Sunday, May 29, 2011

Idaho Falls HS Graduation

Ok. This cake was... um.. an adventure? I guess that's a nice word for it. I almost had a nervous breakdown, but I lived. You've heard me talk about Cake Wrecks, right? Well, this cake would have been right at home. Here's the gist of the story-

I put the bottom layer together and it was thick- I mean THICK. But I just went along with it anyway. I had the cakes both decorated and ready to put together. The top layer looked like a lopsided marshmallow. But I thought once I had it in place I could decorate around the wonky-ness and hide the flaws. When I put a cake together, there are three or four dowels down inside the bottom layer to support the upper layers. The upper layer is on a round cardboard to help support it- so, I put the dowels in the bottom tier, then put the tip tier on (you with me so far?) Then, If the cake is being transported more than a block away- and by someone other than myself, I drive a longer dowel down through the middle of both cakes. I use a sharpened dowel to poke through the cardboard and then hammer it down in.  So I did that- just the same as I always do- only... when I was done with it, the top layer had sunk about a half inch down into the bottom tier. I decided that the top tier just looked too wonky and if this was going to a paying customer that it needed to look good. Not like a half @$$ed thrown together monstrosity. So I thought I'd take the top layer off and redo it. When I pulled it off- the bottom tier was hollow! Hollow? What the heck????


When I pounded the sharpened dowel down through both tiers, instead of poking a hole, it just folded the cardboard up in between the support dowels and pushed it through, smashing the cake in the middle. I stared at it in shock. Then horror. Then asked my mom if she had a potted plant I could stick in it.



Needless to say- I started over.

The second go round turned out much better- for obvious reasons- but also just because I feel it's proportioned a little better than the first cake was. It's almost as if it was meant to be that the first cake bit the dust. I never do cakes in advance. I'm always scrambling at the last minute to do them but this time I started way ahead of time. Yeah... it's probably a good thing.

The little tiger I made was done a few days in advance so I didn't have to worry about him. but I re-baked and re-decorated the cake.  The kid this is for likes sports so his mom wanted something sporty on it. The sports things are made from gum paste and hand painted. The football I rolled inside a paper towel so that it would have texture on it.




And here we have the finished product!



I think it turned out pretty darn cute! I hope they like it... I also hope his mom laughs- and not the opposite- when she sees the "bows" on the back of the cake. We were joking about putting bows on a boy cake and I guaranteed her there would be a bow on this cake somewhere. You can kinda see it in the penultimate picture... just a little black bow at the back on the ribbon.  tee hee... silly.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

The Next Generation

The other day I was working on some butterflies for a friend, the kitchen was strewn about with my cake crap. My niece Sadie asked if she could decorate a cake. I just so happened to have a frozen cake that had not been claimed. I let her go crazy. I didn't help her at all except to give her a few tips for rolling the fondant so something little.

When she was done, she said it was for me. Cuz I love frogs.  Awww.... Thanks Sades!

With no direction from anyone- this is what she came up with:


I think it's great! Her first fondant cake ever. Again, my camera on my phone isn't great. It loses some of the detail. but the little sandwich actually has "cheese" in it- and the little apple and banana...? awww...

Good job Kid!

Sunday, May 22, 2011

Bonneville HS graduation

This cake was fun! A girl from work needed a cake for her daughter's graduation so she asked if I'd do it. Of course, it was my pleasure.

This is the Bonneville High mascot:



Super unattractive, right?

So what kind of cake could I do for a graduating Bee?


Try this on for size. It's a little fondant bee, with graduation cap and tassel (you can't see it, but he has a tiny little stinger on his bum).  But I didn't want the little bee to be lonely...


...so he got a few friends from the hive (with even teenier stingers on thier bums). Bonneville colors are yellow and green. I threw in the black to make it "pop" a little bit, plus to bring it in from the bees.

It's a chocolate/white marble cake with white butter cream frosting.

Personally (and I am my own worst critic), I think it's pretty cute. I just hope Katie thinks so too. Apparently, she was bragging to her friends that her mom is ordering her a cake!a real cake! and her friends thought her mom had gotten something like, from the Ace of Cakes... yeah... I hope she's not too disappointed. Duff is waaaaaaaaay outta my league.




 



Sadie's Birthday

February 2011

When I asked my niece, Sadie what she wanted for her birthday cake, she just told me "pink, purple, yellow, and green. So that's what she got.


 I need to work on my patience though- and get all the stripes straight. Plus I got a little overexcited with the steamer- so it looks a little... extra shiny. But it was a fun experiment with color and shapes. She liked it- so that's all that matters.

Lego Birthday

February 2011

This birthday cake was my first actual ordered and paid for cake! It was for 10 year old Matthew.


It was super time consuming and didn't turn out *exactly* how I planned, but that's because I'm impatient.  But every dot was individually cut and put in place, as was every "Lego" stripe.

All in all, I think it turned out ok. The picture is crap- but it's better than the one I have on Facebook (this one hides more of the flaws).

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Butterfly Birthday

My laptop is on the fritz. I have a better picture of this on my camera- but if I want to get the picture up before the memory of the cake flies away like a butterfly leaving it's cocoon, I'll just post the not-as-good-but-better-than-nothing from the phone pix picture.

Got that?


White cake with white butter cream frosting. Made for Mailei. Happy Birthday, Kiddo!

The fun part was- Heather, (her mom, not my other personality) just said to do whatever I wanted- in summery colors. So this is what I came up with. When she picked it up (I wasn't there) she said that she'd just gone to the store to pick up decorations for the party- and without talking to me, or seeing the cake- the decorations and the cake matched! How awesome is that?