Polka Dot Baby Shower Cake

I was asked to make a cake to match the shower invitations, which were light blue with a polka dot border in blue, green, yellow, and white. My plans were to frost the cake then add circle fondant appliqués. But I've learned that simple graphic design means the slightest imperfections are magnified. So, rather than struggle to achieve a perfect coat of frosting, I frosted the cake as smoothly as I could and I covered it in pale blue fondant. I then mixed the other colors to match the dots on the card. I cut the dots using a cookie cutter. They looked perfect...until I tried picking them up. They kept stretching out of shape. So I let them sit a while until they stiffened a bit, then I gently lifted them and placed them on the cake.

I intended to create concentric rows of dots, but the diminishing circumference meant that the dots didn't align properly. So I went with a single row around the top of the cake. I cut a large circle of white fondant for the center plaque and mixed some frosting and piping gel with blue color to pipe the personalized message.

The cake itself was three 10-inch rounds made using the white almond sour cream recipe, but instead of using white cake mix, I used French vanilla. It tasted wonderful. I filled the layers with Bavarian cream filling. I frosted the cake with white butter cream frosting. The fondant was vanilla flavored.

I was told that everyone thought the cake looked great and was delicious.

How to Photograph a Cake (without expensive equipment)

While I always enjoy compliments on my cakes and cookies, I've recently begun to get many compliments on may cake and cookie photography. Being a practical and frugal person (interpreted as "cheap"), I'm always looking for creative solutions.

After completing my most recent cake, I decided to try something new when it came time to photograph it. I recently installed full spectrum bulbs in the fluorescent ceiling fixture in my kitchen, which has improved my ability to shoot without a flash. Throw in an empty butter tub and a $2.00 scrap of fabric and voila, I've got some really nice photos. Read more about my Fuchsia Gerbera Daisy Cake.

Fuchsia Gerbera Daisy Cake

This is another version of the cake I fell in love with on www.pinkcakebox.com. You can click here to see the first one I did, which was also my first fondant cake and featured peachy-pink flowers. This is my fourth try at covering a cake in fondant, but I'm still not sold on it. I guess I just need more practice before I can be comfortable with the whole process.

The cake is three, 1-inch layers of German chocolate cake. I made a traditional cooked filling with coconut and pecans. The outside of the cake was frosted with chocolate frosting I made from Ghirardelli sweetened chocolate powder, then it was covered in vanilla fondant.

The "pearls" around the border and the green stems are both made of hand-rolled fondant. The flowers are gum paste. The fondant for the stems was colored with Americolor Electric Green. I used a little bit of Americolor Fuchsia to color the fondant that covers the cake. I added a little more color for the lighter flowers and then added a bit more for the darker flowers.

Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about the techniques I used to make this cake.

Purple Roses & Pink Fondant Cake

This is my second attempt at covering a cake in fondant. My first attempt at making gumpaste roses. This is definitely going to take some practice!

Thanks to my Wilton instructor, Geneva Breaux, for being such a patient and knowledgeable teacher.

Baby's First Birthday - My First Fondant Covered Cake!

My friend and co-worker, Belit, asked me to bake a cake for her daughter Bella's first birthday. She gave me creative license and I knew I wanted to make something special. As luck would have it I had a Wilton class the night before I had to bring her cake to her. In that class, we learned to cover a cake in fondant.

So, I decided on a design, which was actually inspired by a cake I found on Flickr. It was a cake made for a wedding shower by Pink Cake Box, of which Anne Heap is the founder. She is a graduate of the Pastry Arts Program at the French Culinary Institute in New York City and completed an apprenticeship with Ron Ben-Israel Cakes in New York City (OMG!). She is a spectacular cake artist. You can click here to see the cake that inspired me.

I covered my cake in class with fondant colored a very pale shade of pink. But, instead of adding all the other stuff that was included in the class curriculum, I waited until I got home to decorate it.

I colored gumpaste in a shade slightly darker than the fondant on the cake, then I made an even darker color, adding a little orange to it so that it was sort of a shrimp color. I used a daisy cutter to make gerbera daisies and then rolled bright green stems and tendrils. I used a darker shade of green to make the centers of teh flowers. Then I used a small round cutter to cut circles from white fondant. I rolled two circles together to form a pearl and did this until I had surrounded the entire cake. I then brushed the pearls with pearl white shimmer dust for a finishing touch.

Since fondant isn't "mushy" I decided Bella needed a "smash cake" that she could dig into. So I cut a small circle out of cardboard and covered it in silver paper. Then I used a biscuit cutter to cut the center out of an extra cake. I frosted it in pink buttercream and covered the entire cake in pink sugar crystals. I finished it with a gerbera daisy on top.

Belit was ecstatic when she saw the cake and I was thrilled that I could deliver two cakes to her that I was quite proud of.



This was Bella's little smash cake.

Chocolate Ganache Birthday Cake

This cake was baked for the son of my friend, Tally, to celebrate his 14th birthday. It's a six-layer, devil's food cake with bavarian cream filling. I covered it with Ghirardelli chocolate frosting then poured chocolate ganache on top.

Yum!

Bright Birthday Cake

I baked this cake for the daughter of my friend and co-worker, Toni. She wanted a cake to match the party invitations.

It's an 11" x 15" single layer "cinnamon toast" cake. I used a recipe from Cupcakes by the Cake Doctor by Anne Byrne. Delicious! I coated the cake in buttercream frosting and decorated it with fondant appliques.

Happy Birthday to Me!

My birthday was September 8th so of course I baked myself a birthday cake. I wanted to try something new and I definitely wanted buttercream frosting. I recently discovered Cupcake Cafe a wonderful, all-buttercream cake shop that does amazing cakes. I turned to them for inspiration and found a lovely wedding cake covered in lilacs (see tiered cake below).

I thought I would do my interpretation of that cake in a single tier, so I made a four-layer, french vanilla cake with red raspberry filling. I mixed a (too dark) shade of ivory buttercream and two shades of purple, some brown for stems and green for leaves. I wasn't sure how to actually make the flowers, so I experimented with a few tips and ended up with something completely different!

I don't think they are actually lilacs. Some people thought they were wisteria and others thought they were hydrangeas. (My kids thought they were grapes). But everyone thought the cake was beautiful and tasted great. In fact, it was pretty much devoured in one sitting.

All in all, I enjoyed my birthday celebration with family and friends. And I got the birthday cake I wanted because I baked it myself!

Ooh La La! Fleur de Lis Cake

Finished this cake tonight. It's a birthday cake for a coworker who likes fleur de lis.

It's a double layer, 9-inch devil's food filled with chocolate Bavarian cream. I frosted it with chocolate frosting made from the recipe found on the Ghirardelli powdered chocolate can. Very yummy! The fleur de lis appliques are made from colorflow, which I painted with gold luster dust. There are eight, 2-inch tall fleur de lis around the side of the cake.

The base of the cake is decorated with chocolate sprinkles. I chose not to embellish the top rim of the cake because I thought it would have detracted from the simplicity of the design.

View the entire Fleur de Lis set on Flickr!

Glorious Ganache

This cake was very simple to make. It's a five layer yellow cake with Bavarian cream filling. It is covered in buttercream frosting and drizzled with chocolate ganache.

Ganache with Panache: Sandi's Birthday Cake

I surprised my friend, Sandi, with a chocolate cake for her birthday. She loves chocolate and chocolate covered strawberries, so I pulled out all the stops and invented a cake just for her.

It was a devil's food cake with chocolate Bavarian cream filling. I bought a can of Ghirardelli chocolate powder and made chocolate frosting using the recipe found on the label. It tasted fabulous! I then poured chocolate ganache over the entire cake. It was supposed to flow over the cake and drip down the sides but I learned an important lesson. Don't try this on a cake you have just removed from the refrigerator! The chocolate cools quickly and doesn't flow.

Then, I dipped fresh strawberries in the ganache and clustered them on top of the cake and placed them around the base of the cake. I drizzled them with melted white chocolate. Then I tried writing on the cake with the melted white chocolate. This didn't exactly work, as you can see.

But...the cake TASTED fantastic! One person said that each chocolate area was a little adventure. An adventure in chocolate. Sandi has named it her official birthday cake and said I must deliver one to her for her birthday every year.

Peeps Cupcakes

In addition to making the Sunflower Cake for Easter, I wanted to make cupcakes for the kids. I frosted some in white buttercream and others in chocolate. I piped green buttercream grass and the girls helped me place Peeps marshmallows bunnies on top. Click here to see more pictures.

Sunflower Cakes & Cupcakes

I wanted to bake a cake for Easter, but I wanted it to be something unexpected - no bunnies or eggs. I decided sunflowers would be very spring like. A quick Google search found Debbie Weaver's instructions for making sunflowers for decorating cupcakes or cakes. I baked an 8" three-layer yellow pound cake, filled with Bavarian cream. I frosted it with buttercream and followed her instructions and this was the final product. I used dark chocolate cocoa powder to help achieve the dark brown color of the seeds. The great thing was that it tasted as good as it looked. Once I convinced everyone it was OK to cut it, they devoured it! You can click here to view all of my sunflower cake and cupcake photos.

A friend of mine, Robin, saw my first sunflower cake pictures and asked if I would decorate a cake for her mother's birthday party. She brought me two 9" round lemon-flavored cakes. I torted them and filled them with lemon curd. I frosted them in a lemon-cream cheese frosting. I used buttercream for the flowers. You can click here to see all the photos.














Robin's sister-in-law, Sam, loves sunflowers. I had to bake some cakes the following Sunday, one of which was a sunflower cake for a friend and co-worker, Debbie. So I used the extra cake batter to make cupcakes for Sam. Debbie's cake was a square lemon cake. I filled it and frosted it with lemon buttercream frosting. It was a belated Administration Professionals Appreciation day cake.

Wilton Cake Decorating: Course 2

In this course we learned to make birds using the colorflow technique and we made flowers using royal icing. In the first three classes, we made flowers that we brought home to dry. For the final class, we brought a cake crumb coated in buttercream and frosted on top.

We learned to cover the sides with the basketweave technique. This is actually quite easy once you get into a rhythm. Then we trimmed the bottom using the rope technique. I trimmed the top edge with reverse shells. Then we arranged all the flowers and the birds we made in the previous classes.

My flowers were brighter than I would have liked, but I was still happy with the final product. I would like to try making a chocolate cake with chocolate basketweave around the sides. I think I'd like to decorate the top with chocolate molded leaves and chocolate covered strawberries!

Wilton Cake Decorating: Course 1

I recently took Wilton courses 1 & 2 in cake decorating. We learned to decorate cakes using buttercream icing, royal icing, and colorflow.

Our first assignment was to bake a cake using a character pan and a star tip. I chose a purse because I wanted something with as few colors possible. This technique is easy, but it causes my hand to cramp.

Our second assignment was to learn how to make a shell border, write freehand, and pipe characters from icing. We had to make clowns. I'm not a fan of clowns so I wasn't thrilled about the assignment. Basically, the trunks, arms, and legs of the clowns were thickly piped frosting with no structural support. The heads were plastic picks.

The frosting was still wet when we left class and I had a pretty long drive home. I think I hit every pothole along the way and knew there was no way the two sitting clowns would still be upright.
When I got home we all had a good laugh because the sitting clowns had fallen down. They looked drunk. The third clown looked like he just didn't have the strength to climb to the top of the cake! I dubbed it my "Drunk Ass Clowns Cake" and everyone who sees it, loves it.

Our final class had us decorate a cake with basic buttercream roses. Making a good rose is quite a challenge, but I think I did OK.