Sweet Escape Baking

Just A Girl…Who Loves to Bake

Posts Tagged Cakes

My 1st Wedding Cake

Aug 23

Posted by admin in Cakes, Uncategorized, baking | 1 Comment

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.

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Happy Birthday to ME!

Jul 27

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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) ;)

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Welcome Baby!

Jul 27

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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!

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A Beachy Bridal Shower

May 24

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White Cake with Chocolate Ganache Mousse and Buttercream Frosting

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.

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A Questionable Birthday

May 14

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Chocolate Cake and Cream Cheese Frosting

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.

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Backyardigans 1st Birthday Cake

Apr 2

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Last week was my sweetest, most adorable, most lovable nephew’s first birthday. Backyardigans is one of the only things that can get that sweet, adorable, and lovable boy to sit still for more than a few minutes, so a cake was requested. I used bakeries cake as my model and created away. While it was a very time consuming cake, I have never been happier to make a cake for any reason.

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Pablo is the little man’s favorite character, and therefore the most difficult one I had to make.backyardigans-4
Look at him holding up the dot that is falling off. Yes, I did that on purpose!backyardigans-5backyardigans-6backyardigans-7
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!backyardigans-8
backyardigans-9backyardigans-10I 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.
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Foofa Cake

Jan 30

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This week I created a cake designed around the character Foofa from Yo Gabba Gabba. I created the character out of marshmallow treats and modeling chocolate.
I made the marshmallow treats and modeling chocolate from scratch. The modeling chocolate was not the right consistency and that caused some problems, including getting the character as smooth as possible and making the arms look normal. I will buy the chocolate recommended by Chris Rossum and his team from my class at the NY Cake Convention to see if it makes a difference.

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The cake is red velvet with cream cheese frosting. I covered it in white fondant and decorated with flowers and butterflies. Overall, I think it turned out great.

I’m looking into taking Wilton classes at my local Michael’s because I want to get the techniques a little more perfected, specifically getting my cakes to lay flat when I tier them.

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A Lucky 30th

Aug 12

Posted by alissa in Cakes, baking | 2 Comments

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The boy’s big brother had a milestone birthday last weekend and I had yet another chance to try my skills at cake making.
A set of dice was requested because of an upcoming trip to Atlantic City. I got to thinking, and was excited to make a cake that represented something fun and playful.

An exciting trip to the cake decorating store with Shirlene and Luka (I’m determined to make his first work “cake”) ended with already dyed red fondant and some really cool chocolate molds.
The next day I got to work with the assistance of Alicia, who was interested in seeing how a cake was put together after I made her this. We rolled, molded, cut, and generally just made a mess out of my kitchen.
Lately, I’ve been watching a lot of cake shows on TV (Cake BossandAmazing Wedding Cakes) and have noticed that after they crumb coat the cake they use a pastry bag, or ziploc in my case, to add an even layer of frosting around the edges. After trying this on the last two cakes I have made I have found that it makes covering the cakes easier and allows a bigger buffer zone between the fondant and the cake. Anyway, who doesn’t love extra icing.frosting
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I seemed to have a lot of trouble with the red fondant. At times it was too soft and I would stick my fingers through, other times it was too dry and it would crack. Does anyone have similar problems with pre-colored red fondant?

We finally managed to cover the cakes (one was a mess, but strategically placed chocolate playing cards helped) and decorate with molded chocolate.
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Overall it was a success. Especially the eating part of the cake. Chocolate Sheet cake from Cooks Illustrated and Cream Cheese Frosting with chocolate chips. I think that combination is my new go-to when making any cake.
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Lastly, I have to thank Alicia for the awesome photos! I’m going to have to invite her over more often so I can get more pictures of the process, however messy it might be.

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A Beach Birthday

Jun 15

Posted by alissa in Cakes | No Comments

A close friend of my had a birthday last week and I offered to make the birthday cake. My friend is a big fan of the beach and I knew I had to run with that theme. I had difficulty deciding on a specific idea until I did some googling and I finally got inspired.

Here is my cake…

Beach Cake

Here it is again….

Beach Cake 2

I made a chocolate cake (Martha Stewart’s One Bowl Cupcake Recipe) layered with cream cheese frosting (my personal favorite). Here I am cutting the cake…

Beach Cake Cutting

Once I layered the cake and crumb coated it with the icing I dyed the fondant an ocean hue. I attempted to use white chocolate to do the piping around the cake but it was too soft so I ended up whipping up a batch of royal icing and using that.

For the shells, I used a chocolate candy mold. For most I used white candy melts. Some of the shells I swirled in pink candy melts or butterscotch chips to add some color.

My next cake making goal is a two tiered cake and/or some ribbons….

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My First Cakes

May 26

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In the past few months I’ve had the opportunity to try my hands at making fondant covered cakes.

For Easter, I made an Easter Egg. On the inside was carrot cake with a cream cheese frosting molded into the shape of a half egg. I then cut various pastel colored fondants into shapes and patterns to resemble a decorated egg.

It’s a little lopsided…It was one of my first attempts to make such a complicated shape…Here it is from the side…


For a birthday, I decided to make a computer programmer and fellow Mac person, a cake version of the Mac Logo.


I attempted to make a grey colored cake, but without wasting too much of the white fondant I had to make the black fondant lighter, I got this darkish grey instead. I was very pleased with the shape (I printed out a 6 inch version of the logo and used a 6 inch pan to get the right size).

On March 23, a baby named Luka was born. I may be biased…but he is probably the cutest baby ever! I made this cake to celebrate that day!


This was actually my first official fondant covered cake. I used a large yellow ribbon along the edges and a smaller blue ribbon to balance the size. I used various pastel colored circles (cut with different sized cuters) to decorate the cake. At the time of decoration, we were not sure if a girl or boy would be greeting us so I made it as gender neutral as possible.

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