Ladybug Cake

Sprinkles

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!

Mark and Sarah Wedding cake

1st birthday cake with smash cake

For my sweet great niece. The cupcake comes off the top for her smash cake. A princess cake for a sweet little princess.

Birdie's dancing

"Birdie" is turning five and wants a ballet cake. I went over and over how to do this cake in my head for weeks. Finally, after doing the mega cupcakes with non edible accents I started stretching my ideas. I was kind of opposed to using non edible accents on cakes because that seemed to defeat the purpose, but then I thought "why?" I'm still making the cake, the filling, the fondant. I'm still decorating it from head and abilities. And frankly, using tulle on a cake tutu was going to turn out much better than using fondant. So...
Here's a picture of my chocolate chip cookie cake with caramel filling before I covered it with fondant. It gets ordered with every cake I make, a fast favorite, everyone wants it. I don't blame them, it's amazing :).

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 :).

The tattoo cake

Happy birthday to my tatted out sister. This cake has the names of all her family on it, as well as all the old school tattoo designs I could think of. I hand painted them (sometimes with a toothpick because the detail was too small for my brush), and I would have to say if I ever had a project of this sort again, I'll just paint directly onto the cake instead of piecing it together. This cake has Jes's spunk and sassiness. Love her. I can say that painting on a cake is by far my favorite method. Check out the pin up tat I did of my sister :).

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.

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.

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 :).

Princess cake

Crown, castle, banner, sparkles and a frog... princess. What more can a girl ask for? I have a different idea for a crown now if I ever get the chance to take a crack at it again. A couple of different ideas actually :).

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.

Tiger Lily

3D flowers

so just throwing it out that I did steal this idea from google images... but I'm still pleased with myself for pulling it off! I made it for Emily's 10th bday.

Spring Fling Cake