Yo Ho Ho!

God bless my oldest - she has the same taste as her mama!  When I asked her what kind of cake she wanted for her 8th birthday she told she wanted a Johnny Depp cake.  This was way, WAY out of my league, but Captain Jack Sparrow?  This I can do!

I searched frantically online and even offered to buy her a cake and take in a photo of Johnny that they could put on it, but she didn't want a store cake.  She wanted MY cake.  How can I let her down?

I honestly spent weeks researching and then I finally found a Captain Jack sugar sheet.

This would prove to be my most nerve-wracking cake ever - I only get one shot at laying down the sugar sheet and while I did I demanded complete silence and crossed all of my fingers AND toes!  As you can see, it worked out pretty well.  The only down side is that all the ladies were fighting over who got to eat Johnny's face.  I will tell you that us adults had quite a nice time licking frosting off our Captain Jack paper plates.

Elmo

A child's first birthday is a big deal for the parents and my niece's first birthday is no different.  My niece has shown great interest in Elmo and so my sister asked me to make an Elmo cake for her first birthday.

Of coarse I took on the challenge (there is an Elmo pan, how hard could it be?).

A bit closer to the party, the size of the party increased and so I decided I would do an double Elmo cake - yup, two layers of delicious Elmo with yummy buttercream in between!

Even closer to the party, the party size increased again.  Now I didn't feel up to the challenge of a triple layer Elmo cake, so to supplement I decided on Sesame Street cupcakes.  Amazon is a great resource for party supplies and they had Sesame Street rings - perfect for a kid's birthday.  I thought it would be a good idea to make the cupcakes in fun colors!

And of coarse, my sweet niece needed her own Elmo cake in one-year-old size.

Frogs and Weddings

Typically these two things do not mix, but my twins are now six and they now have completely different tastes.  One of then just loves frogs and wanted a frog cake.  Of coarse there's no frog cake pan, so I have to completely free hand it (and by free hand, I mean trace the shape and then fill in all the lines myself)  I think I'm getting better at it.

Now the other one is pretty fancy.  The loves fancy things right now and told me she wanted a wedding cake.  A wedding cake!  Now I'm nowhere near wedding cake talent, but I did my best and I think it turned out pretty nice.  I used fondant for the flowers for the first (and last) time.  Fondant tastes like crap, and therefore will never find itself in my kitchen again!