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!

Bright, beautiful, butterflies!

A few weeks ago when I was at choir practice at church, my friend Jen asked if I would be interested in making a cake and cupcakes for her daughter Madeline's first birthday. Would I? Of course, I'd love to! She said she wanted to go with butterflies so I told her to take a look online and send me pictures of any cakes she liked, to give me an idea. I did some searching as well, during which I found a really cute idea for the cupcakes. Well, two days later, she e-mailed me a ton of pictures, some more intricate than others, and in the end, she decided on a really cute cake with lots of bright colors.

Then came the baking part. Jen requested yellow cake with raspberry buttercream filling. Now let me just say that this was my first time making this particular cake recipe.I already had a good recipe for the filling, but for the cake - every time I'd made a yellow cake from scratch in the past, it came out very dense, like pound cake. Not exactly what you want for a one-year old's birthday. So I looked everywhere, and then I saw a post that my friend Ann made about a new cake recipe she found for yellow cake that was very moist and not overly dense. Jackpot! I asked her for the recipe and she was happy to share (thanks Ann!). Several hours later - I had all of my cakes and cupcakes baked and ready to frost and decorate.



The decorating was so much fun - I have seriously missed decorating with fondant and gum paste, almost as much as I've missed making royal icing flowers. (which will be coming up soon for Easter!).
All of the flowers and decorations on the side of the cake were made with fondant - the butterflies are a fondant/gum paste mix. I originally dried them in a box, each butterfly in one piece, bent in the middle. They dried okay, but then I realized I would have problems putting them on the cake this way. So I broke them in half and pressed each wing into the cake, with the body in the middle. Not perfect, but pretty darn close!

For the smash cake - I knew I wanted to make it simple. Not a lot of fondant, but cute nonetheless. So I put two ladybugs on the sides, a butterfly on top(to be removed before the birthday girl got to work!), and front and center - the initials of her name - MVP (her older sister has the initials VIP!). It's obvious that she liked it, don't you think?






 Finally, the cupcakes were iced by me with a simple swirl and then decorated by the children at the party (I did the rest while the kids went to burn off their sugar rush!). Pretzels for the wings, an M&M for the head, icing for the body, and for the antennae, I took some black chocolate fondant, rolled it into a rope, cut out little pieces and let them dry so they'd be easier to work with. Much more kid friendly than black licorice.

Thanks Jen for allowing me to be part of your daughter's special day - Happy Birthday Madeline!

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!