Under Construction

A friend of mine asked me if I would make a cake for her son's 2nd birthday.  Boy cakes scare me - mostly because I've never really done them (other than Halloween-themed for my husband).  They were having a construction theme and luckily, she had a picture that I used as inspiration.










I'm all about everything being edible; however I'm not talented enough to create edible trucks, so I found an amazing little cake supply store that had a set (this shop opened up a whole new world for me).







I wanted some road signs so I created some with cute two year old references, laminated them, and attached them to toothpicks.









The road is paved with pulverized Oreos and the rocks are chocolate (and possibly my new favorite candy).








I think my favorite thing about this cake is how easy it is - you want it to look messy!

Harley Quinn

My oldest just turned 12.  I love it and I hate it.  I love bearing witness to the formation of her own personality; her passions and beliefs.  I hate the smell of tween angst.

Last year, she let me off easy with an ice cream cake from DQ...because I had just finished moving, rearranging, remodeling, and painting three bedrooms - including hers.  For her.  So she could have her own room.  This year; however she continued to challenge my limited cake skills.

She is getting into comics and her favorite comic character is Harley Quinn.  She asked if she could have a Harley Quinn cake and I was a bit nervous.  I'm not good at faces (like, at all), and red and black frosting coloring can end up tasting bad.  So I thought on it for weeks, until about a week and a half before her party, things started to hit me.

I'll cut the sheet cake into a diamond shape!  I'll use an icing strip instead of coloring the frosting!  I'll make a mallet out of Cocoa Krispies!  I'll make cake pop bombs!  All of these things added up to an awesome, easy cake (that kept me up until 1am).  I am proud of the finished product and most importantly, my girl loved it!

PS:  Every other time I use candy melts for cake pops, they don't melt properly causing me much frustration.  This was one of those times.

Marble Marble Cake

 

I was assigned dessert for Easter, and this year it just so happened that it was my brother-in-law's birthday.  After my mom suggested I make him a cake, I sent my sister a text and asked what his favorite was.  She told me marble with either regular or chocolate buttercream.  After some thought, I decided that because the cake would be marble, I would use both!  I used vanilla buttercream for the first layer, mixed the chocolate with vanilla for the second, and only chocolate on the top.  I was a bit worried it would be too fancy for a dude, but he loved it!

Hey Where's Perry?

It's that time of year again.  My twins are TEN!  I can hardly believe it!  And while I got off easy with my oldest wanting an ice cream cake for her 11th birthday back in September these girls are not so impressed with store cakes.

My little sweetface likes simple cakes (thank God) so this year she wanted a sprinkle cake with pink and orange nonpareils.  Pretty simple right?  Haha.  They make is look so easy in the pictures, but for an amateur such as myself, I think it turned out pretty nice.

My little cuteface on the other hand, loves to challenge me almost as much as she loves Perry the Platypus.  She wanted a Perry cake - but not just any Perry cake - and NOT agent P.  This one took some creativity.  I hate fondant so I never use it.  We're a buttercream family and I try to make everything on the cake edible.  

Perry's little feet, bill, and tail are made from those vanilla cream wafers covered in buttercream.  Of coarse I had to prop that bill up.  The eyes are just buttercream (a special treat for my mam).  Everything else is cake - blue velvet cake so he's the same color inside and out...kinda weird, but tasty.

(once I finished him, I looked at a picture and realized I forgot his little tuft of hair, so I added it)

You can't see, but she's totally smiling in there.

Ma Cake

My ma LOVES buttercream roses, but I'm no pro so when she asked me to make her a pistaschio birthday cake, I mimmicked a cake I previously made for one of my daughters, but used three shades of green for the frosting.  She was so happy, and that's all I can hope for.

I took these pictures on the picnic table outside trying to capture some natural light, but it wasn't working out too well for me.

A Bigfoot Cake for my Main Squatch

That's right, my hubby just turned 40!  He was super blah about this birthday, so I threw him a party. Once the invitation was out, I started brainstorming cakes.  While trying to research bigfoot (and I say trying because there's not a whole lot of bigfoot party supplies), the only cakes I would come across were foot cakes.  And then it hit me - picture cake!  I found a few places to order the picture sheet from and a friend of mine did a nice little photoshop job for me.  Once I ordered the sheet, I got really excited!

My mom just so happened to be going to Door County for the weekend so I asked her to bring me some chocolate rocks.  I then decided chocolate footprints were necessary.  I ordered a footprint candy mold (probably for baby showers, but whatever) and put them all around the cake.  

And finally....trees.  They had to be edible.  They had to be cool.  Sugar cones, dipped in chocolate, rolled in green rice krispies - YES!

Of coarse you can't just have a bigfoot cake. 

Fl-owl-ers

Happy 9th Birthday to by beautiful twins!!!!  This year the girls decided they wanted a roller skating party, and therefore we weren't going to have a big party at the house.  We were also going to do the unthinkable...ORDER A CAKE.  After some thought (and complaining on their part), we decided to have just a small family gathering for them on their birthday and that I would make cakes for that.  

When it came down to it, they had no idea what they wanted!  So we browsed the web for ideas and came up these:

Flower Cake

For my very fancy girl, we did all flowers in lots of colors.  She was more than thrilled...and I have to admit, for someone who can't do flowers, this looks pretty cool.

For my girl who loves everything animal, we decided on an owl with an added surprise.