Ariel Birthday for a special girl

My eldest daughter is turning 4 soon. But 5 weeks and 1 day prior to her birthday, is her very first friend has a birthday.
This year, I got to make her birthday cake:)


My girlfriend asked me to make the cake. Something princessy, but nothing fancy. Then her daughter found a picture of Ariel on a cake and decided that was what she wanted. So I took that and ran with it.

We decided to stick to buttercream since it would be mainly kids eating it... Ok, my girlfriend hates fondant..I was actually happy about it because most of my cakes this month have all been fondant. I enjoy it, but I do like working with buttercream too!

So we stayed simple. Chocolate and Vanilla cakes, Pudding for a filling, and a buttercream icing. Fondant made it into the decorations, and an Ariel bath toy made the perfect topper. All of the girls loved the cake and were "ooohing and ahhing" prior to cutting it up. I was happy to see the enjoyment on their faces:)

The buttercream was done by mixing blue icing with white and spreading it on. I had to work in a single layer and once the icing went on, there was hardly any movement for change. I wanted it to look a little more like the Ocean rather than the sky, but that was my own fault for not darkening the blue color more. Probably for the best since almost everyone got blue tongues!

It was a fun cake to do. And I got to play around with one of my new Fondant and Gum Paste Molds from Wilton!

Happy Birthday Emma!

Wedded Bliss

A few months ago, I was at a friends place for an Epicure party. While there, she introduced me to her niece, who was getting married this year and was planning on making her own cake and cupcakes. My friend knew that this was a bad idea, so she was hoping I could help steer her away from it, and possibly give me another client in the process.

While I know a lot of brides out there think its perfectly feasible to make your own cake and such, I highly discourage it. Not because I think you need to pay someone a ton of money to do a piece of dessert for you, but because as a Bride, the last thing you want to have to worry about on your wedding day is whether you will get your cake done in time, and not have icing all over yourself!

In any case, I gave the bride my advice, and told her if she wanted to speak with me about doing her cake, I would be happy to oblige. If she decided to go with someone else, well at least I could convince a Bride not to do her own cake.

A month or so later, she contacted me.

The wedding was a average size, but the Bride wanted a very small cake for cutting purposes and a few cupcakes for guests to eat instead. We went back and forth on some pictures she had sent for inspiration and I was glad to see it would be relatively a simple task. Elegant but thankfully simple.

Since this was my first "paid for" wedding cake, I was pretty excited to do it, and was counting down until the big day.

The colors were Blue and Yellow. Different than I had seen at a wedding before, but they actually did a nice job with the set up and the reception room looked wonderful. Too bad I didnt take a picture...

Blinged out Cupcakes

The cupcakes are blinged out with Edible hearts, blue and yellow cake sparkles and white sanding sugar, which hopefully glittered when the lights shone on them.

The wedding cake was a simple design and simple was what she wanted. I was overall pleased with the cake, but I found it to be a little too simplistic. The problem was the inspiration picture was a two tiered cake which had a large flower sitting on the side of the tiers. Being a single tier, there wasn't much I could do to add to it, without being completely hideous (in my opinion)
So I stayed simple.

At least at the wedding the cake looked like it fit in a lot better than it did on my kitchen counter:)

Unfortunately the Bride decided to forgo any stand or plates for these, so it was just placed on the table. I only hoped when the couple got there, someone was able to find something to place the cake on to elevate it a bit..


I hope the Bride and Groom loved them at least!

Pink Kitties and Blue Dragons

I got a request to do a 3 year olds birthday cake. Her request was a little unusual but it sounded like a lot of fun to do. She wanted a "Pink Princess Kitty and a Blue Dragon and a castle"

Cute, no?

So this one require fondant figurines to make. Something I am still incredibly new at doing. However this time, a good friend of mine was over the previous weekend and she loves to create things like that, so she offered to make them. I happily handed over the fondant and gum paste:) She can definitely create better figures than me.
It worked out well because I was very nervous about creating these, and this gave me a chance to watch and see how she did them, so I might have a better time next offering of figures.

Anyways, I decided to make a small castle from 6 inch rounds to go on top of a grassy area. I made a sheet cake for the bottom, then piped grass all around, made a little oreo cookie pathway that led to the castle where the princess and her pet dragon sat on top of.

Adorable isn't it?

A close up of the figures.

I hope the birthday girl has a great third birthday!!

Princess Party Galore! Cakes #3 and #4

My final cakes of the weekend were for Sisters born two years, 13 days apart so the parent decided to have a joint birthday to make life easy. Sine their eldest is heavily into Princesses, that was the theme of the party.

I had also made the daughters birthday cupcakes last year so it was nice to be considered again for her 3rd birthday.

The client had requested Princess themed, but other than that had no restrictions on what I could create. Since I knew there would be at least 40 people attending the party, I wanted to make sure there would be enough cake for everyone. And since there were two cakes, I definitely needed two different flavors

I was lucky I got to try out my new Imprint mats on these cakes. I highly recommend them too:)

There are a few things I would have done differently, with the biggest one being that I would have made the Sash a little bit smaller. It kind of took over the cake more than I wanted it to. I also need to work on writing. My printing is really not pretty!!

Overall I was happy with the look of the cakes. I love the imprint mat for the diamond texture. I can definitely see using that one again.

I do have another princess cake due in a few weeks, so hopefully I can find something a little different to do for that one.

Happy Birthday Girls!!

Strawberry Shortcake.. Cake #2

My Client, the same one who ordered the Pirate cake and cupcakes, asked for a Strawberry Shortcake Cake for her daughter's third birthday. I had made her second birthday cake, so I was thrilled to be asked to once again create a cake for her.
We had gone back and forth via messaging to decide on the final design, and flavor options. I actually ended up having a Pin in my cake decorating board in Pintrest that was perfect for the occasion.

I was pretty excited for this one because it was an inspiration cake I had marked for possibly making for my own daughter's birthday. Only she was into Strawberry Shortcake for all of two weeks. (She has since requested a Wall-E birthday cake) So this was a cake I really wanted to try out.

I had to start by making up some decorations for the cake, including some very cute strawberries:

The next step was to create A Strawberry House for the top tier. I'm still fairly new to shaped cakes, so I needed to minimize the shaping for this one as much as possible. I ended up having a perfect metal bowl in my kitchen that had a nice roundness to it, that worked out to be a great top to the house. The rest of the cake I made with a 6 inch round and carved to fit. Then a covering of red fondant to get it started.

I have gotten a lot better on covering my cakes in fondant. But this one I wasn't completely thrilled with. Thankfully the errors could be covered up with a border, and hidden in the back.

The bottom tier was a basic white fondant covering with red and green stripes. I was amazed by how many cakes I looked at online, that all had this red and green theme. But it does look very cute when done right. (A lot of "Wrecks" out there:))

I was doing a pink overlay on top so I wasn't too concerned with the top of the stripes. I did end up having to trim them down a bit because the edges were so sharp they were ripping my pink overlay! I would have also liked to have taken more time to ensure all of my stripes were even and straight. from certain angles it looked like the bottom tier was leaning over!

Finally the assembly was complete and I could end my first long day out of my "Weekend of Cakes"

I was pretty proud with how this one turned out. There were a few things I would have liked to have changed, but my time constraints wouldn't allow me to be 100% what I wanted. This is something I need to work on, figuring out my time better, and somehow being able to get my husband to take my kids away for a few hours so I can work in peace!!

Arrrrr Matey!!! Cake #1 of 4

I had a super swamped weekend of cake making behind me, and now I can finally share the results and how everything turned out.

My first two cakes came from a previous client whose daughter was turning 3.They had a large playgroup of kids who have birthdays in May and June so they requested a Pirate themed cake, with 6 cupcakes to match.

We settled on a pirate face for the main cake, with 6 matching pirate cupcakes for each of the birthday kids. I was pretty excited for this one because I had yet to make a "face" out of a cake, and the final look of the cake was a pretty clean and simple looking cake. Suprisingly it did not take nearly as long as I thought it would... Or maybe I'm just getting better the more I do?:)

Anyways, the cake started out with a covering of fondant, with a black bandana  on his head.

I must say, for not having done a lot of fondant covered cakes over the past 3 years, I am getting a lot cleaner with it and my last few cakes have been incredibly smooth and "error" free!

Next came the face and details on the bandana, making him look like the pirate he is meant to be:)

And of course, the matching cupcakes. My client wanted 3 boy pirates, and 3 girl pirates, so each child had their own special cupcake for their birthday.

I was really pleased with how they came out. Nice and cute, no scary pirates here!!


Next on the list was my client's daughters cake... Strawberry Shortcake themed