Cali's Purple Owl

It's all about layering.  Easy as... cake.

Dinosaur

I was givent this picture:

 and asked to make a birthday cake out of it.

Harry Potter Snitch

3-D rainbow cake with glitter fondant how to and rainbow how not to

My cousins baby turned one. Michelle's order went something like this "her birthday is on St. Patrick's Day so I want it springy and St. Patricksy, but not TOO St. Patricksy." I thought of this St. Patrick's day cake and started thinking about how I could tweak it to be "not TOO St. Patricksy". Here's what I came up with. The cake with a matching smash cake. So, the crack in the rainbow... my husband did that (bless his soul). He wanted to know how hard the rainbow had gotten so he pinched it... babe, it's not metal in your garage, it's gumpaste in my kitchen. He felt bad, but we rolled with it. Note, do not squeeze your rainbow to test its hardness. :) A general tip, I love, I mean L.O.V.E my matt. I got it at Orson Gygi's and it's right up there with my pizza cutter. I will not make a fondant cake with out it. Just dump a little powder sugar on it (a little bit goes a long way). And spread it around into a very thin layer. If you don't spread it in a THIN layer then the fondant, after you flip it over on to the cake, will have a visible white film of sugar on it. I didn't call attention to it yet, but I decided to play around and discovered how to make my fondant glittery (take a closer look at the finished pictures). I took these glittery color flakes to match the color of fondant I was using (found at cake supply stores and craft stores) and after I spread my sugar out (see how thin my layer is? You can barely see it), I sprinkled the glitter flakes all over my matt. Then I rolled my fondant out on it, hoping it would stick into my fondant. Guess what? It worked! How sad is it that I was bouncing up and down and giggling over my new found glitter fondant? I used gumpaste for my rainbow. I can get away with being lazy and using fondant for smaller things, or bulkier things that will settle on itself andhold itself up, but the rainbow needed to firm up. I mixed up my gumpaste (found in cake supply stores and craft stores in powder form), rolled it out and cut out my rainbow shape. I debated between coloring the fondant and piecing it together or making one solid shape and painting on the colors. I decided the less pieces I needed to hold together the better it would be so I settled on painting. I really think this was a good idea. I used some wooden skewers and then also added some toothpicks to hold the rainbow on the cake. When I used gumpaste on this cake I put it in a warm oven (it was off, but still warm) to harden the gumpaste quicker. My oven on this cake had just been on so I switched it off and threw the rainbow in to it to harden while the it cooled. This would be a how NOT to. The oven was still WAY too hot and after only a few minutes my rainbow had puffed up like a baking sugar cookie. I quickly pulled it out. It was a little misshapen, but I could work with it still. If you want to harden gumpaste fully you should make your piece days in advance. That's the only way to do it. Or keep your oven no hotter than 200 degrees, though that will just harden the outside enough to use it, the middle will still be soft. (As we discovered when my man pinched the rainbow. *smoosh*, nope, the middle is definitely not hard. Thanks for checking that out for me). I painted the colors on, added the clouds and flowers. This has become one of my favorite cakes. I love it!

Damask Baby Shower cake and pregnant lady tutorial

I actually had a model for my figure. They emailed me her baby shower invites, which had a professional picture of the very pregnant mama on it. "Just make it resemble her. And make it match the baby bedding (damask) and the shower plates (also damask). Hmmmm.... OK. I myself love damask. Don't you? I didn't get a final picture of it because they picked it up in boxes and set it all up themselves, but the finally product would have sat on a three tiered cake stand, with the cake on the top level, and the bottom two levels covered in the cupcakes.

Here's some how to tips (and as always with me, some how NOT to tips. I'm no professional. Just a cake hobbiest passing on what I figure out).

I molded the figure out of fondant, which held well enough, but if you want it to be truly solid you should use gumpaste. Gumpaste is easy to make, you can find it at cake supply stores or craft stores in powder form. You basically just add water and powdered sugar according to the directions on the can. I had the problem with the dowel poking up through the top of the head. The soft fondant kept settling down farther on it. I finally had to take it off and let it harden for a bit on the corner of my styrofoam block. I skipped all the basic sculpting steps. I rolled a lot of balls and "snakes" out of fondant, a lot like you would with playdough until it all fit together to look like this. For the hair I draped a piece over the head to see where I needed to shape it. My most valued tool... my pizza cutter. I kid you not, I don't make a single cake without it. I seriously think if it somehow broke, I would have to go to the store for a new one before I could finish my cake. Here I used it to cut locks into my hair piece. I tried to not flatten the bulge from where it sat on the head so I could keep it in perspective. One thing you have to know when working on fondant is that water is the best thing to use as "glue". The water breaks down the sugars and they bind together. I have various sizes of small paintbrushes in my cake supplies. I paint a lot on my cakes with food coloring plus I use them for my "gluing". I also have an exacto knife in my cake supplies. I used it to gently press a line in for her part. I then used it to giver her a hair cut. :)I tried to scatter her locks a bit to give it some dimension. I've made a figure before out fondant, a little hula girl. On that figure I sculpted with pre colored fondant. On this figure I decided to sculpt it out of all white and then paint it, to see which way I like better. I like sculpting with pre colored fondant better. Here's why: my biggest issue is I had trouble getting the color into small crevices, and I had trouble with bleeding color and my clumsy smudging.

To make skin color (which I also used on this cake) I use just a little bit of copper coloring.

Some more must have tools that I use on every cake. But especially for painting a cake. The liquid is actually vodka. For two reasons. Vodka spreads the color much more smoothly than water does. Water is really good to paint with if you want a textured look, like grass. But for smooth color, vodka works better. It doesn't leave your fondant sticky like water does, and the alcohol evaporates away. I usually just dip my brush (or toothpick for those tiny details) into the vodka, and then use the lid of the food coloring as my "palette" to mix my color onto my brush.

Again, toothpicks are great for the tiny details. (That's pretty much all I used on the tattoo cake).

I don't have a cake turn table yet (you can count on it being my next item I plan on buying!) I use either a hot chocolate container or a jar of peanut butter to lift the cake up off the counter so I can work the edges better and turn it easier. :)

Boxing Ring

It's a girl thing

Jack-o-lantern

Brenna Lou's Butterflies

When the niece asks for butterflies, the niece gets fluttery, delicate, edible butterflies!

Once a Pirate, always a Pirate

My debut into high school logos ha ha. My football helmets are getting A LOT better. Thank goodness since they seem to be a reocurring request!

Cowboy hat and bandana

Unicorn

Baseball diamond grave

For a 60th birthday... this shape was a little more tricky to get than I first expected, but I got it eventually. I painted the green on, thinking the paint strokes would add a cool texture to the grass.

Sk8 Park

Ayden is amazing. Did you know he can do a back flip? He showed me. I've never been able to do a back flip. Ever. Not even on a trampoline and this kid just did it from a standing jump on the floor. Impressive. Ayden is also an 8 year old skater boy. Happy birthday Ayden! I didn't get a picture with the cake after McKell put little skateboards all over it but it looked really cool with or without them, if I do say so myself (and quite often I'm saying so myself LOL). I think I nailed the concrete color, which was pure luck on the first try ha ha.

What goes better with Saint's football than ESPN on a flatscreen TV? We had lots of flavors going on in these cakes. Carrot cake, chocolate chip cookie cake, vanilla cheesecake cake, and spice cake. Still not a fan of my helmet carving abilities, but it's a better shape than my last one. which is a good sign that my next will be better too :).

M-I-C...K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E

I'd had a pretty rough day. Really rough. Anything that could piss me off, did. This cake was therapeutic. I loved it. I had a clear picture in my head, and the cake actually did what I told it to with out arguing. It was a better ending to my day than just huffing off to bed.

Lightning McQueen, Ka-chow!

My friend asked me to do a Lightning McQueen cake for her son's bday next weekend. But then she sent me a text Thursday asking for it this weekend instead. I already had the Batman cake I needed to do, and we had plans to go out of town. I told her I would do it if I could. But after battling the bratty Batman cake I knew I wasn't going to get the Cars cake done. But I've know this friend FOREVER so I told her I would do it while we were gone and bring back with me for her to have. Which I did.

And it worked just fine until... the whole entire side of it melted from the sun. This is definitely getting racked up to one of my "cake disasters"! I tried my best to make it look OK for my friend, who said she loved it any way. Here's the final tweaked result: This cake was milk chocolate with cookies n'cream filling.