Whimsyshire!

First, some backstory. I got this order from my friend Sara. She is the one who gave me my first ever cake order a little over a year ago so when she asked for another cake, this time for her hubby, I was happy to say yes. Then came the design. She mentioned a game called Diablo 3 and a special level called Whimsyshire with unicorns and teddy bears and rainbows and pretty pink flowers. She even sent me a picture.

Now hearing the name "Diablo 3", the first thing I thought of wasn't exactly happy unicorns and smiling clouds. Then she told me that no.. it is not a happy game. These characters are from Whimsyshire, a secret level of this game. The game itself is very dark. In fact, she sent me a link with a video of game footage. Feel free to google it yourself if you want. The gist of this game is that once in this happy place, the object is to kill as many unicorns and teddy bears as possible. Yeah... pretty gruesome.
Well, good thing she wanted me to make this a bright happy cake. I did make a few changes though - I omitted the purple unicorn and replaced it with a teddy bear. A pink, decapitated teddy bear. I giggled a bit as I was putting it together, and in doing so I was able to add another talent to my cake decorating repertoire - painting! Basically used gel colors with almond extract to give the picture the shading it needed. The colors aren't exactly the same, but it's pretty close

And here is a full view of the cake - I had meant to do rainbows on the sides of the cake between the flowers, but by the time I got the flowers on, it was almost midnight and I was having a hard time keeping my eyes open. I figured that wasn't exactly a good time to be using an exacto knife.
The cake itself is dark chocolate with chocolate ganache filling. Had to get the dark theme in there somewhere :)

For my little slugger!

My son Lucas started playing T-ball with the local little league organization this year. When I got the schedule, I saw that his last game was scheduled for the day after his birthday. Perfect opportunity to have a built-in theme for his birthday celebration. It didn't take much for me to convince him to have a baseball birthday cake, but he had one more request - it had to have an airplane too. It didn't take long for me to figure it out. I found a die-cast airplane that came with its very own stand and put that on the cake. If you use your imagination (which for my son was very easy!), it looks like the plane is doing a fly-by past the baseball diamond! The cake itself, per his request, is chocolate cake with chocolate frosting (no filling here) and lots and lots of green grass, crushed graham crackers for the infield, and fondant bases

Happy 7th Birthday to my little slugger - congrats on a great year!

For one of Milwaukee's finest!

A couple of months ago, when my friend Diana had told me her son's birthday was coming up, I hinted that I was available to make a cake for him. She was more than happy to have me make his birthday cake, but then her boyfriend Joey, surprised her and bought a cake for him instead. And again, a couple weeks later, I had another chance to make a cake for her and her boyfriend bought one instead. Really great guy - buying all these cakes for her kids, one of which wasn't even his own child. Well, two weeks after the 2nd birthday I was talking to her again and she said that her boyfriend's birthday was coming up and she definitely wanted me to make a cake for him. She has made cakes before, but wanted this one to be extra special because of everything he had done for her in the past year. After looking online, she sent me a picture of a police car cake - really cute and looked pretty easy. Joey is a police officer with the Milwaukee Police Department, so a police car cake is very fitting for him. Well, the picture she showed me used a special 3D cake pan. I could not find said cake pan, so I decided to improvise. She wanted yellow cake with chocolate buttercream filling, so I made an 8 inch square cake, cut and stacked it to look as close to the shape of a car as I could. A bit disproportionate, but still pretty close.

Then, using the picture Diana sent me, I filled in the rest, and used Oreo cookies for the wheels (very popular with her younger kids!)

And a shot of it driving away to its destination...

Hope you liked your cake as much as I liked making it - and thanks for keeping us all safe!

Cinderella - and cake pops!

A few weeks ago, I got my first referral customer! My friend Ann, who taught me everything I know about cake decorating, is currently on maternity leave, had referred a client to me! Her name is Daniella and she wanted a Cinderella cake like the one that I made for Cecilia, along with cake pops decorated to look like pumpkins, all for her daughter Lauren's birthday. I decided to decorate the Cinderella cake with fondant, since I remembered how difficult it was to use buttercream. Little did I know that the day I decorated the cake, the temperature outside was in the mid-70's, and because of my oven being on, the temp in the house wasn't that much cooler. Yikes! I ended up having to do a bit of patch work and was a little disappointed that the cake wasn't as perfect as I wanted it to be. But it still looked pretty good!

Next up was the cake balls. I decided that cake pops would be really cute, and I bought a styrofoam ball that I decorated to look like Cinderella's carriage. This was my first time making them, so I did a ton of research. I went to the Bakerella website, my friend Ann's blog, and asked a few other friends as well. I mean, I know the basic idea is pretty easy - make a cake, break it into crumbs, add frosting, roll into balls, dip in chocolate, and viola! But still... I wanted to make sure I didn't mess them up. After I felt confident enough, I got started - and everything was going smoothly until I started dipping the pops in the chocolate. They started falling off the sticks! Maybe it was because I had scored the sides of the balls to make them look like pumpkins, but anyhow, I ended up having to spoon the melted chocolate over them and they didn't look exactly like I wanted them to, but close enough.

 I then decorated each with fondant stems and leaves before the chocolate set. Then I wrapped them, tied them off with ribbon and stuck them in the styrofoam pumpkin, just to see how it would look - very cute if I do say to myself!

And here is Cinderella with her "coach"

I took the cake pops out of the pumpkin (couldn't deliver them that way without worrying about the whole thing falling over!) and put them in a nice little box.

Hope you had a wonderful birthday, Lauren, and that you loved your Cinderella cake and pumpkin cake pops as much as I loved making them!

Minnie Mouse!

Two months ago, I got a message from my friend Marge, who had been following all of my adventures in cake decorating and wanted me to make a cake for her granddaughter's birthday. I was happy to provide a cake for her, and when she told me a month later that she wanted a Dora the Explorer cake, I got to work looking up ideas. I had everything all set and was about to go to the store to get some little toys to put on top of the cake, when I got a message from Marge stating that there was a change in plans. She had been to a party supply store to get invitations and her granddaughter saw a pair of Minnie Mouse ears, grabbed them and put them on her head. Marge later told me that her granddaughter never lets anyone put anything on her head. No headbands. No hats. So when she grabbed the mouse ears and proudly displayed them, Marge knew that a Minnie Mouse party was the way to go. She purchased a candle and some toppers and sent me a message stating the change in plans. So I started planning another design for the cake, all this time not knowing what the decorations that she had purchased looked like. I had an idea about what I wanted to do, but didn't know what colors I'd need. She dropped off the decorations on Thursday afternoon, and from there I set to work with the final design. It took a while, but in the end I came up with a design that I knew she would love.

Two days, two cakes and one yummy batch of strawberry buttercream, and lots of pink and purple icing (not to mention some fun fondant colors!) later, I was done.

Happy Birthday Autumn - I hope you love eating your cake as much as I loved making it for you!

A Cake for a Friend

A few weeks ago, I was talking to my friend Jennie, asking her if she was ever going to come to visit me in Milwaukee. She lives three hours away and has been busy looking for a job, and most recently, helping out while her parents' house is under construction. All this while recovering from having major hip surgery after a nasty fall almost two years ago. After telling her that Lucas had a week off of school for spring break, and that Brian was taking that week off of work, she said that sounded good and she'd be coming to visit on Thursday and staying through the whole weekend. Needless to say, I was thrilled about having one of my best friends coming to visit me (and my kids were even more excited about getting to see Miss Jennie again), so I began planning. I had some activities planned, as well as the menu of all of the yummy meals I was going to prepare while she was here. Then, I posted pictures of my Easter cake and she made a comment about how I needed some cake testers - you know, for quality control purposes. Well, after seeing that, and knowing everything that she has gone through in the past two years, I just had to make a cake for her. Something simple, but heartfelt and as beautiful as she is.

The cake itself is yellow cake with chocolate buttercream frosting and filling, decorated with some of the royal icing roses that I had made a week before (and was able to use up some of the blue flowers that I had made last year, since blue is her favorite color and all.)

It was great to see you, Jennie, and I look forward to seeing you again soon :)

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!