Japanese Cherry Blossom

This was actually my first attempt at making flowers... I used my friends birthday as an excuse to make a cake and to be my guiney pig at flower making. Altogether, it was a pretty easy cake to put together. First, I made the flowers and colored them with food coloring, then I made the branch out of rolled fondant and placed the flowers all around it. My friend liked the cake and so did everyone at work, so it was another successful experiement, but I still think I need to work on my coloring skills....

Transformers

Another girl from work wanted me to make her son's birthday cake. Apparently he loves Transformers, so it became the cake theme. Now while I wanted to make a 3D Transformer or something like that, I don't have anywhere near that skill, so I went with the Transformer logo instead. My husband helped me picked out the proper logo because apparently there are two different kinds, one for the good guys and one for the bad...who knew? Once the proper logo was found, I again printed it out on paper and cut it out to use as a template to cut my fondant from. I had to do a little improvisation with the rest of the decorating, but overall I liked the look. I found what I thought was a cool font on word and printed out William's name in italics to give some movement to the letters. Again, after cutting out the paper I used it as my template for the fondant and then placed the letters on the cake. It's a pretty simple design, but I like how it turned out and from what I hear, William liked it too. Yay for another happy customer!

Harley Motocycles

I was asked to make a cake for a coworkers husband's birthday. Apparently, he is a big Harley fan and has a few motorcycles that he rides frequently. I wasn't quite sure what to do with this cake, so I looked at a few pictures I saw online and pieced my favorite elements into this cake. Making the logo was the most difficult part. I printed out the logo on paper, cut out each letter and shape individually and then used those pieces as my templates to cut the fondant with. Making the logo took around 2 hours, but I didn't even notice the time pass. I made the flames out of store bought fondant (again because it colors easier) and used orange and red food coloring to give it the swirled colors, hoping that it would look more realistic. I free handed cutting out the flames and just put them around the cake to make it look like it was engulfed in fire. While I may not be a motorcycle person, this is still on of my favorite cakes thus far...

Snoopy cake for Kathy

A coworker asked me to make a cake for her daughters birthday. She said that when she was a little girl, her daughters favorite cake had been a Snoopy cake, so we went with that theme again. I searched online for ideas and thought making Snoopy with his dog house and Woodstock would be the most iconic. I used a breadpan to make the dog house and just carved the cake to the shape I wanted. Using store bought fondant, I made the wood slats for the roof and carved lines on the side paneling to make it look a little more realistic. Making Snoopy and Woodstock was easy and didn't take very long. The only disaster I faced was that I orginally covered the cake in white fondant and I thought it needed more color so I emergently made some green and covered the cake with that. Then I added my paw prints and "Happy Birthday Kathy" and it was complete. I have to say it was a really fun cake to make. I hope I get to make more like this in the future.

Spring is here!

I bought a new gumpaste flower making kit and thought I'd try it out. Thank goodness I work somewhere where I can bring all my goodies in to work so other people besides me eat it! Anyway, I thought I'd try out making some flowers and using my petal dust to paint some of them. Overall, I like how everything turned out. It was a lot easier to make the roses than I had expected so I made a few to put together on this cake. I used the petal dust to color the white flowers pink (just on the inside) and overall I think the effect was nice, but I need to work on my painting skills some. It was a fun experiement and everyone at work was happy to help eat my finished product...

Lingerie Cake

The next cake I made was for a friends bridal shower. I decided to make a lingerie cake, as that was the theme for the party. This was the first time I covered a cake in fondant and was a little worried about it, but it wasn't that hard at all! I did use store bought fondant to cover the cake, but I made sure to have some yummy icing underneath it. I made the base of the cake out of a 9x13 pan and used cupcakes to make the boobs. I made a template of the shape I wanted and cut the 9x13 cake accordingly. Then I placed the muffins in the appropriate places and shaped them. The I covered the entire cake with icing and used it to help smooth out the details, before placing the fondant on top. Once I covered the cake with fondant, I used ribbon to decorate it, in order to give it a more realistic look. All in all, it only took me an hour to assemble and decorate the cake the morning of the shower, which I thought wasn't too bad, since I'd worked a night shift the night before.

The cake was a big hit at the party. Happy Nuptials Sarah W!

Teddy Bear baby shower

The next cake I made was for another baby shower. This cake was again, inspired by a cake picture I found online. The only change I made was to make colors of the cake fit with the nursery colors. In learning from my previous mistakes, I made the cake from scratch and covered it with homemade chocolate marshmallow fondant. For those of you who haven't tried it, the homemade marshmallow fondant tastes MUCH better than the store bought stuff. I made my bow, bear and dots out of store bought fondant because I've found that it holds its shape much better and colors easier than the homemade. I've also found that if you want your fondant to dry out and harden, the store bought doesn't crack, but the homemade will. In order to keep my bow pieces 3-D, I wrapped the actual bow parts around napkin rings and let them dry over a few days. I also made my bear ahead of time and let him dry out as well. I assemled the cake the day of the shower and delivered that afternoon. I only charged $40 for the cake, which, as my husband pointed out, didn't give me much profit, but I could care less about that. It's all for fun!