Animal Cakes

For the carnival cake walk, I had to do some cakes too :)



These are very simple, I used an 8" round for both, with the top of a cupcake as the snout. The giraffe was cut smaller and ears cut out. Then I used a star tip and some dark brown fondant to do eyes, noses and mouths.




Since it was just for a cake walk, I went super easy.

Rainbow Cupcakes

I saw this in a magazine while at the orthodontist with Teresa. We thought it would be really fun to try for the carnival cake walk.

It was easy to do, just time consuming. We chose to do 5 colors. I seperated the cake batter in 5 plastic cups(for easy clean-up). Then colored them. I used the liquid coloring and it was really easy to get the darker colors. Then you just layer it. It was interesting because the cupcakes baked in the metal pan looked tie-dyed on top. The ones baked in the silicon pan(in a glass pan) came out just red on top. The kids loved them, we thought they were very cool. We'll have to try different things now, I think camo cupcakes would be cool.

Here's the finished product

Our carnival theme was jungle, so we picked up some plastic animals to top the cupcakes

Yellow Roses Birthday cake

I had a woman who works at Teresa's school ask if I could do a birthday cake for her sister. All she wanted was white cake with lemon filling and yellow roses. I don't like to do roses, not because they aren't pretty - I think they're just so overdone. You go to the store to buy a cake, it's going to have roses or balloons. But I figured it would be simple enough. But then I decided to take the opportunity to practice making gum paste roses. They take more time than buttercream flowers, but they look so nice. This was a fun, no stress cake to make. Even if the gum paste flowers didn't turn out, I could do the buttercream ones. Plus it gave me the chance to test a lemon filling recipe I had.
I think it turned out nice. I probably could have done a few more flowers



Just a close up of the flowers. They aren't too difficult, just time consuming. I think I'll be practicing the flowers.


March 12, 2010

Masculine Birthday cakes

I recently made two different birthday cakes for guys.

One was for Jonathan's birthday. His was supposed to be made with optical illusions - one on top, one on the sides. But that morning I started to get sick, so I decided to skip the top one. It didn't come out to look like the optical illusion, but it did turn out to be a nice birthday cake. Just simple and masculine.

2 layer 10"round marble cake with buttercream frosting and fondant design

This one I made for Teresa's Principal's birthday. I don't know him very well, so I couldn't make it personal. I had to settle for simple. But I like it, it came out nice. Teresa helped me cut the dots, I had to get up early so I could get Teresa and the cake to school by 8am. We managed :)

3 layer 10" round chocolate cake - with a 2 layer 6" on top. Buttercream frosting with fondant dots.

Bridal Shower Cake

I did a cake for my sister-in-law who was throwing a bridal shower. The colors were pink and silver. We decided to use the napkin as inspiration.




Specifically these two designs


The flowers are fake with curled ribbon. You can't tell, but I made the little silver balls with grey fondant and then used silver pearl dust to make them look silver. I dusted the design with the dust as well. If I were to do it again, I would make a lighter gray. When I was coloring it, it seemed really light, but when I put it against the pink, it was much darker.


It's an 8" round 4 layer devil's food cake with buttercream frosting. I tried something different, and flavored the fondant with cherry this time. It probably made it a little sweeter, but added a flavor - not necessarily noticeable as cherry

Sports Themed Baby shower cake

This cake is for a baby shower at Teresa's school. One of the teachers is having a boy and they wanted the cake to have a sports theme.


It's 4 chocolate cakes mixes





It gave me some trouble, but I think it will do.

Dual Birthday

I made a basketball cake for my nephews 10th birthday(Dec 20th). They are here from Utah, so it was really cool to be able to make him a cake.

It's just a 2 layer square chocolate cake with chocolate pieces in the center. The backboard and balls are fondant. It was fun to make.

We were also celebrating my sister-in-laws Birthday (which happens to be today). Her theme was chocolate. This was a chocolate cake with chocolate chips. On top was a white chocolate cream and the whole thing was wrapped in chocolate. They call it a chocolate collar. The white dots are white chocolate the light brown dots are milk chocolate and the rest is dark chocolate. It was the first time I'd tried something like this, so it's a little messy. And I didn't have the right paper to use, so the collar has a few wrinkles. I will definitely try this again.

The aftermath of making 2 cakes in one day is not pretty. My kitchen won't recover completely until tomorrow. But well worth it :)