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.

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.

I Wanna Rock And Roll All Night

My baby, my first born is 10!  I don't know where the time went and more importantly I don't know at what point in the last year she defected to her father's side.

She is now a Kiss fan.  And despite my begging for something more cake-panish and easy for me to do, she had her beautiful little heart set on a Kiss Cake.

And to challenge me even more, she didn't want black frosting.  I called in the help of Pinterest, Google, and yes, even my husband.

I made trips to Michaels, Wal-Mart, and JoAnn Fabrics scoping my cake decorating options.

I even checked ebay for anything that might help me out on this one.

I borrowed my sister's sheet cake pan and was just going to cut out the Kiss logo, but then she showed me a cute little 6-inch pan she had.  "Stage" instantly popped into my head.  I reconsulted my husband, who suggested these cute little Lego-compatible kiss figures.

In the end, I came up with this - all on my own.  Free hand (with only a little tracing) and even made flames!  I don't think I've ever seen a kid so happy about a cake in my life.  Maybe she'll be defecting back to my side now.

You Are My Sunshine

Apparently my Easter cake was such a hit last year, they wanted a repeat performance.  On top of the pressure of being creative and Eastery, my sister demanded chocolate buttercream - her new love.

Sunflowers are springy...more summery, but Peeps are definitely Eastery and this cake makes me smile!

Dirty Zebras!

It's time for my twins to celebrate another birthday and while this pink fancy cake may look simple and delicious, it's far more.

The girls are getting into animal prints and one of them loves zebra stripes and the color combo of pink & black.  I give you my zebra cake!

The other girl just wanted a simple, delicious dirt cake, complete with gummy worms.

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!

Crikey, Mate

For my Christmas my mom bought me a cupcake book and the kids haven't put it down since.  They've been plotting and planning all my next baking extravaganzas and before I knew it, it was the twins birthday.

At least they were in agreement.

They wanted this for a birthday treat and since I pretty much try to accommodate birthday treat requests, I agreed.

This monster had to be carried on two separate cardboard cake boards, but he was tons of fun to make!!!

His teeth are pieces of marshmallow and his claws are made from banana runts.  I cut up shortbread cookies for his spikes and used marshmallows and Jr. Mints for his eyes.

Because one is a chocoholic and the other love vanilla, and this guy takes lots of cupcakes, I made both flavors.

The scaling took a while, but like I said, he was fun to make.

The girls loved him so much that I had to do it again for their birthday party a few days later.

Hello Kitty

Six-year-old girls love Hello Kitty and mine is no different.  Hello Kitty cake pan was an easy find as well as Hello Kitty anythingyourheardesires.

Sadly, the Hello Kitty cake pan isn't very big at all, so if you're having a party with more than a few people, you might want to make some cupcakes in your daughter (or son's) favorite colors.

In Sync

No, I'm not talking about the band, N'Sync.  I'm taking about my twinados who are in sync on this birthday's theme!

All my girls just loved Wall-E and of coarse there was a Wall-E cake pan (thank you Wilton).

E.V.E. on the other hand (or Eva as so many kids like to call her) was a freehand creation that I'm super proud of!  Basically I asked my BIL to print off her shape for me to fit in a 9x13 pan and then traced her with frosting.  The stars and all other decorating are all me.  I'm even more in love with her than Wall-E was.

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

Once again the family has called upon me to make a cake for a family function.  Luckily, someone bought me this awesome snowman cake pan!

GraveSkull

Halloween time again!  I saw a very similar cake in a Halloween party magazine and thought it simple enough.  Even though it was my husband's birthday, I made him cut the coffin shape.  Since I thought it was highly inappropriate to put "R.I.P." on a birthday cake, I used "R.H.B." which stands for Really Happy Birthday.

We're Just Two Lost Souls Swimmin' in a Fish Bowl

My oldest wanted a fish bowl cake.  I know there's no cake pan for that, so I have to start free thinking again.  We all saw what happened last time.  It wasn't pretty.

So I googled and I found a picture that was much better than this, but didn't have a gummy shark like mine.  I followed the directions pretty closely and ended up with this.  I think it turned out really cute and my 5-year old loved it but you know we had to sing pretty early because it started tipping over.

You live, you learn.