Eat Your Vegetables... - June 2014

I made this asparagus cake for my sister Valerie for her birthday.  I saw the inspiration for this cake originally on a Sunday Sweets post on the Cake Wrecks site.  It had a link to the original post from Rosie at Sweetapolita where I saw how she made her AMAZING asparagus cake (and another here).  My sister usually cooks fresh asparagus and brings it to our family meals, so I thought this would be a fun cake to make for her.

More details and pictures coming soon... :)

(I created my animated name at this site.)

Teacher Appreciation Garden Cake - June 2013

This is a cake that I made for my daughter, Carissa's, 2nd grade teacher as an end of the year thank you.  She loves gardening and even heads up the garden club at the school.  I knew this would be the perfect cake for her.

I first used a dry erase marker to sketch out a 'map' of the garden on the bottom of the glass pan that I would use to bake the cake.  I did this so I could get an idea of scale when I started making the fondant fruits and vegetables.  This really helped with keeping the sizes and spacing right as I went.

All the fruits, vegetables, and other items on the cake are made out of fondant.  Some of the details are done with edible food markers and some are done with food coloring.  I painted the watering can and trowel with silver airbrush food coloring. The fondant items were made before baking the cake so that they would have time to dry, especially things I needed to stay standing up.
 

 

For the actual cake I baked it in a 7x11 inch pan.  You could use whatever size suits your design.  After the cake was baked and completely cool I leveled the top.  I drew a quick outline of my garden rows on top of the cake with an edible food marker.  Then, I filled in the rows with some brown icing.  I used some of the cake that I leveled off the top for the dirt in the rows.  To do this I just crumbled the cake to the fineness that I wanted and sprinkled it on the icing.  I tinted some buttercream icing green and using a grass tip piped the grass everywhere left on the cake that wasn't covered in dirt (cake crumb dirt that is :) ).

After that all that was left to do was place the fondant pieces on the cake.  Yay, a finished garden cake!  Or so I thought... unfortunately how I chose to store the cake overnight caused the fondant to weaken where it was place in the cake and when I woke up my tomato plants, potato plants, and sign were all drooped over at the base.  :(  For the potato plants I was able to use the top that was above the cake still and they were just a bit shorter.  I repaired the bottom of the tomato plants and reinforced/stabilized them with toothpicks.  Oh well, now they just looked like someone had put a stake there for the tomato plant to grow on.  :)  To fix the sign I covered a toothpick in fondant and attached it to the back of the sign and post and stuck it into the cake.  I wish I could have made the repair look prettier, but it had to be a quick fix to get the kids and cake to school.  :)
 

I was so happy with how the cake came out; I thought all the little fondant pieces turned out really cute!  And... Carissa's teacher thought so too.  :)  She absolutely loved the cake!  Hooray!  :)

(I created my animated name at this site.)

Pop!... Pop! Pop! - October 2011

I made this cake of a giant bucket of popcorn for my popcorn loving husband, Ronnie, for his birthday.  He really likes popcorn.  :)

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.)

Take Me Out to the Ball Game... - September 2011

I made this baseball themed cake for my brother-in-law, Brad's, birthday.

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.)

Ice Cream Sundae Cake - June 2011

I made this ice cream sundae cake for my son, Caleb's, 3rd grade homeroom teacher.

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.  :)]

(I created my animated name at this site.)

Cupcake Bites - June 2011

I made these red velvet cupcake bites for my son, Caleb's, 3rd grade Math teacher.  I also experimented with making some regular-sized cupcakes look like the cupcake bites.

I had some extra cupcake bites so gave a plate of five each to the two room moms for Caleb's class, and a plate of five each to the two secretaries in the office.  Most of the extra ones were ones I had tried using different types of sprinkles on.

My daughter, Cara, wanted to give her teachers something as a thank you also, so I made a plate up of eight cupcake bites so she could give one to each.

The last plate of five that I made up from the extras was for my family and me to enjoy.  :)

More pictures and details to come... but for now... to make these cupcake bites I basically followed the instructions found on Bakerella's site for her cupcake bites.  :)

[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 cupcake bites, 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 cupcake bites by clicking the comments link at the end of this post. :)]

(I created my animated name at this site.)

Box of Chocolates Cake - May 2011

I made this box of chocolates cake for my daughter, Carissa's, Kindergarten teacher as a thank you for being such a great teacher.  The chocolates aren't candy though; I made some cake balls to look like chocolate candies.  :)

I had some cake balls left over, so I plated them up and gave them to the room moms as a thank you treat.

More pictures and details to come... but for now... to make this cake (and cake balls) I basically followed the instructions found on Bakerella's site for her heart candy box cake.  Yay, Bakerella!  :)

[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.)

Giant 3D Donut Cake - November 2010

I made this giant 3D donut cake for my donut-loving daughter, Carissa's, 6th birthday.

I also made these little baby donuts to put in the kids' goodie bags.

Well, actually I ended up asking my kids and my sister, Casandra, to make them while I worked on the cake.  They were excited to get to make them, and they had a lot of fun.  My daughter, Cara, actually made some little donuts similar to these previously when she went over to her friend's house one time.  (They used Nutella and some different little toppings on theirs.)  I thought they were a really cute and fun idea.  So, to make ours, I put a little bit of vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry buttercream icing in three separate bowls and put them in the microwave  about 5-10 seconds, just to thin the icing a little bit.  Then Casandra and the kids got Cheerios, dipped the top halves in the different icings, and then dipped them into different kinds of sprinkles.  And there you have it - some cute little baby donuts.  :)  We separated them into dozens, wrapped them up, and included one dozen in each goodie bag.  I thought a cute idea would have been to put them in tiny white boxes, but I just didn't have enough time to see what was out there.

More pictures and details on the cake 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.

Taste the Skittle Cake - May 2009

I made this Skittle cake for my daughter, Cara's, 4th grade homeroom teacher for Teacher Appreciation Week.  One of her favorite things are Skittles, so we thought this would be nice for her.

Below is how the Skittle cake looked by itself before I poured the Skittles in the pan.

I used a ball pan to bake this cake.  I filled the pan up with less batter than I normally would though because I didn't want a really round ball shape.  I wanted it to be flatter, not like a sphere, you know more the shape of a Skittle.  :)  After I baked and cooled the cake completely, I leveled the two halves of the cake.  Then I stacked the halves together with buttercream icing in between them.  I crumb coated the cake and let the icing set.  Once the crumb coat was set I tinted some vanilla buttercream with red food coloring and iced the cake with it.  Using a piping bag and some white icing I piped the outline of the 'S' on top of the cake then filled it in.  My last step was to pour real Skittles in the pan around the cake.  Yum.  :)

Cara's teacher really liked the cake, and she especially liked the Skittles that came along with it [which I heard got nibbled on little by little throughout the rest of that day. :) ]

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