Fondant Cakes.

I know that a lot of people are not fans of fondant, they say it tastes bad and it is notoriously hard to work with but I really like it. I make my own, which tastes pretty yummy in my opinion.

Using fondant can be as simple as using cookie cutters to stamp out flowers to cover a cake. To the left is one of my first fondant cakes, I covered and decorated the cake with fondant in one of my classes. All the flowers came from a pre-made, pre-colored box of fondant and I simply rolled it out, cut them then put them on the cake. I think it turned out pretty good, the piping is a version of lace technique which is pretty tedious but I love the result.

This cake is a more recent one using a similar idea, the more polished look comes from the fact that all the fondant is colored by me to get the specific shades of pink I needed. I also used a fondant tool to make the flowers have a more realistic cupped shape. Both cakes were covered with fondant and the flowers were cut using the same cutter, to me its just the details that make the more recent one look more refined. 

This cake was made for a July 4th celebration in 2010. I used fondant to cover the cake as well as to make the stars and stripes. There were originally three stripes then I cut into the third one with my handy Exacto knife to make the wavy line. I love the clean lines of this cake.

This was a Christmas 2010 cake made for my husband's work Christmas Party. Yes it is a pickle dressed is Christmas gear. I used fondant here to cover the cake as well as for all the detail work including the hands, feet, face, and hat. I had so much fun with this cake. It was a red velvet cake inside so it tasted yummy too. The more I work with fondant the more I think it is worth the trouble to learn to use it and use it well. I do, however, think my next post will be dedicated to buttercream cakes, delicious buttercream!

Has it been 4 months??

Has it really been four months since my last blog? It feels like I posted not that long ago, time flies when you are busy  guess. So what have I been doing over the last four months? Cake of course!

D's Cowgirl Cake

So first I did a birthday cake for a co-worker's little girl "D." She wanted zebra print cowgirl, with bright pink. Their last name starts with "L" so that is where the L in the middle came from.
I was really nervous to do zebra print, because I ahd never done it before bu it was way easier than I thought, I personally am not a big fan of the fat/thick zebra print stripes so I tried to make mine skinny and more realistic. The boots and belt buckle were both made of fondant about 4 days ahead of time so they could harden, note the bigger the piece the longer it will take to harden, which you will definitely want if you are standing something up.

Next up I had a cake for my cousin's baby shower, she is having (has now had, yes I know I'm running behind) a little girl and wanted "lots of pink and girly" The small flowers range from deep hot pink to a softer baby pink with the lightest pink being the buttercream writing. The darkest flowers are at the bottom and become lighter the further up the cake you go. Once again the flowers were made a few days ahead of time so they had time to dry, then were stuck on with fondant glue (aka water). I had a lot of fun with this one, I love when I get lots of freedom to interpret a design.

The next weekend after the baby shower I had my nephew's first birthday cake. One of his first words was tractor so appropriately it was a barnyard theme. All of the animals are made of a fondant/gumpaste blend, and were made ahead of time. (Tutorial on those to come at a later date). The barn is made from rice cereal treats because cake would have been too heavy. My favorite part about this cake is the muddy (chocolate syrup) pig on the bottom. It was a big challenge to make all the animals, and I had a learning curve for sure on this one. But I loved the way it turned out, and my nephew devoured his smash cake too. That is the best part about first birthday cakes to me, watching the little ones eat up the little smash cakes.

Finally, one of my co-workers is leaving us (yep you guessed it, he has already left by now) to go to medical school at UNC. We are all so proud of him and wanted to throw him a going away party, and I got to make the cake and cupcakes. The scrub top is carved out of vanilla cake and covered with light blue fondant.  The scissors, pen, syringe, and surgical mask were all made out of fondant ahead of time then hand painted. The mask even has stitching! The small little pills (sprinkles) around the bottom of the cake, on the cake board and the cupcakes were all hand made, one at a time. It was worth it, they turned out amazing, I love the bright pop of color they add!
The cupcakes were chocolate and had fondant/gumpaste pill sprinkles, mini surgical masks, and first aid symbols on them.

Now that we are all caught up (minus one cupcake order that will be up soon) I will be doing my best to keep up with my posts. Things are a little crazy around here. Until next time...

Gerber Daisies + Cake = Love

Let's face it, I don't know many women who don't love flowers. I personally love them on cake, but just a few, the best way to get them on said cake is to make edible flowers out of gumpaste and/or fondant. My personal favorite is the gerber daisy.  They come in all kinds of colors in nature and you have even more options in what you can do in sugar. I love bright colors therefore I love making them bold and bright so they can stand out on the cake. Here are my two favorite gerber daisy cakes I've done.

This one was done for my friend Jessica's 30th birthday last August. She told me she liked purple and her favorite flowers list included gerber daisies, as soon as I heard that this design came to mind. The gerbers and the "30" were made ahead of time out of fondant so that they could set up. Because gerber daisies have thicker petals no gumpaste was necessary. The original flowers were a little pale so I hand painted each one so the colors would be more intense! To paint them I mixed icing color with some vodka (so that it will dry faster and be less likely to run/smear). In order to get the cupped shape right for the flowers I used cupcake cups that I smashed with my had a little. This cake in particular definitely taught me to go with the flow, things did not go quite as I planned but I think the end result was better than the idea I had in the first place.

This next cake will always be special to me as it was my first wedding setup. The top cake was brownie cake, and then there were chocolate cupcakes (bride's favorite) and red velvet cupcakes (groom's favorite).  Once again I made the gerbers ahead of time so they could setup, I also ended up hand painting these as well because I wanted bright colors. To me the little bundle of gerbers on top really makes the cake pop! The cupcakes had little mini-daisies on them as well. Here's a closeup of the top layer so you can really see the daisies.









Hopefully now you know why Gerber Daisies+Cake = Love for me!

Jack's Big Music Show Cake and edible drums!

Recently I had the privilege to make the cake for our friends Adam and Tiffany's little boy, Sylas' first birthday! The theme was Jack's Big Music Show and since Adam plays the drums I knew I wanted to make the drums and Mel the focal point on top of the cake. The first step was to make the edible drums which actually turned out to be a lot more simple then I thought. Here is what I needed

I used my circle cutters, sized on my 6" cake pan to figure out what sizes each of the drums and symbols should be. These were purchased online and range from 1/4"-3" in size. The next step was to roll out my yellow fondant at the thickness I wanted each drum head to be. I cut those out, then rolled a much thinner piece of fondant to cut the symbols. This is what I ended up with

The drum heads ended up being about 1/2" thick and worked out perfect. I laid them aside and let them dry for about an hour. I made 2 extra symbols because attaching them was going to be tricky. To put the pieces together I used some sturdy floral wire and fondant glue (aka water) then supported everything with clean paper towels until it could all dry and harden. I let the whole set dry for the week then painted them and attached white drum heads and the symbols (the best way I found was just using a wad of fondant under the symbol to hold it onto the wire.) You'll see the final product on the cake at the bottom.

Now on to making the characters, the characters are actually pretty simple. When I am making sculpture type pieces for cakes I always try to break them down to the simpler shapes. In this case the heads are basically spheres with a slightly pointed front for the face, and the bodies are cylinders. I made Jack first, rolled the light blue fondant into a ball and pointed the nose a little.

Then I cut in a mouth, if you've seen the show its all about the characters singing in a band, so the mouths had to be open!
The two smaller balls of fondant you see to the right are going to be the ears, I simply pressed down on them with my finger and then put the indentions in to the pieces and attached them to the head. Next I made the nose and eyes out of black fondant which really brought his face to life.

 I used the same steps to make Mary's head and Mel's (forgot to take a progress pic of just Mel's finished head) They turned out so cute!

The red cylinder in the back is my first attempt at making Mary's body. I pretty much just shaped it into the cylinder free hand, and used Jack's head to size it.d head)







Next was Mel's body which is colored a lime green, little bit of yellow and more green. Added to my white fondant. Then I enlisted my assistant (aka my husband) to help me color Jack's body, which is a light peachy pink color, so he mixed a pea size ball of red into a golf ball size ball of white fondant. The finished product looked like this:

I added a yellow heart to Mary and the stripes to Mel, and added the legs and arms and instruments later. Everything was assembled on site and this was the final product:

 Close ups of the characters with arms, legs and instruments attached...

Baby Cakes

So I pretty much like making any kind of cake but if I am going to be honest I love to make cakes for baby showers (first birthdays too but we will get to that later). I've done two so far, first

I did a carved onesie cake and cupcake setup for a work baby shower, the cake was vanilla and decorated in all buttercream. The cupcakes were chocolate with vanilla buttercream and royal icing baby booties made ahead of time. Here is a close up of the booties, they were done with a tip 10 to make the boot and a tip 2 for the bow and top

I also did my sister in law, Heather's baby shower cake, she and my brother chose to have their impending arrival be a surprise so I needed a gender neutral design. I chose... the belly cake!

This was a fresh strawberry cake with vanilla buttercream. It is covered and decorated with marshmallow fondant. I choose to make my own fondant at home using marshmallows as the base, it has all the same decorating qualities but frankly tastes so much better! I love this cake in the end, it came out exactly how I envisioned it. When parents choose to allow me to do their baby shower cakes, I get to be part of such a special celebration, it is one of the many reasons why I love doing cakes.

My Cake Story

A little more history... I initially made the decision to learn how to decorate cakes so that I could make my husband's grooms cake for our wedding. Immediately I signed up for the basics cake class at the local craft store, I already knew I wanted to do something special and custom that was all about him, I just needed the techniques. My husband is a musician so I decided to go big and do a full size replica of a Fender Telecaster guitar. This was the result

Over the next several posts I will introduce you to even more of my past endeavors but for now I will humbly introduce you to one of my very first cakes

 Both cakes are all buttercream as I had not learned to use fondant at this time. This bottom cake is a drop flower cake that I made in my first class. Hope you guys will enjoy reading about my cake adventures. With cakes in the future I will try to include tutorials for the more unique things I do as well.