Transformer Bumblebee cake

Jonathan is a great little guy we met at a friend's birthday recently. He asked if I could make a cake like "Bumblebee" and before admitting I didn't know who he was, I said "Sure!" Well, for those of you like myself who have yet to be introduced to the new Transformers.... here are the two pictures I based the cake off of and the final product. Jonathan loved his cake and I hope everyone else did as well. Thanks for the challenge! The cake itself was a lemon cake with butter-cream frosting under the marshmallow fondant.

More baby showers and boy birthdays...

Here are a few photos of the last two cakes I did. The baby shower was for a small gathering of women, so I did an old family and home-town favorite cake called the Lemon Cloud. It is basically a sheet cake with an almond meringue top layer that is further topped with a layer of lemon curd infused whipped cream. I layered the cake into a 5"x5" square cake, with six layers of cake and five layers of curd whipped cream. I then wrapped the cake in dark chocolate fondant and topped it with fondant that I made to look like a baby blanket. The guest of honor is a huge Peanuts fan, so I incorporated Snoopy and Woodstock into the design by making them "gifts." All the structures were made of fondant, with the exception of the box, which was gum paste. I hand painted the foot prints on the box with food coloring and made a fondant ribbon to top the box lid. I then made cupcakes to go with the cake (a pregnant woman always needs a little bit more to eat, right?!), which were Red Velvet cupcakes with a cream-cheese icing. The lettering and flowers were also all done in homemade fondant.

I also had an order for a 6-year old boy's birthday cake, and like my own sons, this child LOVES Clone Wars and Star Wars. So the Clone Trooper was a quick and easy pick for this cake. The difficult part was deciding which version of the Clone Trooper to do --- I had no idea there were so many variations of them! Not like when I was a kid and all we had were the black and white Storm Troopers... =)  This cake was fun to do just to see my own kids' reactions to it when I was done. And it spawned an order for a Transformer cake, too, so I will post that one next week!

 

Halloween!!!

I think Halloween is the funnest holiday by far. The possibilities are endless for fun and adventurous food! There are so many great ideas out there and we went to some pretty great parties with awesome looking (and tasting) food... here are only some of the desserts I did for schools and family gatherings...

Cupcakes were either chocolate or pumpkin and again I used a simple home-made buttercream icing on everything. The blue eyes on the mummies were blue M&M's. The pumpkin candies were store bought... a last minute panic purchase. =)  The sugar cookie was all dine in melted butter-cream frosting - a technique that opens new doors!

Hope your Halloween was as fun as ours!

Thank you Holly Tree!

Thank you to everyone at the Holly Tree Hoedown for the great feedback and accolades! Unfortunately, I don't have pictures of the table with the cookies and cupcakes.... the camera escaped detection on several searches by myself and husband... Anyway, the Hoedown was fun and the cookies and cupcakes were consumed by the masses. I was surprised to learn how many kids actually love pumpkin cupcakes! Kudos to them for not sticking with basic (but delicious!) chocolate!

Below is a picture of a sugar cookie cake I made for a church Halloween coffee-hour. It was pretty darn yummy if I do say so myself! It was the size of a large jelly-roll pan (12 x 15" or there abouts). 

Four more Halloween orders to come in the next week, so there will be more fun stuff to look at soon.... until then, back to the gym to fight off this taste testing madness....

pre-Halloween fun

My youngest son has the birthday that will never end! We celebrated again this weekend with a proper family and friends party. He chose a Halloween themed brownie cake. The mummies, headstones and grass were made entirely of fondant and the kids loved them! We served the brownie cake with ice cream and had many people asking for seconds. A fun Halloween party treat for sure!

I also dropped off some Halloween treats at Cuttin Up Hair Salon this weekend. I made chocolate chip banana cake bites with melted butter-cream frosting and double chocolate brownie cats. Next time I will make the pupils more "cat-like!"

the week of too many cakes...

So, today was the day I had to drop off two different cakes while also managing to squeeze in my own family's orders for my son's birthday cake and school cupcakes. The cakes also had to be delivered within 30 minutes of each other on what was possibly the last day in the 90 degree range for this year!

The birthday cake and cupcakes were easy and yummy - banana cake and chocolate cake with buttercream frosting and fondant monkey faces. Our son's class has been doing a monkey theme all September, so I decided to keep it going another week with the cupcakes. One little girl refused to eat "a monkey" - so I guess they passed the visual test at least!


The birthday cake had to be Spiderman - my son's latest obsession. A last minute plastic Spiderman had to be added to it. My royal icing red was just too pink for Spiderman, as was my fondant. I forgot to make either medium in advance to let the color deepen. I don't think my son held it against me... =)




The first cake delivery today was for Cuttin Up Hair Salon for kids (on New Center across from Target). I take my kids there and they are great!!! Great people, friendly, clean and fun environment for the kids while they wait for their turn, and the owner sisters have been a huge support by advertising for me to their clientele. Can't thank them enough! October celebrates the salon's first year anniversary/birthday, so I have been dropping off cupcakes for the last two weekends and will do so for the rest of October. I decided to do a "small" mad-hatter cake for them to show clients a fun birthday cake option. I decorated it all in home-made fondant in the store's colors and chocolate buttercream frosting underneath. The cake layers were traditional white cake and a fantastic lemon cake. The cupcakes were the same as my son's birthday cupcakes - banana and chocolate - with colorful swirls of buttercream frosting. The aerial picture isn't the sharpest, but I liked how the colors played together.

The last cake was the cake I made for a contest at the Children's Museum of Wilmington. If you haven't' been there with your kids, you have to go! A very fun place where you can easily pass several hours and escape the heat of summer (which is what we did all July and August). Today was their birthday celebration. They hold a giant birthday party for the museum, with gifts from guests, birthday cakes galore and the traditional singing of Happy Birthday. There were no regulations on the cake contest other than to make it museum oriented. So, I decided to make fondant replicas of almost every room the museum has to offer: pirate ship, rock climbing wall, spider web rope climb, circus cars and ticket booth, science color lab, teddy bear hospital, and the list goes on and on! I made this cake last night in the wee hours - some where between night and morning. The humidity and temperature of just about everything was against me. Not to mention the hour. Needless to say, the fondant did not do what it was suppose to and basically had a major melt down on me, or the cake really. Then my teetering mad hatter levels started to actually slip. I responded with a quick dowel rod. I was bested by the weight of everything and by the time I had precariously delivered the cake this morning, the dowel rod was trying to make a break for it right out of the top of the cake. Everyone still loved it despite all its faults and I won 1st prize!!! I'm so excited!!! I have never won a thing - my husband reminds me I won his heart. True, but sappy. =) Anyway, I have learned valuable lessons in time, humidity, temperature and weight. Must take all of these things into account! Did I mention I almost ran out of gas between delivering the two cakes and picking husband and son number 1 up from soccer? And did I mention that today was 90 degrees with seemingly similar digits for humidity? It has been beautiful fall (70 degree range) here for well over two weeks! The weather gods were against me... but I won! Yay me!

Sand Castle Cake

This was a fun cake to make. It looked so real, some people were hesitant to try it! The "sand" is just crushed graham cracker and raw brown sugar. Cake was covered in butter cream frosting and then "sand" was applied. All the critters are made from home-made fondant. The shoreline was more butter cream frosting. The flags and flag-pole were the only inedible part of this cake.

Elmo and Rescue Pack & Map cakes

Here are some fun toddler cakes I have done with fondant and buttercream icing. The cakes were basic white and chocolate cakes. The kids loved them!

Chocolate cakes for any occasion

Here are three chocolate cakes that could be for any occasion or celebration. The "cherry" blossom cake and the one with the lit star candles were very dense and sinfully delicious 'dark chocolate and rum decadence' cakes. The other cake was per my son's request, a 'double chocolate brownie' ice-cream sandwich cake. All cakes were covered in chocolate ganache, but the ice-cream cake ganache was not a pure traditional ganache --- I used low-fat milk instead of heavy cream and as a result it did not set as thick and shiny as the real stuff. I also beat it in the blender after letting it cool to give it more of a whipped consistency. This cake also has the home-spun lollipops from the cupcake episode - I just stuck them to the sides of the cake in an attempt to use the remaining lollipops and hide the mess of the brownie sandwich.

Pirate Ship cakes

Here are two of the cakes that started it all. I got over-ambitious with the pirate theme for my own son's birthday parties (at home and in school).... The pirate ship flags were made from Fruit roll-ups. I intended on using cotton candy for the smoke coming out of the volcano, but I couldn't find any and was not about to figure out how to make it. So, we just lit all the candles around it instead which was a decent alternative. Everything on the cakes was edible except for the pirates and the objects on the island (plus treasure chest on the ship). I used candy and cookies for most of the ship construction - licorice ties for the ropes, fruit roll ups for the flags, cookies for the rails and masts, Rolos for the canons/portholes.

Cupcakes, cupcakes, cupcakes!

Here are some different cupcakes I have done for people or family. They are always easy and fun to do... and the kids can join in the decorating as well (check out the Jackson Pollock effect on the cupcakes below - they were for my husband, so my two little helpers got a lesson in the jackson Pollock technique).

The first set (above) features what may be the first and last lollipops I ever make. I found the idea from this great blog (http://wisdomofthemoon.blogspot.com/2008/07/fireworks-cake-toppers.html), but I made mine even more free form than they suggest. The "firecracker" lollipops were pretty big and even though they tasted good, proved to be too much sugar for even the most seriously addicted. They had a very pretty stained-glass effect though. The cupcakes were banana cake with chocolate ganache. Yum! And another vegan variety that a friend's mom made... (the ones with blue and red frosting still in the baking pan)

The mini octopus cupcakes for were a daycare celebration. The octopus bodies were gum drops that I cut in half. They were adorable!