Painted Cake with Flower

This cake is a birthday cake for my niece.  She is turning 24.  The cake is handpainted using vodka and food gel, and the flower was made out of gumpaste.

Gumpaste Bow Birthday Cake

This cake is for my niece.  I made the bow according to this tutorial.  When I colored the cake and bow, I used my airbrush.  I decided to make the bows gradually change color, so when you look into the center of the bow, it starts as a yellow and then turns to turquoise and finally becomes the purple color.

WWE Raw Birthday Cake

This cake is for my nephew's 10th birthday!   

The pads are airbrushed Marshmallows and the ring is made with airbrushed red spaghetti noodles.
The WWE Raw logo is hand painted.

Sports Baby Shower Cake

 I used Crumb Boss's Vanilla Cake recipe for this cake.  The buttercream icing (1/2 butter and 1/2 shortening) is decorated with gumpaste and fondant elements.  The Football, dots and stripes are all airbrushed with Americolor Maroon, Navy and Chocolate Brown.  The wood grain baseball bat was made with the idea from this tutorial.  The monogram was done with help from this tutorial.

The Fresh Beat Band Cake for Matthew's 2nd Birthday

This cake took approximately 10-12 hours of work.  All the characters were hand-molded in Fondant + Tylose powder.  It's 3 stacked 8" diameter cakes to make the drum.  All of the cake is edible.

I made this cake for my son, Matthew.  He had his 2nd birthday and absolutely loves the Fresh Beat Band.  He watches it everyday and was so excited about eating his birthday cake this year.  He didn't quite understand why we were waiting so long to eat it though.

Fall Festival Cake (Hand molded Scarecrow)

This was my first time to mold a figure with hands and feet and facial features.  It was VERY challenging!  The cake is pretty plain since I spent so much time on the topper.  It went to the Fall Festival at our church.

Mom's Birthday Cake (My First Rose)

I got this idea from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezthnEpRo5Q&feature=g-hist
It turned out beautifully.  I layered 2, 2" chocolate cakes and torted and filled them with chocolate pudding.  It was quite tasty with the buttercream icing.  My mother loved it and I was really happy with how it turned out.

SMHS Fightin' Rattler Graduation Cake for my Nephew

I planned this cake for months!  I was really excited for the opportunity to make it.  When my Mother-in-law came to me and asked me to make my nephew's cake, I was flattered.  I love making cakes but this was an opportunity to really do something fun!  I pondered what I could do to set this cake apart from your average graduation cake and it hit me like a ton of bricks.  A RATTLER cake!!!  I took to google to find the perfect "pattern" for a cake.  Not a literal pattern, but at least an idea of how I should attempt something like this.  Here is the site I found.
http://peachofcake.blogspot.com/2012/05/snake-cake.html

In order to achieve this, I would need to know how to cover cakes in fondant, so I planned to practice.  (you saw the last two posts, right?)  Once I felt comfortable with that technique, I decided it was time to try this. 

My first step was to mold the head of the snake and the rattler.  I brought up google images of a rattlesnake head and it's rattler and molded it based on the pictures I saw.  The rattler needed to be purple because those are the school colors.

I let these dry for several days.  To get that neat texture for the scales, I used a netting I picked up at the grocery store.  The next step was to make my cake and carve and cover each layer.  I also had to texture each of those.

I got to the top layer and built up the neck so that I could attach the head.

I then stacked the cakes.

I'm not sure why the first picture had that purply-pink thing going on, the other pictures are more true to color.
Several days before I had worked on a graduation hat and tassle.  Those had been drying, so the next day I added them, and some diamonds.  This was a diamond back rattler, afterall.

The final touches were his eyes and the 2012. 
I was really proud of this cake, and my nephew loved it.  I'm waiting on a picture of him eating the head of the rattler...but, it hasn't made it on Facebook yet. ;-)

N's 8th Birthday POKEMON Cake!

My son, N, LOVES Pokemon.  When he asked for a Pokemon cake I first got excited because I wanted to attempt to mold all the little Pokemon in gum paste.  Then, after realizing what I might be getting myself into, and also because I was to do another cake that same week that would be a real challenge, I decided to give in and buy the Pokemon to go on top of the cake.  When I told him I was expecting him to be sad, but instead he was ecstatic!!  He couldn't wait to get to play with all the little Pokemon figures that I bought for his cake!!

With several weeks to go before this cake would be done, I started on the lettering.  I'm finding that I really like this process.  It's calming to me.  I printed out the word, Pokemon, from their website and used it as a gauge to make my letters.  I did not make a template this time.  Instead I just looked at the letters and drew it with my exacto knife.  This was the result.

Next, I had to figure out how to make a Poke-ball with the actual cake.  I tried making the fondant one big sheet and discovered rather quickly that the technique I was trying was NOT something I could accomplish.  Instead I cut the cake into two hemispheres and proceeded to cover each cake separately.  I then pushed them back together and sealed them with the black.




I called it a night after this step since the dilemma of how to cover it had taken me a while to figure out.  The next day I continued working on the cake.  I made rocks and grass out of gumpaste.  I attached the lettering and placed the rocks and grass.  Then my son helped me to place the figures.  After asking some cake friends what they thought, I tried to make it seem like they were fighting a Poke-battle by putting the details around the figures on the top of the cake.  I'm not sure that comes across to anyone who bothers to look at the cake, but I knew what it was. :-)

My First Fondant Cake--Lillies and Gardenias

With about 1 week until I was supposed to start my son's 8th Birthday cake, I decided I better practice the technique of covering a cake in fondant.  I had 2 cakes coming up in the following two weeks and both were in fondant, but one was NOT for my immediate family!  My nephew was going to have his high school graduation party and I was doing something AWESOME for his cake.  I needed to know how to cover a cake in fondant.

Our cousins came to visit us, so I figured I would make the cake while they were there.  I covered it with Gardenias and Lillies that I made at my Wilton class and still had in a container.  I just knew those would come in handy one day!

"Butterflies, LadyBugs and Caterpillars" First Birthday Cake

This cake was my first attempt to make a cake for someone outside of my family.  My closest friend's daughter had her first birthday.  I was able to try my hand at gum paste letters in this cake, as well as making my own butterflies, caterpillars and ladybugs.  I also "painted" the bugs with vodka and gel coloring, as recommended on most cake sites.  This cake was a hit in my book.  In just a short time I feel like I've come a long way.

The idea came from this cake at Cake Central.
The idea for the butterfly came from these videos.  Butterfly video 1, Butterfly video 2

About Me and This Blog

I'm a stay at home mama to 3 beautiful boys.  My loving husband has always encouraged me in my endeavors and I've picked up quite the list of hobbies over the years including, sewing, digital scrapbooking,  and drawing. 

My cake decorating journey began as a montage of these various crafts I have worked on over the years and the love I have for my kids. Ideally, I knew that I was artistic enough to make this fun, but I had no idea how to make or decorate cakes...I had to learn the "basics." I knew that I wanted to make a cake for my 5 year old's upcoming birthday, so I took some Wilton Classes at my neighborhood Michael's and watched some Youtube. I've been cake decorating for about 4 months, and I absolutely love it. This blog is intended to put the creations I have on display. I get many of my ideas from Cakecentral.com, and have many times gotten an idea off of there and made it my own. I'll do my best to link the cake that I drew my idea from as a thank you to them, and to recognize the work that they originally did. 

On average, these cakes  have taken me anywhere from 3-10 hours to make.  I usually do them over the span of about 2 weeks.  They are very conducive to my kids nap schedules.  I hope you enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making these cakes.

"A STAN-ding Ovation" Musical Cakes

These cakes were made for my PreK son and my 2nd Grade Son.  Their school does an all school musical and these were to the themes in their classrooms.  The musical was set around the theme of the Flat Stanley books.  The PreK were not familiar with Flat Stanley yet, so they had music notes on their T-Shirts.  This is why I did a musical note cake for them.  The Flat Stanley cake was a take on Flat Stanley going to Hollywood.

"Batman and Robin Lego" Cake

This was the cake that I made for my 5 year old.  He LOVED it!  I tried many new techniques in this cake including working with gum paste and stacking cakes.  It was with this cake that I discovered what I really enjoy about kids cakes.  Sculpting fun 3D gum paste figures!!

Idea for this cake came from this person at Cake Central.

"Wilton Roses"

This was my final class cake. I had to learn and execute the Wilton Rose. I was proud of my work, but it could use some practice.

"Easter Basket Bunny"

This was my first donated cake. I got the idea from Wilton. I learned how to do a basket weave on this cake.

"Poor Little Heart"

Oh wow. My first try at a cake "on my own" without my instructor's help. I went out on a limb and tried to do roses without instruction (we had not yet gone over them)...wow. I've come a long way, I believe. I practiced smoothing my frosting here too so that the buttercream has the "fondant" effect going for it.

My First Cake "Little Fish"

This was one of my first cakes. It was one I did in my Wilton class. The things I learned from this cake were how to apply the correct pressure to frost a cake, how the consistency needs to be in order to apply that frosting, how to make a slick, glassy and watery look on my cakes. I also took my first stab at drawing on cakes.