On the Beach with my horse

I have a niece how loves horses, she has been riding since she was four, and her horse is her best friend.  Her birthday came up and she asked to have a cake with her horse on it, but she also wanted to have a beach cake, since she also loves the beach.  

Knowing this girl had a sense of humor, 

I came up with this literal image of her and her horse hanging out on the beach .  

The beach tier of the cake is styrofoam, the bottom ocean is two layers of 8" cake. 

 Emmalee loves to bogey board at the beach, 

and on the yellow one is where I added the year, 2013 

This was my first time doing the ruffled fondant edge. It didn't take as long as I thought, and was pretty easy to do, although it did use a lot of fondant.   

I added edible sand as a border and on top of the beach tier as well, I was so happy to achieve a realistic "sand" look.  

 

This is her horse, chilling at the beach, eating some chips.  

She is content next to him with a book.  I made the beach chairs out of gumpaste and let them harden several days before I made the figures.  

Chillin' with friends

Happy Birthday Emmalee!

Army Cake

This cake is for an eight year old boy who loves the army, camouflage and guns.  

I thought I would go away from the usual 8" round cake and make the cake the shape of an army helmet.  

I also made a  Colt 1911A1, which is a standard army handgun. 

Thank you google images for info on that one.   

Dog tags were a fun way to tie in the birthday boy's name.  

I also wanted to tie in his age.  I really like putting either the year or the age on every cake, so in 15 years they can tell from the photos which year they had received the cake.  

On the side of the helmet I added some bullets tucked into the helmet belt.  You can't make an army cake for a boy without bullets, and of course a grenade.  All the elements of this cake were made out of fondant.  

Happy Birthday!!

School Cupcakes

My children's school was having a fundraiser this past week and needed baked goods.  I made cupcakes using the school colors (gold, navy blue and primary red) and the logo.  

These gold cupcakes have an edible image of the school logo- go Redhawks!

Then I made little girls and boys in their red school uniform polo collars.  

These were really fun to make.    

Then I made a few cupcakes with navy blue sixlets, on top.  If you are selling anything at a school function, you need it kid friendly.  I wanted some kind of candy on top of some of the cupcakes.  

Packaged and ready to go!  

Owl Birthday!

I made this cake for my two year old daughter who loves birds.  

She especially loves Owls.  

 The top is a 6", bottom tier is a 8" cake. 

On this cake I tried modeling chocolate instead of fondant.   The cake shows all use modeling chocolate, and although it hardens a lot quicker, I found it frustrating to use.  The chocolate is rock hard, then you warm it in your hands, and can mold it until your hands get too warm and the chocolate starts melting on your palms.  So making the owls was a messy process.  The pieces seem more fragile also.  I think I will use modeling chocolate when I need to have pieces  harden quickly, but if I have the time, I think fondant and gumpaste works better for figures. 

On the second owl I mixed the modeling chocolate with the fondant, 1:1 which I had read you could do as well.  I did not like it at all, don't try it- it was very dry and crumbly yet greasy.  It was a learning process and I ended up making a total of 4 owls for this one cake, I settled on my favorite two.  

The cake was surrounded with trees, and flowers made of cheerful colors, fun for a two year old birthday!

Woodworker's Cake

My dad's birthday was this week.  He is really talented at building things out of wood like food trays, cutting boards, chairs...houses.  For his birthday I wanted to make a cake stump of wood, and add different wood making tools around it.  

Every builder has plans, his plans were to have a Happy Birthday.  

I used tools to spell out "Dad".

A clamp (I've been told you can never have too many of these), nails, & a tape measure.   

 My dad loves his chocolate, so I used chocolate frosting, in a star tip to cover the sides of the cake.  Then I added the individual pieces of bark.  The "bark" was made out of modeling chocolate, each one hand made and textured to look like bark. I dusted them with a dark brown petal dust to add depth.  

I added a saw blade, and bits of chocolate shavings, and brown sugar saw dust.  The stumps ring piece was made several days in advance so it could be stiff and hard (like wood :).  I hand painted the rings with different shades of brown petal dust.  

It is always so fun to make birthday cakes, and to make them personal for the individual!

Country Wedding

Last week I was able to make a wedding cake for my sister in law. 

 She wanted a country style cake that had a rustic, simple feel to it.  

 I also made cupcakes for the dessert buffet.  

After piping 350 cupcakes, my right hand was shaking.  

I have a new appreciation for bakers who pipe all day long. 

Vanilla, Pumpkin and Chocolate cupcakes on dessert buffet. 

Pumpkin cupcakes with a frilled cinnamon frosting.  

Chocolate cupcakes with handmade chocolate roses.  

Vanilla cupcakes topped with fondant daisies

It was so much fun to take on this project.  I am so glad the bride loved it. 

Hulk and Spiderman: Trial and Error

This cake was a learning cake.  I made this for my nephew.  He wanted Hulk and Spiderman to be incorporated into his cake.  I came up with this crazy idea...

Hulk is below and has one large skewer going through him, below and above him to connect the two cakes.  

I used a large straw filled with white chocolate to hold the bottom of Hulks skewer.  Once the chocolate hardened he should be  secure.  I made the top Spiderman cake using a Cake dummie so that it would be lighter and easier to deal with the weight of the cake. I didn't factor in the weight of my fondant made Spiderman.  

Hulk looks like he has a lot of muscles, but really they are just fake.  

He was not ready to support this cake.  I made him about a week before the cake, so he was completely hardened.  Then I hot glued his hands and head to the bottom of the Spiderman cake (which the cake was also skewered onto Hulk also). The weigh of the Spiderman figure was too much for one side of the cake though.  The cake lasted about 4 hours, after delivery I found out that it gave way to gravity and started tilting too much for comfort.  

The birthday boy got to see his cake, and enjoy it, but then to save the cake for the party later on the day, extra support had to be added to keep it together.  That really is just so sad, I wish I never made mistakes, but I do.  The idea seemed like a good idea in my mind, but realistically just didn't last.  Spiderman should have been made out of modeling chocolate which weighs lighter, and given the Hulk, two skewers, one in both feet, not just the one.