A birthday and a graduation!

I love girly cakes, and this one is no exception. I was asked a month ago by a friend of a friend, if I could make two cakes - one for a high school graduation party, and another for the 18th birthday for her daughter Alexis. Well, the week that she wanted to have the graduation party was when I was planning to go on a vacation with my husband to celebrate our 10th anniversary. After some more thought, she decided to combine the two celebrations!

Alexis drew a picture for me, and I just fell in love with it. I mean, what's not to love about flowers, butterflies, and bright pink bows? The butterflies were to be in her high school and college colors (yellow and purple are the colors of Cudahy High School and orange and blue are the colors of Carroll University, where she starts in September.)

The cake is my yummy strawberry cake, filled with chocolate buttercream and iced with pink vanilla buttercream. I just love the way it turned out!

Congrats Alexis, and Happy Birthday!!

Hooray for Bollywood!

I think I have to say that this cake order is one of the most interesting ones I've had in a long time. A couple of weeks ago, I got a message from a long time client, Ratna asking if I could make either cupcakes or a cake for a party she was throwing for her sister. Her sister was moving to Wisconsin from California (I hope she's ready for Wisconsin winters!) and the theme of the party is Bollywood Bash.

The picture Ratna sent me was of some very intricately decorated cupcakes with flowers and paisley designs painted on the frosting. I immediately began to feel overwhelmed - I've never even done that kind of painting before. But did I give up? Nope! Instead I did a search and found a reasonable alternative that was much more in the realm of my skill set. After some back and forth, we agreed on cake flavor and frosting color. Then it was just up to me to get the needed materials. It took me a while to find the gold beads, but I found them at Cook's, a baking supply store right here in Milwaukee. The paisley design was made with a leaf cutter, and I attached the beads with gum glue, which is a mixture of water and gum paste. I had initially thought of making royal icing, but decided to give gum glue a try and it worked!

Here are the final cupcakes. And there is much more to the color scheme than meets the eye - these cupcakes are color-coded! To add variety to the chocolate cake, Ratna asked me to add filling to the cupcakes. And then I devised a color scheme to help the party guests know which cupcakes had which filling. Orange - peanut butter buttercream. Pink - peppermint buttercream. Purple - coffee buttercream.

A big welcome to Ratna's sister - I hope you love Wisconsin and had fun at your Bollywood welcoming party!

Happy Easter!

For Easter, I volunteered (as I did last year) to make the cake for my family's gathering on Sunday. Honestly, I've been thinking about this cake, at some point or another, for the past year. At this time last year I had just finished my decorating basics cake class, so I hadn't known how to make all of the lovely flowers that one would associate with the Easter season. When I learned how to make them a few weeks later, I got so excited about making my next Easter cake (especially since I learned how to make lilies!)

Well, fast forward several months, and there I was, with several bags of royal icing in assorted colors, and I suddenly came to the realization that I hadn't made a single flower in a whole year. Most, if not all of my cakes since then have been decorated with either cartoon characters or fondant cut-outs. So out came my flowers and cake design book, my flower nail templates, and I got to work basically re-teaching myself how to make all of these gorgeous flowers. I think they all turned out pretty good.

The cake itself was made with an old family recipe - a yellow carrot cake with lemon curd filling. After frosting it (and fighting with lemon curd that desperately wanted to escape!) I decorated the sides with basketweave and arranged a pile of flowers on top. Very yummy and something that the Easter bunny would undoubtedly approve of!

Happy Easter everyone!