It's a girl!!!

I was planning for this cake for a while mostly because I was excited to try it. So when I got the round pans home the fun began. I thought I had to turn the pans upside down on a cookie sheet. So I tried it, and failed. Obviously the cake seeped out the sides and made a mess in the oven. I finally called the store I get my supplies at and was kinda laughed at. I figured out I could stand the cake up the correct way (with the rounded part down) and it wouldn't fall because the weight of the batter will keep it even. When they were done they came out perfect! I made a 9x13x2 sheet to put the "belly" on and covered it with black fondant. I put the rounded cakes on top and covered it with the pink fondant. Once it was on the cake is when I shaped out the dress. Wife wouldn't let me have any cleavage showing. :(  I made due with what I could. I added some trim and a bow to the belly to break it up a bit. The pink icing at the bottom, I think, finished the cake. I would totally do this one again. This was a lot of fun.

Where My Peeps At?!

The title will make sense after you read about this one. Trust me. :)

     

It was Easter so the only thing I could think of was an Easter basket. This is the first cake that I made by my own design. I had an idea in my head and I ran with it. This is the beginning. Obviously I made 4 cakes, 2 8in and 2 10in. I cut one of the 10in layers at an angle to give it the shape of a basket (I know, it looks like a flower pot). With the top layer of cake I cut it to simulate the depth of a basket and gave it a bit of a lip like baskets have. The biggest mistake I made was actually "scoring" the cake before I took out the middle part. I actually lost half of the "lip" because there wasn't enough cake left and the buttercream was too heavy...sooooo I made that the back.

  

This was interesting. Initially I was going to use one piece and wrap it around the cake. That wasn't working. So I just figured I'll do it in panels, but there would be a seam. Mom to the rescue! As you can see in the pic on the right, I used the stems of the flowers to cover the seams. And I added a grass border on the bottom for a little texture. Easy fix.

  

In the area that I carved out I added the contents of the "basket". All of the candy is real, the robin's eggs, peeps, and chocolate bunny. The grass is actually green buttercream. I used a grass tip to pipe the grass in. I put the candy in first and filled the rest in with the grass. I cut a hole in the cake for the bunny to sit in so he was sturdy. 

  

The last thing to put on the cake was the handle. I braided 3 different ropes of fondant and let it dry in a pizza pan overnight. The pizza pan allowed me to get the shape I was looking for. The individual ropes were too thick so it didn't dry all the way causing it to be too heavy to keep it's shape. So I brought it to the party and put it in for the sake of taking pictures. I think I'm starting to get the hang of this cake thing. Good times!

Daddy's Little Princess

I made this cake the night before I needed it with a little help from my mom. Never really expected it to turn out like this. The figures are all plastic, if you couldn't already tell. The fondant is actually chocolate flavored. I used simple daisy cut outs to add a little texture to the cake. I didn't think I'd get all this done in less than 3 hours. It was fun and I couldn't have done it without the madre. Thanks mom!!

A Gift for Everyone

   

 For Christmas Day at work I made everyone working that day their own personal cake. This is the beginning. I made 3 vanilla and 3 chocolate 10x10x2 cakes, stacked them, and then cut them into quarters. Once all the cake was cut I iced them and covered them with white fondant. On the cookie sheet, you can see the nametags drying. Those were made out of gumpaste. I used gumpaste because it dries hard and it would allow for the tags to keep it's shape.

                       

Next it was time to put the ribbon and the bow on. I made the loops the night before to allow them to dry overnight and be hard when I put them on the cake. The ribbons were simply a couple strips of fondant. The middle part of the bow I made when I was ready to attach the entire bow to the cake. I used a little water to make the the middle part sticky enough to attach either loop together. I placed it on the cake using water again. 

                   

This is the final product. I used an edible pen to write the names on the bows and brushed the color around the edges. I bought the a roll of the red foil paper to cover the cake boards with. The green bows were my favorite. They went very well with the red boards. The hardest part (more of a pain in the ass) was covering 12 individual cakes. It will be a while before I do 12 personal cakes again...at least by myself.

The Jolly Snowmen

I had a lot of fun making this cake. This was for our Christmas party. I got the idea for this from looking a pictures of others. I collaborated a couple ideas and came up with this. Everything is fondant. The tree is made by stacking stars on top of one another. There were 3 different sizes and 3-4 of each size to make the tree. The star topper is actually 2 stars pressed together with a toothpick in the middle to keep it upright on the tree. I also covered the cake board in fondant. It gave it that nice bright white I was looking for and also helped with keeping the snowmen in one place. The snowmen were simple. Just rolled up different sized balls of fondant and gave them a little shape. The noses were a bit of the pain to paint. Next time I'm using colored fondant. lol. The hats are fondant too. The top hats are two pieces (top and brim) and the santa cap is one. This was fun and a big hit at the party. It was hard to cut into it. It just didn't seem right. This was the first time I had a piece of my own cake.

It's a boy!!!

This was a cake for my wife's friend who was having a boy. I saw this cake in a picture online and tried it for myself. The moon, stars, and clouds are all cut from fondant. I cut the clouds freehand by drawing them on the fondant first and cutting around the outline. I left the outline on them to give the cake more of a cartoon type look. Again, I used royal icing around the bottom of the tiers, simply because I didn't know any better. The topper was store bought. It fit the cake perfectly! The original cake had a gumpaste infant sleeping under a blanket. At the time, it was way over my head so the topper was my idea.

My First Attempt....Kinda

This is the second cake I've ever made. I can't find a pic of the first one but I can describe it. It was the Steelers logo on a 8in round covered in white fondant. The red yellow and blue diamonds were cut out of fondant and I used a gel icing pen to write "Steelers" next to it. EXTREMELY simple but that was the point. Just wanted to check it out.

This cake was intended to try my hand at making bows and piping. I learned that the fondant doesn't need to be that thick for a bow and royal icing isn't really for piping. I had fun. In the end they all taste awesome because, after all, it's cake!!!

The First Post

Hey all! As you can tell this is my first post of, hopefully, many. The whole purpose of this is to put all the cakes I make in one spot so if someone wants to see them I can point them in a direction other than facebook. I'm also leaning towards the idea of making a business out of this. In the meantime I'm going to post whatever I make, the good, the bad, and the "holy crap, what the hell did I do wrong", so this should be interesting. I'm always open to new ideas and methods of doing things. Feel free to tell me what you think and even share your own experiences. I should have pics of what I've made so far up here shortly sooooo stay tuned!