Horse Cupcakes - May 2007

For my daughter, Cara's, celebration of her birthday with her class in 2nd grade I made her these horse cupcakes.

My sister, Casandra, had given me a magazine that had the idea in it awhile before, but by time I was going to make them I had misplaced the magazine (I think the magazine was Woman's World.).  Luckily I had already looked at it so I remembered the basics of what they used to make them. 

After I baked, cooled, and iced the cupcakes I put a peppermint patty on top and iced it for the nose.  I used Bugles (iced over) for the ears.  I started out spreading the icing on the Bugles with a knife, but then I think I switched to dipping them in the icing (heated a little in the microwave to thin) to make it easier.  Next I piped on two white ovals and put M&Ms on each for the eyes.  I piped on the nostrils and mouth; then I piped on the little diamond-y shape on the top of the nose.  I used a star tip to pipe the mane.  I put some brown icing stripes along the insides of my piping bag before I put in the white icing, so when it was piped out it would have both colors in the mane.  All the icing I used was vanilla, just tinted with food coloring to make it the various colors, but you could use chocolate if you wanted to.

Cara, her class, and her teacher all really liked the cupcakes!  :)

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Tea for Two - May 2007

I made this 3D tea set cake for my mom for Mother's Day.

She didn't know I was making a cake for her, so when I carried it in she said that she thought I had brought a little toy tea set with us until I got closer.  Then she realized it was a cake.  That was pretty funny.

The teapot, teacups, and saucers are all cake.  I crumb coated them and then iced them with a top coat of buttercream icing.  I made the pink trim, handles, and spout out of fondant.  I piped the flowers on the teapot and teacups with buttercream icing.  I tried to use a paintbrush to pull some of the icing toward the middle of the petals and leaves to give it more of a painted look.  The 'tea' in the cups is buttercream icing tinted a tea-like color.  :)

The cookies on the tray are actually cake.  When I was cooling the little cakes for the teacups on the wire cooling racks the tops of the cakes had gotten little lines imprinted on them.  When I cut the tops off to make the shape for the teacups the cut off tops looked like a perfect little cookie.  I had purposely made a different set of cookies from cake, but when I saw how nice these looked I decided to use them instead.  :)  The tea bags are just regular tea bags of course, I didn't make those.  :)

My mom really loved the cake!  :)

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An Apple for the Teacher - May 2007

This is an apple cake I made for Cara's 2nd grade teacher's birthday.  I made apple cupcakes for her (and the students :) ) as well.

Everything on this cake is edible.  I baked the cake using a ball pan.  After it cooled I stacked the halves with buttercream in between and carved the cake a little on the bottom half and where the stem would be to make it a bit more apple shaped.  Then I crumb coated the cake and let it set for a little while.  After the crumb coating was set I iced it with red tinted buttercream icing.  I made the stem, leaf, worm, and books all out of fondant.  I used food coloring to paint on the details for the worm and books.

I wasn't sure if she was going to serve the cake at school or take it home, so I made the little apple cupcakes so the class could have a taste and celebrate with her.  The little ones were baked in a mini muffin tin; then I made the bigger apple cupcake for the teacher baked in the bottom of a glass measuring cup.  After they cooled I just piped the tops with buttercream to make them look like the tops of apples.

My sister, Casandra, had told me about a cake contest that Woman's Day magazine was having, and so I entered some of the cakes that I had made, including this one.  They had about 600 entries and none of mine won, but this apple cake was included in a slideshow on the Woman's Day website along with about 67 other cakes that they said were some of their favorites.  So, I thought that was pretty cool.  :)

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It's a Bird... It's a Plane... It's Superman! - April 2007

These are the Superman themed cakes that I made for Caleb's 5th birthday.

The Superman logo cake is just a square cake that I cut to the shape of the logo and then iced with buttercream icing.

The way I got the pillowy look for the cloud cake is I baked a cake in a loaf pan and also baked cake in mini muffin tins.  I put a quick coat of buttercream icing the loaf cake, and then I stuck the mini muffins all over it and iced over the mini muffins with buttercream.  The Superman figure is just one of Caleb's Superman toys. 

underneath icing