Gender Reveal Cake - It's a... ??? - November 2013

When my sister Valerie was pregnant with their second baby, she and her husband decided to find out the gender.  After some persuading from her friends :) they decided to have a gender reveal party, and they asked me if I would bake the cake for it.  My mom offered to decorate it, but they didn't want us both to know the gender ahead of time, so after I baked and assembled the cake I frosted it with a layer of icing that would conceal any of the colored cake before handing it off.  Then, my mom finished frosting and decorating it.

I baked French vanilla almond sour cream cake in 2- 9 inch cake pans and French vanilla almond sour cream cake tinted 'the mystery color' in 3- 9 inch cake pans.  Since I was using a crystal cake stand, I put a round cake circle on the stand under the cake so no one would see the color of the cake through the crystal.  ;)  I alternated layers of colored and white cake and iced them with white frosting in between as I stacked them.  When all the layers were assembled I iced the cake with a crumb coat.  After the crumb coat set I iced the cake with just enough frosting so my mom couldn't see the color of the cake when she went to decorate it.

My mom iced the cake with white frosting and made little peaks on the sides.  My sister had asked her to write 'Oh, Baby!' on the cake, so she piped it in green icing on the top.  Then she used pearlized pink, blue, and green sixlets around the base of the cake and several on the top.

The cake turned out really cute and sweet, and when they cut the cake everyone was excited to find out they were having a... 

...BOY!  :)

(I created my animated name at this site.)

The Pigeon Helps Make a Birthday Cake - November 2012

I made this Mo Willems themed cake for my daughter, Carissa, for her 8th birthday.  Mo Willems is one of her favorite authors so she decided to have a Mo Willems themed party.  She picked 8 different characters that she would want as part of the party [she decided 8 would be good since she was turning 8 :) ].

The characters were made out of fondant.  I rolled it fairly thin and let it dry a bit.  (This just made it a little easier to draw on; the marker wouldn't stick or drag so much as it would on fresh soft fondant.)  Then I drew the characters with a black food coloring marker. I used a small paring knife to cut the characters out, and then I painted them with food coloring.  I went over the outline with the food coloring marker on any places that needed it.  I attached lollipop sticks (maybe toothpicks on some) to the backs of the characters using fondant and water.

More pictures and 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. :)]

(I created my animated name at this site.)

Chocolate and Vanilla Swirl Cupcakes - July 2012

I made these cupcakes for my daughter, Cara, to share with her friends at her Bible study on her birthday.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For these cupcakes I used the rest of the cupcake liners that I had leftover from making my sister, Valerie's, shoe cupcakes (see this post).  I think these red and white polka dot liners are so cute.  I baked the round cupcakes in regular muffin tins.  For the square cupcakes I filled a 10x10 square pan with 25 of the cupcake liners.  I filled the liners with the batter, and as they baked they expanded against each other and ended up square [some turned out better squares than others :) ].  After they were done baking I let the cupcakes cool completely.

 

I filled a piping bag with chocolate buttercream icing and used a large star tip to pipe swirls of icing on (almost all of ) the round cupcakes.  When I started running low on the chocolate buttercream I filled the piping bag with vanilla buttercream without cleaning the chocolate out.  So, that resulted in the striping of the chocolate and vanilla swirls on most of the square cupcakes.  The last of the square cupcakes ended up with just vanilla icing swirls as the chocolate was used up by that point.

 

After I piped the icing swirls on all the cupcakes I topped them with some red sugar sprinkles to bring in some of the color and style from the liners.

 

Cara had a happy birthday and everyone enjoyed the cupcakes!  :)

(I created my animated name at this site.)

High Heel Cupcakes - June 2012

I made these high heel shoe cupcakes for my sister, Valerie's, birthday.  My other sister, Casandra, had gotten me the book Cupcakes, Cookies & Pie, Oh, My! by Alan Richardson and Karen Tack for my birthday, and this was one of the cupcake creations in the book.  I thought it was so cute and decided to make it for Valerie.

More pictures and 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 these cupcakes, 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 these cupcakes by clicking the comments link at the end of this post. :)]

 

 

 

 

(I created my animated name at this site.)

Are You Seeing Spots? - June 2009

I made this polka dot cake for my sister, Valerie's, birthday.  We were also celebrating my brother-in-law, Josh's, birthday, so I added a little something on the cake for him too (see further down in the post).

Below is the 'little something' I added for Josh.  He is a Denver Broncos fan,

so I made a watermark of a football with the word BRONCOS on it on one of the orange spots.  :)

I had to refrigerate the cake because of the ganache I used in between the layers.  So, the moisture on the icing and fondant made the cake look shinier (below) when I brought it to the party, which wasn't a big deal.  Unfortunately though, it also 'erased' my Broncos watermark, so I just had to show Josh the picture I took of it beforehand.  :(

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. :) ]