Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Pirate Cupcakes!

Pirates! Mrs. Pevey and Mrs. Coffey, two adventurous second grade teachers, chose pirates for their end-of-the-school-year party, and I got the opportunity to create their class some pirate treasure cupcakes.

Smiling red hot bandana head pirate


hand-painted marshmallow fondant palm trees with "x marks the spot"

Hand-painted treasure chests, note to self - pipe frosting before you sprinkle brown sugar, all my butter cream decorations kept falling off! Aaarrgh!

Abstract Watermelon Cake


Watermelon Cake! This was my last cake for my last Wilton course, sad! I didn't mean for it to look like an abstract representation of a watermelon, but that's what happened! Below are some of my business cards Gab designed for me.

Friday, May 22, 2009

Animal Cupcakes


Here are some of the 48 "pet" cakes waiting to be adopted by some kindergartners. Vanilla cake, vanilla butter cream with cut pieces of marshmallow.
It was my first time really working with marshmallows and it was pretty fun except that the rabbit ears did not want to stay! Even Gabriel ending up in the kitchen cutting out some animal facial features!

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Cobra Cake

This cake I made for my mom's 40th reunion with her high school group of friends called the cobras. It had to go on a seven hour trip so mom made sure she took these fantastic pictures beforehand :P. To make the cake I made three round cakes in 3 in. pans, so I wouldn't have to make two layers. I only had to carve a little to make sure the coils were round, but it was enough to slice pretty deep through my thumb. It's the worst cut I've ever had, so of course it made a good story the next day with my kindergarteners about making a Cobra cake that turned to life and bit me!
I covered the cakes with fondant that I had pressed with a cobblestone impression mat. Before covering, I also carved out a thin circle out of the top of each cake so each coil could sit snugly inside the other. I painted the fondant black, and then did yellow/green luster dust stripes. The head and tail were made out of rice treats. I used wired in the head and then covered it with gum paste. I also had a tall dowel inside the head that later poked down through all three layers of cake. The sign was made out of gum paste which ended up breaking later. I think I should of tried pastillage. The tongue was also made out of gum paste. The tongue and sign were affixed with royal icing.
This is a happy cobra :).

Saturday, May 9, 2009

Unexpected Cupcakes for Mother's Day.


Well, I wasn't planning on doing any baking this weekend, since Gabriel was back after his two-week trip to Argentina, but I got a request for some Mother's Day/birthday flower cupcakes, and I was excited.

The cupcakes were yellow cake with butter-flavor buttercream except for the roses, which was Sam's Club icing. Red icing is super hard to get without having a lot of aftertaste, so my Wilton instructor let us in on Sam's Club red icing. It's nice and red with a yummy taste.

This rose was made mixing yellow/orange icing and red icing and using a really big rose tip.
The lady who requested the cupcakes had already seen my sunflower cakes, and she wanted a flower assortment, so I opted for red roses and blue/white carnations to match the sunflowers. Lots of fun, and I'm glad I got to do something for Mother's Day. Happy Mother's day to every mother reading this!