Tuesday, April 28, 2009

My Roses are in Argentina - Happy Birthday, Sonia!


This cute cake was made by my husband's mom for her birthday this April 25th. I made the roses and sent them along with Gabriel to Argentina. Thankfully, they made it without breaking and then my mother-in-law used them for this yummy dulce-de-leche birthday cake. I'm just sad I couldn't be there to eat it!

Final Cake for Wilton Course Three

Tracy and Robbie, sisters and "cake" mates in our Wilton class.


The final cake for class 3, picture taken from the side, not the front, oh well!


The whole group - a lot of really SWEET people :P


The cake was French vanilla with berries 'n cream filling, covered with buttercream and fondant.






My assistant and me :P.

Saturday, April 25, 2009

Blog Under Construction

Please excuse my missing logo! I inadvertently deleted it, and now am waiting for my hubby to get back from Argentina to fix it. Thanks!

Sunday, April 12, 2009

Symbolic Easter Cupcakes




I made these Easter cupcakes for my mom's group of Sunday school children. It was a good chance to practice the fondant/gumpaste rose I learned in my latest Wilton class.

Made of vanilla cake with buttercream - I melted the buttercream and it really help give a smooth shine to the frosting, kind of like ganache, accents are mint chocolate clay crosses, fondant roses, melted candy melt piping

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Week of Cupcakes

Easter cupcakes for my class. The "grass" looks more like cabbageheads, but my kids didn't seem to care :) Made of vanilla sprinkle cake and buttercream frosting with Robin Egg candies on top.

These cupcakes were made for my friend Angel to take to her job's Easter dinner. She asked for pretty flowers, but since I had just made bright pretty flowers, I decided to go a different route with chocolate. The cupcakes are cream cheese brownies topped with chocolate ganache. It was my first time to make ganache and I am a big fan!

The embellishments are made from candy clay. I love it! It's much more fun and yummy than fondant, in my humble opinion. I used Wilton candy melts, and they worked like a charm, much easier than baking chocolate. The brown candy clay was made from mint chocolate candy melts. I accidently bought the mint flavor, but it turned out to be a good mistake, not a bad one :). I added some candy coloring to green melts to get the teal color. I really enjoyed making these cupcakes. Some day I should try eating what I make, just to be sure it's not gross!


Cake Vase with Cupcake Roses




This weekend I made a cake vase for Deb Young's birthday. It's an idea I've had "baking" in my mind for a while, so I used her birthday as an excuse to bring it to reality. Sorry Deb!
I made the cake out of chocolate pound cake and an all-butter buttercream. I really liked the taste of the buttercream, but it was a pill for piping the roses. I carved the cake to form and then covered it in fondant. The fondant squashed the neck of the vase somewhat, I wasn't too happy with the results. So I covered it up with strips of white gumpaste. I handpainted the vase and added piping and some fondantr daisies. I used floral foam in the top to attach the mini cupcake roses. They were made out of vanilla sprinkle cake.
The vase looks pretty polished but that's thanks to mom's professional photography and photo shop editing! It was actually a lot rougher than I would have liked but hopefully I'll find more reasons in the future to practice this cake design.
Happy Birthday, Deb!

Bathtub Cake


This cake and cupcakes were made for Stefani King, an expectant mom at my school. Jessica Ham was planning the shower with a rubber ducky theme. I really was not sure what to do, so I scoured the internet like I always do, and found a lot of cute ideas. I also used some decorative tubs Jessica was using for centerpieces to help design the cake tub.

I made the tile floor out of gum paste. I hand painted it and then used royal icing as "caulk" in between the tiles. The soap was made out of gum paste also. The bubbles I made out of white candy clay that I rolled in powdered sugar and white pearl dust.


The cake is covered in Wilton fondant. I tried to cover it in handmade fondant first, but it was too dry and cracked horribly. Thankfully I had some emergency Wilton fondant on hand and it worked very nice. The baby is made out of gum paste. It was my first attempt at a gum paste figurine. Up close there were a lot of cracks. I think next time I will try a mixture of fondant and gum paste. The water is tinted gel piping. The ducks are also gum paste. The cake itself was chocolate cream cheese pound cake. The icing is white chocolate cream cheese. I used a icing whitener to give it a whiter look, but unfortunately I think it gave the icing an aftertaste.

The cupcakes are chocolate cake with the white chocolate cream cheese frosting. These ducks are actually made out of white chocolate candy clay. I wanted to make something to put on cupcakes that people will actually eat. Fondant is cute, but I'm tired of seeing it picked off on the sides of dessert plates. The "N"'s were actually fondant I believe, no wait, I think it was candy clay. It's all mixing up now! The "N"'s were for the baby, Nathaniel.

The buckles on the side were blue and gray gum paste, and then the gray was painted with silver pearl dust. So far, this was the most satisfied that I have been with a cake. However, I feel I'm still missing the mark as far as taste goes.

I have so many more ideas in my head. I just need reasons to do them and time!