Ashley Rose’s 7th Birthday

Wednesday, September 8, 2010 by admin

Today my daughter Ashley turns 7!

I made these cupcakes for her classroom celebration. I am extremely pleased with how they turned out considering the fact that I made them at 12:30 am!

I hand piped all decorations on these cupcakes. I also added a bit of pink sprinkles to the pedals of each flower to add a little something to them. I hope you all enjoy!


Legos & Dinosaurs

Thursday, July 22, 2010 by admin

This birthday cake was made for my little brother Andy's 11th birthday. There is nothing he loves more than dinosaurs and legos.

This originally started out as just a lego birthday cake. I iced the cake with blue buttercream frosting, then started to construct lego pieces out of handmade marshmallow fondant. Once I constructed the little legos, I made small balls of fondant to circle the bottom of the cake to finish of the decorations.

When I was shopping for my brother's birthday gift, I came upon these tiny dinosaur figurines. I decided to get a couple to just add a bit more to his cake. It turned out to be great because he LOVED it! I was very pleased with the multicolor aspect of this cake. I felt it was really appealing to the eyes.

I also also very proud of myself since I had managed to construct it in merely 3 hours, which is amazingly fast (especially for me). Because of my time constraint, this cake is definitely not my best work thus far, but I am still very happy with the final product. It definitely pleased the client.


Mermaid

Thursday, July 1, 2010 by admin

This was Cadie's 6th birthday cake. She decided on a mermaid theme since she was having a swim party. I decided to use fondant again, but this time after doing my research decided on using a different recipe. I have had disappointing experience with the taste of the fondant I had used. The already made fondant tasted the worst and the home made fondant I used for my previous cupcakes tasted much better, but it was still not GOOD.

I had learned that using marshmallow fondant was much more of a success as far as taste and worked as well as regular fondant. I decided to go for it. It was great! I covered the entire cake with blue marshmallow fondant, hand piped the edges of the cake, even creating a wave design on the bottom. I sculpted the mermaid on the rock and the mermaid jumping into the water by hand and hand piped her long brown hair.

The water texture on the top of the cake was created by using blue gel icing. I really enjoyed making this cake and didn't even feel it was extremely difficult. I did learn, though, that making your own gel icing is not the best idea. I think I'll be store buying next time. It was a MESS!


Baby Bug Cupcakes

Thursday, July 1, 2010 by admin

I made these cupcakes for the 1st birthday of my nephew Emerson.

My sister in law said that because of his nickname "bug" she wanted some little bug cupcakes. I hand piped the green buttercream frosting as the "grass" on the cupcakes in which the little bugs are standing.

This project was very much a last minute creation. I had only known the day before the party. Fortunately, this gave me the opportunity to create my own fondant from scratch since there is no store to purchase cake decorating supplies in Fort Bragg. I was happy with how they turned out.

Of course, I did learn some from this project. The recipe I used was a little bit soft for my taste. It also gave me the opportunity to do some more research and find exactly how I would like to make my own fondant. Everything on these cupcakes were hand created.


Mickey Mouse

Thursday, July 1, 2010 by admin

This cake was for my son Evan's 2nd birthday.

He really loved Mickey Mouse and so I decided to give it my best shot creating a cake of Mickey Mouse's face. This cake was a bit of a challenge. It is made of some buttercream frosting and some fondant. The only fondant I used was to create the head/ears and I hand piped the facial features.

I find it particularly difficult to add dimension to a character's face. I had this same issue when creating the Tweety Bird cake. The ears were purely for decoration made entirely of fondant. I suppose you could eat them, but you'd probably make yourself sick.


High School Musical

Thursday, July 1, 2010 by admin

This year, for Ashley's 6th birthday, she begged and pleaded for me to let her have a high school musical party.

After making the cupcakes with the gum paste wings, I decided to go ahead and try using fondant. Again, I bought the fondant already made by Wilton cake collection. I dyed it red and found that it actually was not that difficult to work with. I would say the hardest part of fondant is how much kneading it requires.

I made 3 adorable starts attached to 3 thin wooden dowels and purchased 3 star candles. I cut out the letters to spell "High School Musical" and decorated with edible sparkles & piping. I then added two small pictures of the lead characters to finish it off. I was amazed at how wonderful it turned out. Fondant was a success!


Pixie Fairy Cupcakes

Thursday, July 1, 2010 by admin

This year for Cadie's birthday she asked for a Tinkerbelle birthday party.

I knew right away what I thought would be cute. Cupcakes with little green pixie wings on them. This was my first time using any kind of gum paste or fondant. I got the store bought gum paste from the Wilton cake collection.

I colored it a beautiful green, cut out the shapes and hand piped green decoration on them. I then sprinkled edible purple glitter on them. I was pleased at how beautiful they turned out!


The Prince & Princess

Sunday, June 27, 2010 by admin

My son Evan was born just 8 days after the 4th birthday of my daughter Ashley.

We decided a joint birthday party was the easiest way to manage two birthdays so close. Luckily Ashley was a good sport as we allowed her to still choose her birthday theme.

This year she was extremely into the "Fancy Nancy" books an wanted to go for a fancy birthday. We happened upon a very adorable little prince 1st birthday theme that matched wonderfully.

I baked both cakes in the same crown mold and decorated them both with hand piped icing along with the glitter sprinkles. This birthday was a smash hit and I was very pleased at the outcome of both cakes.


Tweety Bird

Sunday, June 27, 2010 by admin

This cake was for my daughter Cadie's 4th birthday.v Her big beautiful eyes reminded me of this cute little bird (although her eyes are brown), and she loved the idea for her birthday.

This cake was also sculpted by hand. All it's decorations were hand piped as well.

Honestly, this is not my best cake if you ask me. I was happy is turned out as well as it did, but it was a challenge.

Creating a face like tweety's was difficult. Of course, I realize I am far more critical of my work than others might be, but none the less, I managed to create the cake in time & she was very happy.


Wizard of Oz

Sunday, June 27, 2010 by admin

This cake was created for my daughter Ashley's 4th birthday.

She has been in love with the Wizard of Oz since she was about 2 years old.

This year she insisted on a Wizard of Oz party and I racked my brain on how to create a cake to fit the theme. I figured of all the elements of the movie, the ruby slippers would be not only the cutest, but best thing to make.

I started with two loaf pans, hand sculpted the shoes from that then decorated with the buttercream & chocolate frosting.

I created bows out of sour candy strips and sprinkled the cake with the red glitter sprinkles. It was by far the hardest cake I had mad at this point, but definitely a huge success when I saw my little girls face when she first looked at it!