In the Magical Land of Care-a-Lot... - November 2008

I made this Care Bear Cloud Castle cake with a little fondant Cheer Bear standing out front for my daughter, Carissa's, 4th birthday.

My mom found these cute little Care Bear candles.
When you light the candle it looks like you've lit a candle on the cupcake they're holding.  Cute!

 

More details to come... :)

[Right now I'm just trying to get everything on the blog, then I'll go back and fill in details; you can read a little longer explanation here if you want. BUT if you have any questions in the meantime, in general or about this cake, please feel free to email me by clicking on the 'Contact Me' tab at the top of the page and using the email address found there, and I will try to get back with you as soon as possible. Or you can always ask questions or leave a comment about this cake by clicking the comments link at the end of this post. :) ]

Rainbow Cookies - November 2008

I made these Care Bear themed rainbow cookies to put in the kids' goodie bags at my daughter, Carissa's, 4th birthday party.

To make these rainbow cookies I mixed up some sugar cookie dough which I then separated into 3 sections.  I used food coloring to tint one ball of dough pink, one ball of dough yellow, and one ball of dough blue.  I set the yellow and blue aside for a bit and worked with the pink first.

I thinned the pink dough with some water to get a consistency that I could pipe the dough using a piping bag & decorating tip.  I used a medium sized round tip and piped the large pink arcs of the rainbows onto some parchment paper.  After I was done piping the pink arcs I thinned the yellow dough and piped the yellow arcs.  Then I did the same thing for the blue dough.  After all the rainbows were complete I baked the cookies.

I thought they looked pretty cute, and it was a neat alternative to painting them or using icing to get the different colors.

Below is a progression of piping the cookies, and the finished product once baked.  :)

[See the cake from this party in the next post!  :) ]

------------------------------
Parties I've Linked This Post To:

Creative Bloggers' Party and Hop - Homemaker on a Dime

Made By You Monday - Skip to My Lou
Just Something I Whipped Up - The Girl Creative
Tuesday To Do - The Blackberry Vine
Show Me What You Got - Our Delightful Home
Whatever Goes Wednesday - Someday Crafts
What I Whipped Up Wednesday - Sugar and Dots
{wow me} Wednesday - Ginger Snap Crafts
Mrs. Fox's Sweet Party - Mrs. Fox's Sweets
Cast Party Wednesday - Lady Behind the Curtain
Strut Your Stuff - Somewhat Simple
Sweet Treats Thursday - Something Swanky
Kitchen Fun and Crafty Friday - Kitchen Fun With My 3 Sons
For the Kids Friday - Sun Scholars
Fun Stuff Fridays - Toys in the Dryer
Decorating Challenge - Food Corner

It's a Deconstructed Ice Cream Cone... Cake - October 2008

I made this cake for my husband, Ronnie's, birthday.  He loves Marble Slab ice cream, namely vanilla with chocolate chips in a waffle cone... well... that's really all he gets.  :)  So, he mentioned it would be cool to have an ice cream cake for his birthday.  I thought 'I can do that', and this is what I came up with.

Below are some pictures of the inside of the cake.

I baked the chocolate cake in a Fanci Fill pan (for an explanation of what the pan is see the Ooo La La - Lingerie Shower post).  After the cake cooled completely I filled the middle spaces with ice cream.  Now I knew that not any ice cream would do, it had to be Marble Slab Vanilla ice cream.  So, I had gone to Marble Slab and picked up a quart to use in the cake [I didn't use the whole quart, we had some leftover - Happy Birthday to Ronnie! :) ].  After filling the cake with the ice cream I put a little icing on top one half (not over the ice cream though) and stacked the two halves together.  Then I put the cake in the freezer to let the ice cream set again.

While the cake was in the freezer I prepared my cake board.  Now, I wanted the cake to be like an ice cream cone taken apart and meshed with a cake, so I wanted to incorporate the waffle cone somehow.  When I had called Marble Slab about buying the ice cream I also asked about buying some cones, but I asked if they could make me a couple of them that weren't shaped yet.  It would be just a flat waffle cone circle.  They said sure and told me I could pick them up the next day because they make their cones in the morning.  Yippee.  :)  So, I took one of the flat waffle cones and placed it on the cake board.  I wish it would have been a little bigger in diameter so it would've stuck out from under the cake a little more [it was pretty much the same diameter of the cake once the icing was on :) ], but I think it still looked good.  After a while I took the cake out of the freezer and put the cake on top of the flat waffle cone.  The cone wasn't perfectly flat, it bowed some, so when I put the (heavy) cake on top of it I heard the cone crack.  Oh well, good thing that part of the cone didn't have to look nice.  :)  I crumb coated the cake with buttercream icing and put it back in the freezer to let it set.

After a bit I took the cake out and put a good top coat of buttercream icing on it.  For the top of the cake I took a spoon and used the back to swirl around on the icing to make it look a little 'wavy' and a little fancier.  Then I got some mini semi-sweet chocolate chips and patted them onto the icing on the sides of the cake.  I put the cake back in the freezer until it was time to go to the restaurant for the party a little later that evening.

So, there you have it a Vanilla & Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Cone - Cake.  :)

I thought the cake turned out really nicely.  It kind of had an elegant look to it I thought.  Oh, but after being frozen this cake was very hard to cut into.  My family quietly waited had a really good laugh watching me try to slice this cake :) [I'm sure I didn't look so elegant :) ].  After slicing the first piece to give to Ronnie, I let him finish cutting the rest - you know, so we could all get a slice of cake before the restaurant closed.  :)

Ronnie really liked the cake, and he especially liked the fact that the ice cream was from Marble Slab.  :)

A Turtle Treat for a Terrific Teacher - October 2008

I made this turtle cake for Caleb's 1st grade teacher.  A few weeks after school started Caleb came home and told me that his teacher had been in a bad car accident when someone ran a red light and hit her.  She had a broken back among other injuries.  After almost a month she came to school to see her class and talk to them about some things since she'd be coming back soon.  She showed them the brace, called a turtle shell, that she had to wear around her torso to let her back heal.  (She also had a little stuffed animal turtle named Shelley to keep in class, and each child got to take it home for a weekend.)

I decided I'd make a welcome back/get well soon cake to give her on her first day back, and I thought it would be cute to make it in the shape of a little turtle.

I used one half of a ball pan to bake this cake in.  I trimmed a little off the cake on the side where the head was going to be.  This would make a little flat spot so I could make it look like the hole where the turtle's head would come out.  I crumb coated the cake, let it set, and iced it with green buttercream.

Since I knew the head was going to be pretty big I used foil to make the bulk of it.  After I got the shape that I wanted with the foil I covered it with green fondant.  I used the excess fondant to continue from the head and make the neck.  I set that aside to let it dry a bit.

I iced the flat spot where the head would be with dark green buttercream.  I used the same dark green to pipe the details onto the shell.  For the design on the top and the lines on the belly I used a round tip, and for the wide edge along the bottom of the shell I used a wide flat ribbon tip.

I attached the turtle head to the cake with a couple of toothpicks.  It was pretty top heavy and wanted to pull away, so I propped it up with a box of toothpicks for the time being.  I cut the signs from rolled out fondant, attached them to some cut bamboo skewers, painted the words on with blue food coloring, and set them aside to dry.  I cut the eyes for the turtle out of fondant and painted on the black pupils, nostrils, and mouth with food coloring.  I made the feet and tail out of fondant and slid them in place under the cake.  Then I put the signs in the foot and tail to make it look like the turtle was holding them.

The head still didn't want to stay right when I tried to take away the box, but I certainly couldn't give her the cake with a box of toothpicks on it.  :)  So I decided to make an apple out of fondant and put that in place of the toothpick box to prop up the head.  :)  It ended up being a good thing that the head was not cooperating because I really liked the way the apple looked as part of the cake.  I thought the color contrasted nicely with all the green.  Plus, you know, an apple for the teacher.  :)

Caleb's teacher was very excited about the cake!  I thought it turned out really cute, and we were happy to do something special for her and very happy that she liked it so much.  :)

-----------------------------------

Parties I've linked this post to:

A Rose Cake by any Other Name Would Still Taste YUMMY! - August 2008

I made this rose cake for my mom for her birthday.  This was the original idea I had for her cake the year before when I decided to make her Scrabble cake instead (see the Triple Word Score for 'CAKE' post); so I was very excited to finally get to make this for her.  She loves roses, and is very good at growing and taking care of them.

  

I started this cake by baking it in a ball pan.  I put a layer of buttercream icing over the whole cake (thicker than a crumb coat, but not as thick as a regular coat).

I rolled out some fondant I had tinted a color pink like one of her favorite roses and put it flat on the very top part of the cake.  This would give my fondant petals something stable to stick to at the beginning of constructing the rose.  I rolled out another thin piece of fondant and started with the middle curled petal of the rose.  I continued to layer my thin pieces of fondant around it to form the petals of the rose curling out the tops of the petals to give them that 'frilly' rose look.

I had intended on putting the green sepal 'leaves' at the base of the rose, but when I was running out of time I decided it looked fine without them.  Although I really like the way it turned out, looking back at it I wish I would've made the time to put them on as I think it would've just completed the look of the rose better [oh well, next time :) ].

My mom really loved the cake and thought it was just beautiful.  :)  I think my favorite view of the cake is looking down from the top.  It looks the most like a real rose that way.  :)

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Parties I've linked this post to:

Made by You Mondays - Skip to My Lou

'Gone Fishing'... in My Kayak - July 2008

I made this cake of my dad fishing in his kayak for his birthday.  My dad has always liked fishing, that's actually some of my favorite memories growing up, fishing with my dad.  So, a few months or so before I made this cake he was fishing and he saw someone with a kayak going out to fish.  They got to talking and before you knew it my dad bought a kayak to go out fishing in.  He really enjoyed it, so I decided that would make a nice cake for him.  [The story about the sign on the cake will come later in the post. :) ]

  



   

I baked two 8-inch rounds for this cake.  I wanted the cake to look like you were seeing a cross-section of the water and you could see under the water at the fish being caught.  So, I cut a little space out of the edge of the cake, big enough to have a fish in.  [If I were doing this cake over again, I would design things a little bit differently to show what I wanted, but it worked out well this way, and my dad got what I was trying to do right away. :) ]

I crumb coated the cake and let it set.  I iced the cake with green and blue buttercream.  I piped along the edge of the water and the bottom of the cake with green buttercream using a grass tip.

This is how the kayak looked by itself.

I made the kayak out of fondant.  I wanted to make it look like his so I asked my mom what kind he had so I could find some pictures online.  For some details on it I used fondant and  for some I painted with black food coloring.  

I made my dad figurine out of fondant.  I gave him a hat like the one he always wears when he goes fishing (it's one of those outback type hats).  Some details on him are done with fondant and others are painted with food coloring.  I decided to give him a nose this time :) (see the Building Your Birthday Cake post).

I painted toothpicks brown to use for fishing poles and put a bit of fondant at the end to secure the fishing line to the pole.  I made the fish, little bobber, rocks, dragonfly, frog, and sign all out of fondant and painted details with food coloring.  The cattails are made with toothpicks I painted with green food coloring and wrapped with a little bit of brown fondant at the top.

So, now for the story behind the sign.  My dad was telling me about a conversation he had recently had with his brother.  They live in different states and were talking about getting together.  His brother was saying that they should go do something really cool.  I think skydiving came up and things of that sort.  So, somehow kayaking comes up, which my dad was doing now and his brother had done down a river with rapids before.  I guess my dad mentioned that he had been out on open saltwater before, and his brother was surprised that he would go out like that instead of just going on rivers and things like that.  So, my dad starts telling him about this Extreme Kayak Shark Fishing he'd heard about, like they should go do that for their thing.  Okay so, evidentially people go out in a kayak and fish for sharks... in a kayak... for sharks... did I mention the kayak and the sharks!!!  CRAZY!  Then (if they manage to not be eaten) when they catch the shark they just tow it in behind them or put it up across their kayak, like on their legs, and paddle back in!!!  [You know to advertise to all the other sharks where lunch is.  :) ]  His brother was like, I don't know about that, you'd have to be nuts!  (And he's right.)  Now, my dad wouldn't really seriously do it, he was just trying to shock him, but after his story my mom and I let him know that we were not-for-that, just incase.  :)  So, when I made him the cake I thought it would be funny to add a different version of a 'NO FISHING' sign.  :)

My dad really liked the cake :) , and when the party was over he and my mom took home the fondant dad and kayak.  When I was over their house sometime after that I was looking at the figure on the counter, and much to my horror I realized that I had forgotten to put my dad's tattoos on!  UGH!  Now, no one had noticed and no one would have cared (especially now)... but... it bugged - ME.  So, after that on one of my trips over their house I finally remembered to bring my green food coloring so I could complete it.  :)  And here it is...

Ah, that's much better  :)