Pink Petals Birthday Cake

This is a carrot cake that a friend ordered for her own birthday. It's a triple-layer carrot cake filled and frosted with cream cheese frosting. I was free to decorate it as I wished, so I took the opportunity to try something new. I found this Lilly Pulitzer-style cake created by Laurie Lucov Wedding Cakes . I liked the pink and green combination and the whimsical design. I thought I could interpret it in a single layer cake.

But...the fates had a different idea. The chocolate transfers turned out horrible and my latticework looked even worse...I had to scrape off the latticework and re-smooth the cream cheese frosting...hence the marbled sides. I made a batch of royal icing and made the flowers, let them dry until they could be handled and arranged them on the cake. Once the cake was finished I thought something was missing, so I brushed it with shimmer dust.

Most importantly - Tallie loved it! Happy Birthday, Tallie!

New Sugar Cookie and Rolled Chocolate Cookie Recipes

I tried two new recipes. I wanted a tastier sugar cookie so I tried the recipe found in The Flour Pot Cookie Book by Margie Greenberg. And, oh my goodness! They are delicious. I rolled them 1/8 inch thick (used paint stirrers for my levelers). Iced them with the Antonia 74 royal icing recipe posted on Cake Central. This is definitely the royal icing recipe I will use until someone can convince me otherwise!

I also wanted a chocolate cookie for a dark background. I used the dark chocolate rolled sugar cookie recipe, also found on Cake Central. I didn't have any espresso powder. I used Hershey's Special Dark cocoa. They tasted AWESOME! I also rolled these 1/8 inch thick. They baked up nice and firm on the outside, but slightly soft on the inside.

I found the Cherry Blossom tree cookie on Flickr! posted by Nancy's Fancy. These were simple and fun to do, but no where nearly as perfect as Nancy's!

The birthday cookies were for my 8-year-old neighbor, Emma, whose favorite colors are purple and blue. I hand cut the cake cookie. It measures 7 1/2" x 5 1/2".

The round cookies were just for fun!

You can view more shots of these cookies and others in my C is for Cookie! set on Flickr!

My first royal icing decorated sugar cookies!

After two months of research, I finally felt confident enough to try my hand at decorating sugar cookies. I owe a big Thank You to CakeCentral.com for all the inspiration I found while reading user posts and viewing the image gallery. I also checked out lots of websites like www.nancysfancycookies.com , www.rollingpinproductions.com , and www.alissweettreats.com , and read several cake and cookie decorating books.

For these cookies, I used the No Fail Sugar Cookie recipe and Antonia74 royal icing recipe found on CakeCentral.com

You can click here to view additional photos.

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!