Isn’t it beautiful?

Inside is white cake with vanilla frosting and raspberry jam. The tiers are 14″, 10″, and 6″ from top to bottom respectively. Cupcakes are white cupcakes, filled with raspberry jam, topped with vanilla frosting and a special fondant decoration.

Creating this cake was so much fun thanks to my new assistant, my tadpole Kristall, who helped me with all of the details the day before the wedding. I also figured out some new tricks while making this cake that will definitely help me in the future.

First of all, kneading the fondant before rolling it really makes a difference. When I covered the middle and top tier and realized how much smoother and shinier the fondant became because I had kneaded, I ripped off the fondant on the bottom tier and started all over (crazy, I know!). I still didn’t get the tier perfect, I’m not sure exactly how to perfectly cover such a big tier, but the decorations were enough to hide any imperfections.

Next, with the help of my tadpole, I began using my diamond quilting marker to put the diamond patterns along the edges of the top and bottom tiers. This took patience….I’m not always so good with my patience. I then went over each mark with an mini-pizza cutter type instrument that I clearly don’t know the real name for.

Kristall was responsible for all the silver dragees/balls, then came the ribbon and we were done and onto our next cakes, an engagement cake for my stepbrother and a personal cake for Kristall.

The cake was stacked at the location, because a. cake is heavy and b. I was not driving a 3-tier cake on my lap through the Bronx, pothole central.

Oh! One last thing. Congratulations to the bridge and groom, Rosalie and Pedro on their exciting new life together.

Last year I wondered if it was normal to make yourself a birthday cake, and then I made two. This year I restrained myself and only made one.

The cake is marble and has chocolate fudge frosting. I used left over frosting from the baby shower cake I created the same weekend as my birthday, which I dyed to purple. I recently got a brand new cupcake cookie cutter that I finally found a use for. I used the same technique as the onesies on the shower cake, and rolled different colors of fondant into the white to create sprinkles, as well as the striped letter for the “Happy Birthday!”

For now, I think making your own birthday cake is okay, I’m hoping it doesn’t go farther than that in the future (i.e. my own wedding cake, or baby shower cake)

Having no job during the summer really allows any cakes I have the opportunity to create to get my full attention. I worked very hard on the details of this cake to create a great baby shower experience for a friend. The first layer of the cake is red velvet with cream cheese frosting, and the top is yellow cake with chocolate frosting. Yum!

I am really satisfied with the overall cake but extremely unsatisfied with the bow. Despite making a bow two days ahead, then remaking it, the humidity in the air refused to let the fondant dry out accordingly and I got two droopy bows. Next time, I think I will do the bow farther ahead of time to give adequate time for it to dry.

The bottles and onesies came out great. I molded the bottles myself and created placards for them to sit on with my fluted cookie cutters. For the onesies, I created a template from cardboard that I then cut around to create the shapes. To get the stripes, I rolled different colors of fondant together, which is my new favorite technique!

The cake is red velvet with cream cheese frosting.
The cupcakes are yellow cake and dark chocolate cake with blue and white swirled buttercream icing.
We laid the cake out in the middle of a table, and used two cupcake stands to present the cupcakes.

I love icing cupcakes! I made my favorite buttercream recipe for the icing here. I dyed half the batch blue and kept the other half white. I put half of each into the pastry bag, and piped the tops with frosting. I love the “swirled” look that creates.

The Kindergartners at my school had their moving up ceremony the week before school ended this year. One of my colleagues had a Luau celebration party for her excited students and their proud parents.

The cake is white “rainbow cake” and all the decorations were made with dyed fondant. I used a sharp knife to cut the flowers out to get a hibiscus shape and used my leaf cutter for the leaves.

You know it is a successful cake when there is not a crumb left to be found at the end of the party, especially when children are involved.

This cake is a second attempt at this cake, but in two tier form created for a bride whose wedding will take place on an island.

The dots and borders were created with royal frosting (my new best friend). The shells are white melting chocolate molded into different types of shells using a specific mold easily found at a local craft store.

The day I was making the cake was very humid and warm, and therefore the fondant and I were not friends. All in all, I need to work on my patience and time management so that I do not get stressed out.

If anyone knows of a better set of alphabet cutters I would greatly appreciate the heads up, I really do not like the unevenness of the ones I used for the lettering on this cake.

I really enjoyed making this cake for a few reasons. The first being the challenge of the interesting shape, a new favorite that I will definitely try again. I baked the cakes in square pans and used circle cookie cutters to cut out the edges. It gives the cake a unique shape and adds depth to a usual present themed cake.

The second reason was the challenge of creating question marks for the cake. At first, I was convinced my alphabet cutters included a question mark, but I was wrong, only a exclamation point. I was ready to throw in the towel until my wonderful boyfriend suggested using the “2″ cutter. I did just that, bending the final product slightly to create the question mark. We debated about the little arm and whether it was correct, but in the end I won out.

After putting the cake together, I was a little worried I had just made The Riddler a birthday cake, but was happy to see I was the only one who noticed the resemblance.

Pablo is the little man’s favorite character, and therefore the most difficult one I had to make.
Look at him holding up the dot that is falling off. Yes, I did that on purpose!
A view from the top. I’m very proud of that bow, the nicest one I’ve been able to make. I’m definitely going to keep making small bows just like this!
I used a white cake and dyed each of the three recipes blue, yellow, and green respectively. Then I used the same technique as the rainbow cake for M’s birthday cake. Finally, I filled the cake with the most delicious chocolate frosting. I am convinced every cake needs this frosting from now on.

My newest cake creation is a recreation of the cake Princess Tiana wears at the end of the movie.

I used the party supplies (plates, cups, etc) to help come up with my initial sketch. Here is what her dress looks like in the cartoon.

First, I baked enough 6″ and 8″ layers of Cook’s Illustrated Old Fashioned Chocolate Layer Cake and the layered Quick and Easy Buttercream Frosting between each of three layers.
**I bought a Wilton Cake Leveler this week, hoping to have it help me evenly slice the tops off of my cakes, but it wouldn’t even budge through one! If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to leave them in comments**

Once the cakes were thoroughly cooled, I began shaping them. I cut off sections of the cake to give it a more hourglass feel. It is hard to see in the finished product, but I think it helped with all the fondant that was added, so the cake didn’t look too bulky.

Then I began making the bust of Tiana’s cake. I freehand cut leave shapes and applied them to the cake in the same manner of the dress she wears in the movie. I was happy to see the final outcome really resemble the dress, in both color and style.

Then came the daunting task of making the bottom tier look like the skirt of a dress, when all I had to go from was front view pictures of her dress. I decided to make my first attempt and pleating and laying the fondant to look like fabric, and almost haphazardly place different leave shaped pieces of green fondant around the tier. I am really happy with some of the side pieces I created that did end up looking like fabric.

Then it came time for the tiara. Luckily, I had leaf fondant cutters that helped to create the shapes for the upper part of the crown. I laid the leave along the edge of a bowl, and then cut a strip of darker fondant for the headband.
When the tiara had dried enough, I removed it from the bowl, only to realize the circumference was far too large for the top of my cake. I bent the headband, only to have it crack into many pieces. After some attempts at gluing it back together, I finally gave up and created a new headband, this time placing the leaves and band around the bottom of a glass.
Once all had dried, I painted on some water and then dipped the tiara into sanding sugar to give it it’s sparkle.

Finally, I created daisies, at the birthday girl’s request, to use as an accent for Tiana’s belt.

I knew the cake was a success when I delivered it and the birthday girl was speechless!!

This past Friday, while we were snowed in, the boy and I celebrated his 26th birthday by playing tons of video games, shoveling out our cars (him), and baking a cake (me).

I decided to go with a special cake on the inside I’ve been waiting to try out after seeing it all over the web thanks to StumbleUpon. It’s called Rainbow cake, for obvious reasons, and is made by dying equal amounts of white cake mix the colors of the rainbow and spreading them into the cake pans. I love the way it looks when it’s cut in to!

The design on the outside is inspired by M’s logo. His logo is the M you see on the front of the cake, which I made by dying fondant lime green and grey and carefully using a toothpick and a pizza cutter to etch out the letters. I kept with the colors for the bands along the bottom as well.

I truly love the 26 I included as a topper to this cake. I made the numbers by rolling out the green fondant into logs and then shaping it into the curly letters (the six took a couple of tries to get it to stand).

I really wanted to take pictures of the process, especially as I was mixing the colors and creating the rainbow effect of the cake. However, I don’t have the best space inside my kitchen, and I am awfully messy. I’m hoping that once I move and get the special work station we are planning things will improve.