Brown and Pink Baby Shower

I love doing pink and brown together! This was a fun cake and I was excited to practice with the party bow because I haven't gotten a lot of opportunities to make it. I've definitely improved and this bow came out bigger than I anticipated but I thought it made the cake really fun and cute. I also pearlized the whole cake which is my new favorite thing to do. It's so easy and makes the cake look totally different. The only issue I had with this cake was the fondant being too soft. I didn't know that was really possible until this cake but it made it more difficult to cover which made it not as clean as I like. The learning never stops.

Cake Class

I taught my first cake decorating class tonight and it went way better than I thought it would. I've been running around like a mad woman this week and didn't quite have my thoughts together before the class started and I was worried I wouldn't have enough butter cream and supplies. I also had to bring my kids with me and even though my little sister came to help watch them, I thought they'd be awful and distracting. Luckily I was wrong about everything. Some how the class seemed to flow pretty well, there was exactly enough butter cream, and my kids were angels! I taught a group of super fun ladies and had a blast! We worked on butter cream cakes and I demonstrated the fondant. This is the cake I made for the class. I wanted everyone to try a fondant cake to see how cool fondant can be and that it's not as horrible tasting as people say. I promised to post recipes on here and I plan on it but I'm exhausted! Hopefully I'll get it done within the next couple of days. Thanks to everyone who came!

Easter Cake

So I finally made a sculpture out of fondant (actually, the bunny is gum paste but close enough). It was midnight when I made it and my 3rd cake for the week but all things considered, it turned out pretty cute.

I practiced with a carrot cake recipe and I think I found a winner. I made a few modifications but for anyone who likes carrot cake, give this recipe a try-

4 eggs
1 C Veg oil
1/4 C applesauce
2 C sugar
2 tsp vanilla
2 C flour
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp clove
1/4 tsp nutmeg
3 C finely grated carrots
1 C chopped pecans

Oven 350, grease two 8" rounds. Beat eggs, oil, sauce, sugar and vanilla. Mix in all dry ingredients until just blended. Mix in carrots. Fold in nuts. Bake for about 30 minutes or until toothpick clean. Cool on wire rack.

Now, try it with my cream cheese frosting (I use this recipe with all my cream cheese filled cakes). I eye-ball a lot of the ingredients but here's a rough idea and you can make it how you like it.

1/2 C butter (room temp!)
8 oz cream cheese (room temp!)
1 tsp vanilla
4 C powdered sugar

If you couldn't tell, it's very important to make sure your ingredients are room temperature before mixing. Cream butter and cheese together well. Mix in sugar and vanilla. Yum!

I plan on sharing all of my recipes that I discover to maybe save others the headache of finding them. I'm pretty caked out from trying recipes that are perfect enough for my standards. I think I also have a winner chocolate and vanilla that I'll post later. I'm tired and happy to have a break from cakes this next week! I need to make up some serious play time with my neglected children.

Safari

So cool! I wish I could take credit for the idea because it is so creative. Ever since I saw this cake, I wanted to make it and I finally got the opportunity. This was for my friends sons 3 year birthday party. The cake went perfect with the safari theme. I think this may be my new fave! Thanks Chels!

Zebra & Pink

How fun is this cake? I'm loving the black and pink together. This was actually my first red velvet cake and it was another order with no specific request. I'm starting to like that because I can experiment more and practice with ideas. You can't tell in the picture but I pearl-ized the cake (my first time) and it came out way cool. I'll probably be using that a lot more often. I still need to work on that piping-grrrrrr!

Man's Gamer Cake

By far my favorite cake to-date. I think I loved the cake more than the customer did. :) Anyway, my BFF (how's that D? :)) wanted an all chocolate cake for her hubby's birthday. When I asked what he likes, she said board games, basketball & football. It really didn't take me too long to think of this idea and I didn't even do much research like I do on a lot of my other cakes but I was skeptical that I would pull it off. I just have to say, I had a blast with it! I love the cake being ALL chocolate. Even the cake itself is chocolate with the cream cheese filling (seems to be the popular combo lately). I did learn from this cake that water doesn't dry on fondant. :( The top pic is the back and the other is the front. Can you tell what age he is turning by looking at the front? So fun!

Shower Curtain

So this is really the first cake order that had no specific requests at all. They didn't even care what flavor the cake was. I was excited but intimidated because I'm really not a super creative person. I was looking at my fairly new shower curtain the other day and loving how cute it is and thought, "Hey, that would make a cute cake!" I'm happy with how it turned out although I really need to work on my writing skills.

Halo Cake

I decided for my husbands birthday cake, I would try out some of my new toys. One of them, I've already mentioned, is my edible ink and paper printer. I'm able to copy pictures or download from a computer or camera. Now in this instance, it made the cake look a little cheesy but I just wanted to show some of the stuff I can do now. Okay, next is my air spray gun-freakin awesome! It'll take a lot of practice but I loved coloring on the fondant instead of coloring fondant and I liked doing the fading technique. My last toy is my clay extruder. It pretty much just saves me a lot of time and makes my work look cleaner but it pushes fondant out in rope or any shape stencil I use. So cool!

Cowboy Cake

This request was a cowboy cake for a baby shower specifically with the little bear resembling the picture and "Baby Justin" written out. I tried first to make the bear out of fondant and that was too difficult with the amount of detail the bear had. So I panicked a bit and printed out the picture with my new printer with edible ink on edible paper (thanks mom!). It actually turned out really cool but I of course had to try to create the bear with clay. If that didn't work, I had my back-up picture. Not my best work but I thought it looked cute enough and looked enough like the picture to use on the cake. My favorite though, is the cow print and bandanna blanket. So fun!

My First Wedding Cake!!

Finally! My first wedding! As simple as this cake sounded-3 tiered, ivory cake with white flower's around each base-it was extremely time consuming. Yes, I sat a made each of those roses. Of course I left most of it until last night and then underestimated the amount of roses I needed and scrambled a few more minutes before the event. Thankfully I made it with time to spare. I hope it was what the bride was looking for. Thanks for trusting an amateur to make your cake! :)