A Dora Cake for an A-Dora-ble Girl

A friend of mine from church, Erin, saw some pictures of my cakes & asked me to make one for her daughter's 2nd birthday in early August. She loved Kelsie's design (my first!) & wanted something similar. Fun design, bright colors. She also mentioned that the party was a Dora party & asked if I could swing it, to tie the cake in with the theme. I wasn't ready to tackle making an edible Dora yet, but had some perfect size toys of Dora & Boots, so decided to put those on as toppers.
Erin requested yellow cake with cream cheese frosting & fun colors. Since Peyton's cake, I like to sketch the cake before I make it, I like having visuals to work with. I didn't want her cake to be exactly like Kelsie's, so I changed a few colors, & incorporated striped on one tier.I also stacked the top tier off center this time just to see, & I liked it. I think it adds to the fun of the cake.

I also decided to try modeling chocolate again, for the number 2 topper, & am really happy with the results this time. I molded the 2 with my hands, as I didn't have any kind of mold to use. I placed small wooden dowels in the bottom of the 2 before I put it in the fridge to harden, so that I could easily stand it upright on the cake.
Two things I still need to work on really improving are carving the cakes to be flush around the edges for the dirty icing, (which is the 2nd thing). Because once I've placed my fondant, I can see an obvious distinction between the layers of cake underneath, & I hate that. I made sure with this cake, to use more filling between the layers than I have before. Since the fondant is too sweet for a lot of people, or an unwelcome texture, it's important to have plenty of what they consider "the good stuff" on the inside. :)
Erin & her part guests all gave me wonderful praise, which makes me proud of myself & encourages me to continue to improve my skills!

Traveling Cake

In June, I went to Tennessee to make a cake for my dear friend, Abby. For her daughter, Addison's 2nd birthday. Abby found a really awesome design online & I did my best to imitate it! Since I'm still really getting my feet wet with this, it was a bit of a challenge. But not one I was about to pass up! I bought some circle cutters, but they aren't fabulous, only 3 sizes, & odd ones at that. But I have my eye on a great set on Amazon. :)
This was also my first attempt at working with modeling chocolate, which went fairly well, as the shape was simple, but I didn't dye it as perfectly as I should have. Hind sight is 20/20...
I had a lot of fun making this cake, & my sweet friend, Abby even helped me with some of the little details. :)
I used pound cake, which was delicious! The cakes alternated, 2 pink cakes, and 3 pink & yellow rings, filled with buttercream. The pound cake batter is thicker than regualr cake mix, so the rings didn't pour perfectly, but still baked really well.

I just used the Wilton buttercream mix this time, where, with Peyton's, I'd found a recipe online & made that. I think the Wilton buttercream mix is too sugary, I didn't like the texture. From now on, I'll take the time to make it myself.

The bird on top was originally supposed to have a companion, but again, I was rushing & just couldn't devote the time to it. Another first with this cake was working with gumpaste, I made the butterfly wings & the green leaves with it. Not loving gumpaste...looking for an alternative soon. I don't like the way it looks when it's dry...to me it looks faded...  The design Abby found had writing on the side of the cake, which I did, but not very steadily, so it looked a little wobbly.
This cake turned out great, but was definitely a learning cake for me, I felt like it was my first b/c of the obstacles I had in the making.   Though I wasn't thrilled with the cake, Abby & most importantly, Addison, were very happy with it. :)

Zebra Stipes, Leopard Spots & Rainbow Cake

April came quickly and Peyton & I had come up with a fabulous cake for her. She wanted 3 tiers (which was fine because we were expecting several friends). And she wanted different flavors/colors in each tier. I have to say that I put more work into this cake than I originally planned! But it turned out really fantastic! You can just google "rainbow cake mix" and find hundreds of images and recipes. But, here, I'll tell you how....you make a yellow or white cake mix, separate it into several bowls, and dye each bowl of batter a different shade. Here's the tricky part, you have to pour the batter directly in the center of the pan, one shade after the other, directly on top of each other, and QUICKLY. Don't worry, they won't blend, each new color you pour will push the previous color out, creating rings. It's tricky b/c you have to be quick & not drop any outside the current color you're working on. But it's doable!

Once it's baked, the cake will still have the darker color on the outside, but the inside looks awesome!
The rainbow cake was in the bottom tier, with a chocolate filling. The center tier had a really rich, delicious chocolate cake and white chocolate filling, and the top tier was a yellow cake with hot pink buttercream filling.

I filled & iced the cakes and let them sit in the fridge while I colored my fondant. (Of course now, I color my fondant when I make it, even though the tip I'd used on Kelsie's cake said to color it the next day). I've found it doesn't make a difference & saves time!

Doing the detail on this cake was particularly fun, because nothing lad to be lined up or spaced out perfectly. I found a terrific tutorial on youtube for the zebra stripes.  I watched this as I worked & it was perfect! I didn't like any of the leopard/cheetah spots I found when I googled the design, so I just made up my own, they weren't too bad. I did stripes for the top tier, which I also cut at an angle to give it the mad hatter effect. It turned out perfect for a first try...of course since then, I haven't figured out how to master that trick. Soon, soon.

I had to keep the cake separated to keep it in the fridge as long as possible, as I've read the fondant needs to be kept cool. But I took it out, put it together & added the balls & rope around the bottoms of the tiers, as well as the 7's on the wire. I need to find better wire next time, this was too flimsy & I couldn't get it looking straight. This is the cake that made me decide I could have a small business out of this craft & I'm well on my way!

I want to make fun cakes

Last October I was making a birthday cake for my youngest daughter, Emerson. And I thought, "I really want to make fun cakes for my kids". At that particular moment, it was too late to try anything other than doodle some swirls onto the chocolate frosted cake, as her birthday was the following day. But I decided that the next time I made a cake, it would be really fun.
I googled fondant cakes and found a million how to's. So when February rolled around, and it was time to make a cake for my [turning] 3 year old, Kelsie, I made my first fondant cake. I was fortunate enough to find an excellent site with a marshmallow fondant recipe and video, Piece-A-Cake. 
I made a huge mess, but had a lot of fun, and was proud and impressed with myself in the end.

 I didn't have any cookie cutters, or shape cutters, but I used a metal ramekin to cut the circles. Looking back, I didn't roll the fondant thin enough, it was way too thick, but it looked good & the kids loved it! Peyton, my oldest daughter, immediately begged me to make a cake this way for her birthday in April. So we looked at images online that night to pick out her design & I made a wish list on Amazon for every single cake making tool I wanted! :)

in the works

i'm going to start blogging pictures & details of all my cakes. I'll do a catch up when I get a chance to slow down...who knows when :)

But for now, I'll post some pics! This page is "under construction". :)
Here are my cakes, from most recent to first ever!

5th fondant cake for Arena's birthday 8/10

Don's birthday cake....a catastrophe...but still a fun theme ;) 7/10

3rd fondant cake for Addison's birthday 6/10

2nd fondant cake for Peyton's birthday 4/10

my first ever fondant cake for Kelsie's birthday 2/10