Catch up!

I made several cakes this past week. The first was a pink zebra-striped cake for Keisha... I made her Sweet 16 cake 2 years a ago... I love the fact that I get to see kids grow up by making their cakes each year!
I also helped out with another fundraiser at work. I provided chocolate covered strawberries in cute little heart-shaped tins as well as a two tiered strawberry cake with cream cheese icing topped with fresh strawberries.
So far this weekend I have made two cakes but both are pretty remarkable: the first is a giant cupcake in pink and chocolate surrounded by regular-sized cupcakes.
The second cake was an experiment-- my first cake covered with fondant! I've been resistant to fondant because I've always heard it is so difficult to work with and I know it normally doesn't taste good. I found a new fondant that stays pliableand tastes pretty good so I was ready to try it out. Navneet, a new friend from work, happens to be celebrating a birthday tomorrow so I thought a cake for her would be perfect to experiment with! I used bright colors and tried to imitate some Mendhi designs in royal icing that I then painted gold. I finished the whole thing with a coat of shimmer spray.

The Jonas Brothers!

This weekend, I made a cake for a 10 year old named Bailey. She loves the Jonas Brothers so I incorporated the logo into a cake with gumpaste guitars and musical notes in hot colors...

Busy Weekend

Last week I made a version of one of my most popular cakes! It was a two tier chocolate cake with ganache and chocolate covered strawberries.
This past weekend was somewhat busy after having a short holiday break.
On Saturday morning, I made 60 cupcakes for an (indoor!) pool party. I made some with beaches and some with water... but most had Teddy Graham "swimmers"!
For Saturday afternoon, I made a four-tiered wedding cake. The bride asked me to make the cake in shades of ice blue and ice purple with delicate snowflakes. I've always wanted to make a colored wedding cake so I had a blast with this one! The top tier was icy blue and it "faded" to an icy purple by the bottom tier. I made about 100 snowflakes from royal icing but they were so delicate that they practically disintegrated when I picked them up! I used gumpaste to remake all the snowflakes and it worked perfectly!! I used edible glitter and crystal sugar to outline the snowflakes-- they were gorgeous!
I usually name my cakes after the bride so I think it was somewhat appropriate that I used crystal sugar on the "Crystal"!

Almost Caught Up!

Two last pictures from last year... although I'm sure I will find more as I go along.

I love to make gorgeous decorated Christmas sugar cookies. I host a cookie exchange each year and always choose these as my contribution. However, just like I theme my gift wrap each year, I usually theme my cookies to match-- its a sickness! This year, I mixed things up a bit and did different kinds-- ornaments, trees, candy canes and snowflakes.

I have TONS of cookie cutters and I like to make them for parties but most people don't realize how complicated they are so they are not willing to pay what they are worth...

Baby Shower...

Ranee

My friend Ranee moved a few weeks ago... she left NW Arkansas and moved to New Orleans. I will miss her desperately but I made a cake for her going away party.

Pizza!

More Catching Up

I've always been a huge fan of multi-tiered chocolate cakes... to me they are fall-like and I love fall colors in cakes. I had the opportunity to make any kind of cake I wanted for a wedding shower so it is no surprise that I chose to do a fall wedding cake. I made three tiers of chocolate cake and filled each tier with chocolate fudge, peanut butter or raspberry. The entire cake was iced with chocolate buttercream and then decorated with gold ribbon borders. I added handmade gumpaste leaves airbrushed with metallic fall colors and accented the leaves with handmade acorns. The cake was a huge success and became an instant favorite for me.

Still Catching Up

Two cakes in this post: a birthday cake for a Red Sox Fan and a Jagermeister cake for a, yes you guessed it, a Jagermeister fan!

The first was three tiers of cake decorated with some toppers made by my friend Keri. She's a very talented scrapbooker and I like to collaborate with her when I get the chance.

The second cake has a whole carved out of the neck of the "bottle" so that an actual shot of Jagermeister could be delivered to the birthday girl!

New Year's Resolutions

I have plenty- just like everyone else, I am sure. I won't go into my list here but one of my goals this years is to update my blog more consistently. I have lots of cakes to catch up on from the last several months so I will do that while I post new ones as well... so don't count on anything being in chronological order.

I make lots of cakes for charity events at the office- sometimes they are for Associates in Critical Need Fundraisers but sometimes they re for other charity fundraisers. The fist picture I am posting is a picture of the cake that has raised the most money so far: a Pirouline Cake. The cake is two layers of vanilla bean cake filled with hazelnut chocolate filling, iced with vanilla buttercream, surrounded by chocolate hazelnut pirouline cookies and topped with fresh berries and gold edible sparkle dust, all tied with a bow. Its a serious cake that garnered some serious funds raised: $200!

I'm posting several pictures of some cupcakes I made because they were so intricate. I made My Little Pony cupcakes for a little girl's birthday party and all the cupcake toppers were handmade, by me, of gumpaste! Very detailed but very cute.