Blue and Gold!

A couple of months ago, I was at a cub scout meeting and when the discussion turned to the Blue and Gold dinner, I eagerly volunteered to make the cakes. The cubmaster's wife has made them the past few years, but I figured with her hands full since her son was getting his Arrow of Light award, I'd give her a hand. So here it is - my first sheet cakes. Seeing as it was a cub scout cake, there wasn't a huge budget to work with, and at the time I still didn't have a good yellow cake recipe ( I do now!), I went with a box mix and made two marble half-sheet cakes. Lots of work, but it turned out pretty good and was easier than I thought.

One cake was decorated with the names of the boys in the Webelos II ranking that were receiving their Arrow of Light award that night. It's the highest award any cub scout can receive, and a HUGE deal for these boys. In the middle of the cake, I piped a picture of the Arrow of Light badge that each Webelos II scout was awarded that night.

 Now I couldn't forget about the other scouts - my son being one of them. So I put the names of all of the other scouts - from Tigers to Wolves to Bears to first year Webelos scouts.

 The cakes turned out pretty good, and were well-enjoyed by everyone at the Blue and Gold dinner.

Happy Birthday to the best mother in law ever!

Just when I thought I'd never get another cake order again, at the end of January I got an e-mail from my sister-in-law Jolyn about a birthday gathering she was having at her place for her mom. At the end of the invitation was a request for someone to make and bring a cake. So, of course, I jumped on it! I wasn't sure if I'd be able to - after all, I am merely a daughter-in-law. If one of my many sisters-in-law wanted to make the cake, I was sure that they would be given the task. The next day when I checked my e-mail there were two messages - one from Jolyn stating that it would be great if I could make the cake, and one from my sister-in-law Cathy saying that she would to it (I guess I forgot to reply to all). Well, what followed was a lot of good-natured joking about everyone wanting to make a cake for their mother, but all completely fine with me making it. Yay!
Next up was deciding the design and the cake flavor. Jolyn said that she loved the chocolate cake I made for Cecilia's birthday, and could I make either a buttercream or a raspberry filling. I told her I could do better than that - I'd make a raspberry buttercream. I decorated it with red royal icing roses that I had left over from my flowers and cake design class, since red is my mother-in-law's favorite color and of course with her birthday right before Valentines Day, it felt very appropriate.

Happy Birthday, Mom!

For my Little Princess

For my daughter's 4th birthday, I knew one thing was a given - it had to be all about princesses. I looked up different princess cakes on the Wilton website and gave Cecilia 3 designs to chose from. One was a doll cake, one was a shaped crown cake, and the third was a round cake decorated to look like a castle. It didn't even take 3 seconds - she pointed at the doll cake and said, "that one - but I want it to look like Cinderella!". So off to the store I went to buy a wondermold cake pan and a doll pick with blonde hair. After styling the hair on the doll pick to look like the famous Disney princess and "painting" the eyes blue (couldn't have a Cinderella with brown eyes!) I was ready to roll.

It was a lot easier than I thought it would be to ice the cake. The hardest part was icing the doll pick and working around the arms and various curves of this plastic torso. Then, for the headband, I first attempted it with buttercream, but it became a huge mess, so I cleaned it up as best as I could and went with fondant for that little detail. It turned out beautifully and my princess was thrilled.

Happy Birthday Cecilia!

Happy Birthday baby Jesus

I few years ago on Christmas I started a tradition of making a small birthday cake for baby Jesus. This year being my first with all that cake experience under my belt made me very excited. I had so many techniques to chose from - fondant or buttercream? shapes or flowers?

In the end I decided on a red velvet cake with peppermint buttercream filling and frosting, with poinsettia decorations.









Merry Christmas, everyone!

My first stacked/tiered cake!

Ever since I finished my cake decorating classes back in June, I've been looking forward to expanding my horizons with one last bit of cake decorating knowledge - stacked cakes. Not just wedding cakes, although that's what most people think of, but I also saw this as a different way to make a lot of cake without doing a half sheet pan that takes up an entire table. So I signed up for the class, thinking it would be a lot of talking, maybe working with some styrofoam, and that would be it. Nope. I had to bring with me to the class a 6" two-layer cake and a 10" two-layer cake. My first thought was "what the heck am I going to do with all this cake when I'm done?". And then, at church the day after I registered for the class, an announcement was made about the fall festival and a need for baked goods. Yes! So right after church was done, I zipped to the back, talked to the lady in charge of the festival and offered to donate my cake to serve as a dessert for the turkey dinner on Saturday night. She was thrilled, and so then I began on deciding the flavor and design of my cake.

Flavor was easy - I wanted something fall-ish, so I went with applesauce cake for the top tier. Then for the bottom tier I chose pumpkin cake. For the design, I went simple - I had a set of small cookie cutters in the shapes of an apple, a pumpkin and a leaf, so I used them to cut out shapes in gum paste, scored veins in the leaves and then made three gum paste mums for the top. I frosted the cake with cream cheese frosting (and used buttercream to even out some of the bumps - thus the mottled look) and used buttercream again to make grass, leaves and vines. Despite the imperfections, the cake was a hit - it was gone in just over an hour!

Baby block cakes!

When I got the invitation in the mail for my cousin, Jessica's baby shower, of course I got all excited about making a cake for the event. It didn't matter that the shower was only one week after the wedding that I was scheduled to make the groom's cake for - I was doing it!

Of course my Aunt was happy to have me make the cake, and even gave me complete creative license. Her only request was that the cake be chocolate, and no girly colors, since her grandchild-to-be is a boy.

It took a bit of searching - so many ideas and so little time - but I finally decided on a baby block cake. Now I had heard some horror stories about working with smaller cakes, which I believed because working with the little round cakes for my niece's smash cake was very challenging (good thing I was able to just fix it with lots of frosting!).

So, to make things easier on myself, I opted to make 4 inch cubes instead of 3 inch ones. The frosting part was easy, and the fondant part wasn't too hard, except that I had lots of little wrinkles at the bottom of each block. Easy fix though - just covered it up with frosting lines.

 And here's the fun part. All four cakes were chocolate, but each had a different filling. One was vanilla buttercream, one was peppermint buttercream, one was chocolate buttercream, and the last one was peanut butter buttercream.

Congrats and best wishes to my cousin - hope you (and your baby!) loved the cake!

What's black and white and red all over?

Yeah, I know. Old joke. But in this case, it isn't a newspaper. It's a cake!

Six months ago, My hubby's nephew Thomas got engaged. Seeing as I was in the process of taking cake decorating classes, I jokingly told him that I should make the wedding cake for them. Well, he sent his nephew a text, after which I told him to take it back before I got myself into some seriously hot water. He did, but then something happened that surprised me. His nephew asked if I would be interested in making the groom's cake for their wedding instead. After lots of thought (and a little encouragement from my cake decorating instructor, Ann), I decided to go ahead and do it. Then came deciding on a design. When I asked what kind of groom's cake he wanted, he said he'd be interested in something Packer themed, but when I discovered that the wedding cake would be decorated with the color purple, I knew I couldn't make a Packer groom's cake without making the wedding cake look like it was designed by a Vikings fan.
So I asked for other ideas, and he told me that he liked music too, so I googled some images, presented him with a few and he chose one. I was totally excited because it looked really cool, but relatively easy to decorate because of how simple it is. Then came the cake flavor. I started going down my list, and the groom was sold on the idea of red velvet cake. I have to admit, I was a little apprehensive, especially since it would be covered in white fondant. Would the red bleed through? So, I did a practice cake (see my birthday entry) and once I was sure it would work, I prepared for this undertaking.

Now, let me say first of all that this is the biggest cake I have ever covered in fondant. So yeah - I was a little bit nervous. But in the end, it was a lot easier than I thought. And it took a bit longer than I thought, but once I was done, I was so proud of my work, and honestly, I had to keep my head from floating away at the wedding reception, considering all the compliments I got.

Here, a picture of Thomas, the groom, pretending to "play" his piano cake. Oh, and the notes on the side are music from an actual song. One of his favorites - the theme for Star Wars. He recognized it the moment he saw it. :) Congrats, Thomas and Tasheena, I'm so glad I got to be part of your special day!!!