Dr. Who

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!

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!

Intoducing... Mega Cupcakes

I put these together for a fundraiser auction for Girl's Camp. I had so much fun doing these, and they were a big hit too, which made me feel good :). I made a cupcake in each value's color.

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 :).

Spiral hearts

My daughter's request for her 7th birthday cake was "blue hearts". I wanted an excuse to try a spiral cake, so this is what we ended up with. Not the cleanest best spiral, but I learned a lot with it and very much want to try it again! I also got to play with pearl dust and liquid pearl which I love. Notice the nice shimmer on the hearts? Two of my other daughters did the pearls around the bottom, they wanted to help and were so cute with doing it for their sister. Inside this cake was a yummy chocolate with layers a caramel filling. My favorite at this point. Man, that caramel is so good!

Seattle Seahawks

A neighbor wanted this for her son's 20th birthday... he's avid into the Seahawks. My first helmet... I needed to cut the length in half, it's very elongated. As luck has it, I have another football cake, this time for the Saints, coming up, so I get to try it again. This time I'll have a better idea of how to carve it. Overall I'm happy with the logo and the field. I made the face mask out of gumpaste and let it dry over night, but it turned out that wasn't long enough. I broke when I tried to put it on the next morning. And crumbled with all my efforts to put it together again. With my neighbor coming to pick it up I was able to use a support of florist wire and toothpicks to make a fresh face mask. This cake was a good learning experience!

Spiderman

For cutest nephew who turned 3. This cake is bigger than any I've done. Usually my two layers consist of two cakes, one on top of the other. This one has four cakes in it, with fillings in between the layers. Chocolate chip cookie cake with caramel filling on bottom and Swiss chocolate with cookies n' cream (new and improved recipe) on top. Everything made from scratch. I'm in love with the caramel recipe, Oh my goodness, it's to die for. I kept eating it from the bowl ha ha. I also found a better technique with mixing my fondant with this cake, it comes out smoother and I'm a LOT happier with it.

Holy Cake, Batman!

Having five daughters and one son, boy cakes aren't something I get to do too often on my own accord :). So THANK YOU to my friends who let me do one for their boys. I fought with this cake. It didn't want to do what I wanted it to do, and it was hard for me to "feel" it. Usually I just follow how a cake "feels" as I'm putting it together. This cake was a brat so I put it away for the night, and the next morning I was able to finish up some details. I wasn't so mad at it after some sleep. This cake is a Swiss chocolate cake (so yummy! Made with buttermilk) and it's the first one that I added a filling too. Cookies n'cream.

Aloha! Hula girl

This was a last minute favor. I did the palm tree and hula girl out of fondant. I really wanted to try them with modeling chocolate, but I just didn't have the time to 1- make the modeling chocolate (I'm still sticking with making all my own stuff, even the fondant), and 2- let it harden.
My boss saw the Camaro and decided he needed a cake for his daughter's birthday. She's turning 13, and is taking hula lessons. The inside of this cake I tried a new flavor and it turned out fabulous, at least the little I tasted was. It's a chocolate chip cookie cake. I'm going to start trying a lot more gourmet flavors. Let's watch as hopefully in coming cakes my figures get better :).

Peace, Love, and cake

To sum Alle up, peace, love, and indie about do it. About. She's also brilliant, sweet, a firecracker, and amazing on all levels. But for the cake's sake, we'll stick with peace and love. Which of course means the cake itself has to be tie-dyed. (Hopefully Alle sends me a pic of the inside after she cut it so we can all see it :)). I took a few pictures of this cake because there were little details all over it that I loved. I'm in love with this cake.

St. Patrick's Day

This was actually for a birthday, but they wanted it to be St. Patrick's themed. At first I didn't like it, it felt to plain and dull, so I kept going until... wa-lah! It's all in the details :) You can't tell from the pictures but the colors on the rainbow have shimmer dust on them.

Retro Flower Cake

Happy 10th bday Deeds.

Spring Fling Cake