Fall Cake

As a cancer survivor, I walk in the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society's Light the Night Walk every year.  Unfortunately as the years go on, it gets more and more difficult to raise money for my cause.  I decided to get creative and had a raffle - anyone who donated at least $5 would be entered into a drawing for a free cake.  The more I raised, the more cakes I would give away.  I raised just over $250.00 so I picked two winners.  One of which wanted a cake for Thanksgiving and gave me free reign on design.  I went with something simple yet elegant and got rave reviews.  Not bad for my first "public" cake.

I Love You Man

My oldest is now 9 and is getting into all kinds of different things.  One of which is tie dye.  In fact, she has a few tie dye shirts that she wears quite often.  I find it a bit comical since I was into tie dye in high school way back in none of your business.

Anyway, once again they think I'm a cake champion and can do anything so here it is, they Tie Dye cake.  I'm actually pretty proud of this cake.  It gave me a chance to dabble with decorating a cake from the inside...

I love how this turned out!!

Look What The Bunny Brought!

Word is slowly spreading about my cake fetish.  My aunt asked me to bring a cake to Easter brunch.  Oh boy, I get to do something I want to do.  Do I go easy or do I go creative?  One night at work, it was slow so I just started looking at cakes online and found a great idea.  A basket cake!  And let me just say that I used chocolate buttercream and that mixed with the kit kats are heaven!!!

Now They Think I Can Do Anything

Happy 7th birthday to my beautiful twins!  My three girls really think I can do anything.  Luckily one of these two is a bit kinder than the other.  Still fancy as always, she wanted a fancy purple cake.  

That was it - no further instructions.  This I can do!

My other twin wanted a pizza party complete with a pizza cake.  I have no idea where she got the idea from, but seriously?  A pizza cake?!  What did people ever do without the Internet for inspiration?

I got an 11-inch cake pan and used buttercream frosting tinted tan.  I made a jelly concoction

for the pizza sauce and candy melts to make the cheese, sausage, pepperoni, and green peppers.

FUN!

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!