The cake is a delicious chocolate (you'd never know it was vegan!), and it is frosted and filled with a dairy-free vanilla buttercream, decorated with fondant and gum paste accents.

Hope you enjoyed your cake, Curious Bryson, and I hope you had a wonderful birthday!

C is for Cookie, and Z is for Zarek!

It's so much fun getting cake orders for birthdays. This time last year I was making my first topsy-turvy cake for a little guy named Zarek, and this year I was asked to make a cake for his 2nd birthday. I can't believe he is 2 already. Where has the time gone?

This cake was considerably smaller and less complicated than the cake I made a year ago, but just as fun. It stars one of Zarek's favorite characters - Cookie Monster! I have to admit, I'm a fan of that silly blue cookie lover myself.

When Ratna, Zarek's mother, asked me to make the cake, I immediately thought of making a cake recipe that my friend Ann uses - chocolate flecked cake. It looks like a chocolate chip cookie when you cut into it and I thought that would be perfect for a cake featuring cookie monster. Then I looked up the recipe and calculated the cost - as wonderful as the cake sounds, it is a lot more expensive than most of the cakes I have made. Probably because it's a Martha Stewart recipe. Dang that Martha Stewart and her expensive tastes! Well, since Ratna had just ordered Bollywood cupcakes from me and wasn't ready to spend the amount of money that the chocolate flecked cake would cost, we went with a chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream filling. And then, an added twist - in the past year Zarek has developed an egg allergy, so Ratna was requesting a small egg-free smash cake just for the birthday boy. Having just made a vegan cake two weeks ago, I was all ready to take on this extra request.

Here are the cakes - I had so much fun decorating them, because they use my favorite tip.The smash cake was especially fun. If I'd had enough icing, I would have done the same with the big cake, but my 5 year old daughter insisted that the cake would look much better with smooth sides. So I added some "fur" at the base and stuck some cookie crumbs in the front. Very cute!

Happy Birthday Zarek!

It's Mickey! (and he's vegan!)

Actually, Mickey Mouse probably isn't vegan. After all, he is a mouse. Mice eat cheese. But that's beside the point. My point is... that this was my very first vegan cake!

It all started a few weeks ago when I was visiting with some friends from out of town and got a message on my phone from my facebook page from a lady named Nicci. I was very excited - I hadn't had a cake order in two months and was itching to get back to decorating cakes again. And then came the actual message. The person who wanted to order a cake from me had several requests - the cake had to be egg-free, dairy-free, nut-free, soy-free and corn-free. Yikes! I almost sent this potential client to a gluten-free bakery (and I later discovered that among all of the birthday boy's allergies, gluten was not one of them), but I decided to give it a try. I asked my friend Ann if she knew of any good recipes that would work and she sent me one for Wacky Cake. I discovered that not only has this recipe been around for decades, but it is completely vegan. No eggs. No dairy. I did a test run and my kids and husband loved it. I even gave a piece to my mom when she came over one day and she didn't believe that it was vegan. I was set with the cake then, but still unsure of the frosting. After all - powdered sugar has cornstarch in it. Kind of hard to make frosting without it. I sent a message to Nicci telling her about my dilemna. She then informed me that her son's corn allergy was very mild so he should be okay to eat the frosting. Yay!

So, I made the two cake layers, got ready to make the frosting and something made me look at the  ingredients on the container of shortening. I almost fainted. Right there, ingredient number one - soybean oil. I went to the store to see if they had a soy-free shortening alternative (aside from lard - and really, who wants frosting made with lard? yuck!) and there was none. It was the day that Nicci's husband was supposed to pick up the cake and I just about had a nervous breakdown. I sent a message with many apologies, asking if perhaps her son's soy allergy was mild like the corn one. I then started looking for soy-free shortening online and found one - but just as I was about to call Whole Foods to see if they sold it, I got a message back from Nicci - the shortening would be fine, they could just scrape it off their son's piece of cake. Double yay!!

I got to work decorating the cake, and in the end was very pleased. The design is modeled after the party decorations with everything in fondant except for mickey's face, which is a fondant-gum paste mix. The cake itself is vegan chocolate, with vanilla buttercream filling and frosting.

I felt bad that the birthday boy couldn't have any of that yummy frosting, but I figure, with all of his food allergies, at least he gets cake!

Happy Birthday Bryson and I hope you had a wonderful day. (and next year, I'll make a cake with frosting you can eat - I promise! :) )

Princess T-Rex!

I've done some pretty interesting cakes in the past two years (yep! two years!) but I have to say that this one is one of the funnest cakes I've ever made. It all started when I saw a new friend of mine, Meghann, post on facebook about planning her daughter Mollie's upcoming first birthday. Being the savvy businesswoman I am, I sent her a message asking if she needed a cake. Why yes she did! Upon asking what her theme was, she replied, "Princess Trex". At first I thought it was some new kids toy... and then I realized, this was T-rex. The mean, carnivorous, vicious dinosaur. I did a google search of images and didn't come up with much, but then I saw a link in a regular search for Princess T-Rex puzzle and clicked on it. I showed it to Meghann and she loved it! Here it is:
 
I was going to get a different template for the dinosaur, but the more I thought about it, the original design was just more fun. And it worked so well with the final cake, it's like it was meant to be.
Here it is: two layer cake with chocolate on the bottom, yellow on the top and creamy chocolate buttercream in the middle. Buttercream on the outside with fondant and gum paste decorations.

But something was missing. And the more I looked at that dinosaur, the more I realized what it was. The way she was standing on one foot, she almost looked like she was . . . dancing! I found a piece of lavender tulle in my sewing basket from a tutu I made for my niece last year, got my trusty needle and thread, and made a tutu for the dinosaur. And here is the final result.

Pretty cute, huh? And of course you can't have a first birthday without a special little smash cake for the birthday girl! Same flavors of cake and filling, in a smaller package. I even put diamonds on the side to tie in to the "regal" feel of the main cake.

As a side note, I want to throw out a shout-out to Meghann's sister Beth, and her business Lylas Designs. She had posted a picture of an adorable sunflower pin shortly before Meghann placed the order, and I ordered one for myself to put on my purse. When I dropped off the cake and asked how much her sister wanted for the pin, she said it was taken care of. An extra little bonus for making such a wonderful cake! And here it is on my purse.

Happy Birthday Mollie, aka. Princess T-Rex! Hope you're birthday was amazing!

An apple a day and a doctor's birthday!

After a busy week of cake decorating the first week of April, I was just starting to kick back and relax before working on my next order, when I got an e-mail from a past client - Ratna. I've made two cakes for her, and her friend Priti wanted to order two cakes for a birthday party this weekend. I told her that I didn't have any big plans yet, and as long as the cakes were simple, I should be able to do them.

The first cake, I kid you not, is one of the easiest cakes I've ever made. It's for Ratna's husband, a lover of all things apple. And I'm not talking about the fruit. She showed me a picture and I said, "oh, I would love to make that!". I even got to use my silver sparkle dust! The cake itself is a favorite combo of Ratna and her family - chocolate cake with oreo buttercream filling. Plain buttercream on the outside with a fondant apple logo, brushed with sparkle dust.

The second cake is for Ratna's father-in-law, who works as a cardiologist for one of the hospitals that I work at, and is celebrating his 70th birthday. Ratna was bouncing ideas off me, and the first picture she showed me was a rectangular cake covered with fondant and decorated to look like a doctor's coat, complete with collar and tie. I told her that  not only was that a bit too complicated considering the time I had available, but it alone would feed the 24 people that she and her friend were expecting and it would be hard to scale down. Then she showed me a picture of a heart-shaped cake. This one looked much more simple and I told her I could definitely do it. So I purchased a set of heart-shaped cake pans and made this cake - it's red velvet with cream cheese filling and red buttercream frosting. Dr. Tajik loves red, so I purchased a red heart-shaped platter to put it on. The decorations on top are all fondant, and the ECG lines on the sides are icing. Being a medical person, I had so much fun decorating this cake. The ECG might not be perfect, but maybe Dr. Tajik will have fun analyzing it. :)

 

Happy Birthday to Jamil and Dr. Tajik! I hope that both of you have a wonderful day.

Happy Birthday to Owen!

Just a few months ago, I made a cake for my friend and co-worker Winston for a baby welcoming party for his son Owen. He's brought pictures to work, and his son is just adorable. Well, I can hardly believe it, but the little guy is a year old. How time flies!

A few weeks ago when I was at work, Winston came up to me and asked me if I could make a cake for his son's birthday. He wanted something similar to the last cake I made, but this time with different colors - yellow, orange and red. Turned out Owen's birthday outfit was going to be yellow, so I focused on yellow for the main color. And instead of doing plain stripes, I did zigzag lines on the sides of the cake and stars on top. And of course, no first birthday is complete without a smash cake for the birthday baby!

The cake itself is yellow cake with chocolate buttercream frosting and filling, both for the main and smash cakes. All decorations are made with fondant and the letters are a fondant-gum paste mix.

Happy Birthday Owen! I hope you had a wonderful day!

Star Wars, and Legos!

I love repeat customers. They are proof that I must be doing something right! This time, my friend Ratna, for whom I made the topsy-turvy lion cake, wanted a cake for her nephew's birthday. He was coming to Wisconsin from California with his family, and Ratna wanted to surprise him. I'm so glad I was part of the surprise!

The first thing Ratna told me is that her nephew loved Star Wars. Well, that opened up a whole world of possibilites. Classic Star Wars, Angry Birds Star Wars, Lego Star Wars.... and then there were all the characters! She told me that he loved Lego Star Wars, and after poring over some ideas, we found one that would work well. I would put some figurines on top of the cake, and decorate around them with fondant accents. I was going to get some star wars lego figurines, but they were a bit out of Ratna's price range, and she didn't know which ones he already had, so we went with a couple playskool star wars figurines. They are a bit young for the birthday boy, who is 9 years old, but perhaps he can pass them down to a little brother. The best part - the figures are posable, so when I couldn't shut the lid to the cake box, I just bent Darth Vader and the Storm Trooper over at their waists and down went the lid. It looked really funny, these two figures crouched over under neath the cake box lid. I would have taken a picture too, if the batteries on my camera hadn't died.

The cake itself is chocolate with oreo buttercream filling. I made the same combo for Ratna's son and she loved it so much she had to have it again. Then I added a fondant star wars logo with the birthday boy's name on top, with some fondant lightsabers and stars, fondant legos around the base of the cake, and a message on the cake board using  a lego font I found online. So it might not be Lego Star Wars, but it is legos and star wars. Very original, very fun! I hope the birthday boy liked it!

Happy Birthday Aazil!

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!