Have your cake and eat it too...

Okay, so I don't usually eat them, but here are some cakes I've done this year

Baby Shower

Baby Shower

Teresa's peacock cake for her 16th Birthday

Clue cake for my Dad's 70th

Valentine Cupcakes for Nathan's class

Princess cake for Addison's Birthday

Cookies for the Daddy Daughter dance at Rosedale North

Owl cake for Camelia's 18th Birthday

Pirate cake for Nathan's 8th Birthday

Baby Shower

Let's do some catchup

Not the condiment kind...

Here are the last few cakes I've done since my last post.

This is the most recent cake I made for the author that came to Nathan's school, Kevin Janison.
I just love doing cakes for the authors and choosing something from the
stories. This one had to be done with little time, since we had just returned from vacation.
But I'm really happy with the way it came out. I especially love the effect the painted food coloring
had on the hat. It's Deputy Dorkface's hat.

Look at that, another western themed cake. This was for a retirement party.
I took great care in making the belt buckle and red bandana with fondant

This was a last minute farewell cake for a student teacher

I love this one. At first I was worried about what I would do, then I thought
to use the cake board as the brick, and I love the way it came out.

Octopus cake

Today is my daughters 15th birthday! This is the cake I made for her. I used the ball pan, which was perfect, rice crispy treats for the legs all covered in fondant. I was told I needed to use a dense cake or the ball wouldn't hold it's shape, so I did a little research and it seems to have paid off. If you ever want to make a box cake mix more dense all you do is add a box of pudding and use 1/2 the oil and 2 TBSP less water(I used white cake with lemon pudding). Make sure you tap the pans on the counter and bring the air bubbles to the surface.

The legs took a full batch of rice crispy treats. I molded them last night and used foil to help them keep shape. We lost some form over night, but that was okay. I would recommend letting the treats sit over night and then shape it again to get rid of as many bumps from the rice crispies as possible. I've also coated the treats in warm fondant to fill in the holes, that works well too.

Under the Sea!

My nephew turned 2 a few weeks ago, and I had the privilege of doing his cake

 

 

The octopus is rice crispy treat, the rest of the decorations are fondant on
blue buttercream frosting

And some mini cupcakes to take to his friends at daycare
All buttercream

Another cake for Dad

I thought for a long time before I decided what I would do for my dad. The last one I did for him did not turn out how I had hoped - at all! It had a complete remodel. So this year I wanted to so something cool, but simple enough that I knew I could do it in the little amount of time I had. I was very happy with it and it tasted yummy! (lemon with buttercream)

It was very simple really. I found a picture I liked online and drew it the size I would need. Then I cut out the shape and did a soft outline. I always have a hard time recreating the shape on the cake, so this makes it much easier for me. Then I just started piping the dots. I like using the dots it lets you create a small and detailed picture. The side said "Happy Birthday You Will Have"

YAF Cake

I did this cake for a luncheon for the Author that came and visited Nathan's school this year. I copied a page in the book

Merry Christmas!

I was asked to do this cake for a Christmas party.

It's a big cake, enough to feed 50. Chocolate with chocolate filling. I brought out the airbrush again.

Retirement cake

This cake had to be huge and  it was so heavy. It was for a retirement party, she wanted to ride off into the sunset.

I used my airbrush for the first time on a cake. I've used it on paper, but was too chicken to do a cake. When I heard sunset, I knew it would be perfect to use for this cake.

Trick-or-Treat

I made this cake in record time for an event at school. It was the prize for the best decorated trunk at the school trunk-or-treat.

This is just a 2 layer 8" round cake. I dyed the white cake a nice orange. I baked this cake and froze it, knowing time would be limited the day of. That day I made the frosting, frosted the cake, made fondant and rice crispy treats for the trick-or-treater. It was crazy! I had to use my time extremely wisely, in between waiting for things to cool I was making frosting for 50 cupcakes I was also providing for the event. I'm really pleased with how this came out. AND, I was able to do it all in time to show up to the event early. WHEW!

(Did I mention I had to finish my costume and bake all the cupcakes earlier that day? It's not often that so many things are pulled off smoothly in so little time)

Electric Guitar Cake

It's all cake from head to base. The accents are made from fondant, the rest is buttercream. The cake was about 20 inches tall. I wasn't feelin great so Teresa(my 14 year old) made the fondant accents for me.

LEGO cake

I was asked to make a LEGO cake for my friends 6 year old. At first I was thinking make the cake look like it's made out of LEGO's  - but wow! That was going to be tedious. Turns out they wanted big LEGO blocks - Yah! I can do that. I didn't want to use fondant, but because LEGO's have red blocks, I had to. I messed up a little on the size, I meant for the red one to be 4 knubs long, not 3 so it would fit nicely, but it turned out cute.

These guys are about 2 inches tall, by 8 for the 6 knub blocks. I still need some practice covering the cake in fondant, I don't do it too often. But this was great practice, since I had 3 different size cakes. It turned out to be pretty fun. I like sculpted cakes, as long as they don't have the chance to fall over. I baked 2 13x9 cakes and used a good portion of them to get all the blocks. The knubs on top are just fondant, rolled thick.

Alien invasion

For my sons 6th birthday he wanted ALIENS! He had this grand idea for the cake - too grand for a cake. So we looked around and we came up with this design. We added his own alien designs to the sides. He even picked his candle.

These aliens were also on his invitations

He wanted green and blue cake too

I love Owls

...which is why I was excited when Teresa agreed her 14th birthday should be owl themed. Here is the cake I did for her. I really like how it came out. It's all fondant.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar

I made this cake for my sons teacher.

3 layer chocolate cake with white buttercream and fondant for the decorations. This was really fun to mix the fondant and make it look like the Eric Carle book

Choo Choo!!!

A train cake for my nephews first birthday. (I have a secret to share - I love making cakes for little boys)
My sister-in-law always knows what kind of cake she wants me to do for her, it's fun to create them for her.

I covered this one in fondant, I wanted it to look really nice, plus
the cake was lemon and flavoring fondant with lemon is
very delicious, so this seemed like the perfect cake for it.
I could use more practice doing that, it's just a good thing there is a back.

Here is Owen with his little smash cake - completely sugar free

Bridal shower cake

This one is inspired by some napkins I saw online

I didn't give myself enough time to get this done, so I felt a little rushed. It didn't turn out how I envisioned it, but cute enough.

Baby Shower cake

This cake was modeled after the nursery. I had a lot of fun doing this. I'm usually just a copy cat, so it's fun when I create a cake design and it actually turns out cute. I did the top first and just loved how it came out.

Done with browns and pinks. All the decoration is fondant. Bottom is a 3 layer, 8" round. The top is a 3 layer, 6" round. The layers are frosted with buttercream(the top having a little raspberry flavor added). Both layers are chocolate cake with chocolate frosting in the middle

For my Dad

I had this really fun idea for my dad this year. I wanted to do stick figures of all his grandkids. I sketched them out and they were pretty cute. But when it came time to  draw them on the cake, it was just too hard. Literally, the black, store bought icing was too hard on my hands. With a lot more planning, I could have made it work. But there wasn't enough time. So this is what I found in a short time.

I'm always dissapointed when a cake doesn't turn out how I want it to, but I was glad I was able to find something. Plus, it was a very delicious banana cake froms scratch with cream cheese frosting.

Fill in the blank

This cake was a Justin Beiber cake. But with out the Beiber, it can be any cake you want. So put your childhood crush in the place in front of the stars, if you want  (wink)
A fun cake to make and not too difficult. I like those ones, especially when I have a lot of other things going on. I met this little girl and was glad to make her a cake. I did her little brothers cake before this one(the batman cake) Super cute kids!

Batman Cake!

This one was fun, it was simple and turned out cute. I say simple, but cutting the bats out was time consuming. But they turned out nice, so that makes it a simple cake if there were no mishaps

It's a 3 layer 8" round cake (lemon) with blue buttercream. The decorative parts are fondant.