Lab Week - We ROCK!

For those of you who are new to my blog and don't know, my cake decorating business is really a side business. My day job is as a Medical Technologist. Every year, at the end of April, those of us who work in the medical laboratory field get to celebrate the small yet important role we play in the overall patient experience. Each year has its own theme with a poster designed by someone in the medical laboratory field. I loved the poster for this year!

And with this being my first year as a permanent part time employee since Lucas was born (I've been picking up hours on an as needed basis since then and was finally hired to a part time position earlier this year), I wanted to take part in the festivities. And what better way than by making cupcakes?

Yet, these are no ordinary cupcakes. These are special cupcakes. Lab cupcakes! And I got to use a new toy - food markers! The cupcakes themselves are red velvet with vanilla frosting. I usually do cream cheese frosting with red velvet cake, but since I knew that the cupcakes would be sitting out for a while and I know what happens to cream cheese when it sits... I made something that is much less likely to become a breeding ground for bacteria.

So now for some explanation of the decorations... These are dedicated to the techs who work in Blood Bank, readying units of plasma and blood for transfusion to save the lives of patients every day

And here are the lab coats that we wear to keep ourselves safe from spills so we can go home with our clothes as clean as when we left. (and they look pretty sharp too!)

 And last but not least - my personal favorite. White Blood Cells! These are the cells in your blood that help to fight infection. The pink one is a Neutrophil - they fight bacterial infections. The blue one with the round purple circle on the left is a Lymph - they fight viral infections. The blue and purple one on the right is a Monocyte - it's not what you have a lot of when you get mono, but those cells gobble up the viruses and bacteria that make us sick. Kind of like little vacuum cleaners.

Happy Lab Week!!

Happy Easter!

Every year I make a cake for Easter, and this year was no exception. I went a bit simpler this time around, just because I was also hosting dinner. But I wanted the cake to be special, so I made a new kind of filling to go inside - lime curd! Last year my dad had bought a ton of limes at the grocery store and my mom had already had a ton of lime juice in the freezer so she gave them to me. Note to my readers - you can buy limes and lemons, juice them and put the juice in ice cube trays, then freezer bags when the juice is frozen. That way whenever you need a little bit of lime or lemon juice for a recipe, it's right there!

This lime curd was so easy to make. Lots of stirring but I didn't mind because the lime curd smelled wonderful. So fresh and summery - a real breath of fresh air after a long winter! Added to the yellow cake and it was delicious.

Here is my finished cake - complete with the last of my royal icing flowers. Which means that the next chance I get, I'll need to make a batch of royal icing to make more flowers for next time! And to add a little bit of fun, I piped some grass on top and put some jelly beans in there too - courtesy of my wonderful husband. He's a truck driver and one of his stops the week before Easter was at the Jelly Belly factory about 45 minutes south of where we live. One of the perks of being a truck driver - free jelly beans!

Happy Easter!

God Bless Casey

I love happy endings. And happy beginnings. Heck, I love anything happy! A little over a year ago, I made an awesome Incredible Hulk cake for my friend Leanne's son Luke. A few months later, she and her husband announced that after a long time of trying, they were expecting a little girl! I was so happy for her - especially since I would now be able to give her my daughter's baby clothes that I no longer needed. Cecilia was born at the end of December, and Leanne was due at the beginning of January. Perfect! After Casey was born, I brought the clothes over and she told me that she would be in touch for cakes for her baptism and Luke's first communion. Fast forward a couple months and I got an e-mail from Leanne saying that Casey's baptism was a little over a week away and she wanted a cake, but it didn't need to be fancy. Nice and simple, with lots of lavender. I found a design, she approved and I set to work. The cake itself is yellow cake with vanilla buttercream frosting. No filling on this one. I could have filled it but then the layers would have been really thin and there would have been more frosting than cake. I then added some fondant accents and letters, and dusted the cross with some purple luster dust.

A pretty cake for a pretty little girl!

When I dropped off the cake, Leanne was just finishing up giving Casey a bath. I waited patiently for her to dry Casey off and get her dressed, and then offered to hold her while Leanne wrote out the check for me. Casey is such an adorable baby - she took a few moments to warm up to me, but once I started talking to her and telling her that I'm the cake lady, and how I make lots of yummy cakes, her eyes just lit up! Looks like I have another fan!

Happy Baptism Casey and God Bless you and your family!

Cupcakes fit for a princess!

I know I've said it before, but I just love repeat customers. They remind me, in the midst of my doubts, that I must be doing something right because they keep coming back! In this case, it's my friend Rachel. Last year she ordered a La La Loopsy cake for her daughter Luci's birthday. I made a strawberry cake and although she only asked for enough cake to feed the children at her party, she said that the adults ended up wanting some too. She even said that they were happy to have the tiniest sliver, just so they could have some of that cake!

This year, she asked for the same cake, but in cupcake form. Decorations were up to me, but she wanted the colors pink and purple. I had some princess cupcake liners and picks that I had purchased a few years ago, so I used those. I whipped it up, put them in the oven, but when I took them out, something happened that reminded me of a previous experience. The cupcakes... sank. They were completely cooked, but it was because of the moistness of the cake that they did this. Didn't change the taste of the cake, but being a perfectionist, I wanted to make this right. I gave Rachel two options - I could put more frosting on top, or fill the cupcakes in addition to frosting them. I suggested lemon buttercream, which would make the cupcakes taste like strawberry lemonade. She was sold! (I even tasted the combo with an extra small layer I made with extra batter from the cake recipe and it was delicious!

Here they are!

There were only 23 picks in the package, but I figured, this way the 24th cupcake would be perfect to put a candle in for the birthday girl!

Happy Birthday Luci!

A Frozen Cake (that's not really frozen)

I can't believe my daughter Cecilia is 6 years old. Seems like just yesterday I was celebrating her 1st birthday. When I started planning the design for her cake at the beginning of December, she initially wanted a Sophia the First cake. I even drew the basic shape of a round cake and she drew what she wanted the decorations to look like, complete with a Sophia doll on top. I even bought purple candy melts for the cake pops she'd be bringing to school. And then we saw the movie Frozen. She loved it. So after more thought, she decided she wanted a Frozen cake instead. She helped draw the picture for that one as well (but she spilled hot chocolate on it so I couldn't take a picture to post here). It was kind of funny - when I told people that we were having a Frozen cake, they immediately thought ice cream. But it's not. It's a regular, baked cake. In fact, the flavor of the cake and filling is a stark contrast to the wintery design on the outside. Lemon cake with strawberry buttercream filling. Which is fitting considering that in the movie Frozen, Elsa the snow queen puts the kingdom in a deep freeze in the middle of summer.

Here's the cake - the Anna doll (the one with red hair) she got for her birthday from my sister, and the Elsa doll I bought her. I wanted to get an Olaf figure as well (he's the snowman in the movie - and in my opinion the best character, hands down), but every store was out of them. I added a little sprinkling of silver luster dust to the top of the cake to give it that more magical look.

For her birthday treat at school (which she handed out before winter break), I made cake pops with white cake, a bit of vanilla frosting tinted blue, covered them with white chocolate and decorated with special snowflake sprinkles.

Happy Birthday Cecilia!

Merry Christmas!

What a busy December is has been! And I'm not talking about cake either. I actually didn't have any cake orders until after Christmas, which was just fine considering how busy things were in my house in the weeks leading up to it. Between snowstorms, sickness and working extra days at my new job, I hardly had time for making cookies this year! But when my friend and long time customer Ratna sent me a message requesting a Christmas cake for a holiday party she was having on the 28th, I was happy to make one for her.

The cake itself is red velvet (one of the cakes that I prefer to make from a mix, because the last time I made it from scratch my white spatulas and fingertips were pink for days from all of the red food coloring), and per my suggestion, the filling and frosting are peppermint buttercream. I made a cake with this combination a few years ago and Ratna liked the idea. For the decoration, I piped some poinsettias on top and then made some holly leaves with fondant. Very festive, don't you think?

Merry Christmas!

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!