Lego Cake

Here's a Lego cake I did a while back. I enjoyed making it, and I liked the way it turned out, but as usual, I learned things along the way. I didn't have a mold for the bricks. Next time, I will. I will also do a better job of making sure the sides of the cake are perfectly straight, especially in the corner where the bricks are exposed.

 I made the people from 50/50. They are the size of a real lego character.

 I had my teenage daughter helping me glue the little dots on the bricks. That was a bit tedious.

 Looking at the sides is where I really wish I had a mold for the bricks. I hope someday to be able to do a similar design of this cake.

Pretty Peony

 I recently took an online decorating course through Craftsy. It was their Handcrafted Sugar Flowers and the teacher is Jacqueline Butler from PetalSweet. I came across her blog a while ago and fell in love with her gumpaste flowers, so when I saw the ad for her class I didn't hesitate to take it. 

Here's my first peony. Not too bad. The peony was not part of the class, but I used the techniques she taught and the recipe for gumpaste to make it.

Here's the bouquet I made. The class taught how to make the hydrangeas and the cute little filler flowers and how to assemble them all together.

Craftsy has been quickly adding to their list of cake decorating classes and I have to say I've taken most of them. I so love learning more about this fun craft. Now if I only had the time and money to learn how to take better photos of my crafts!

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!

The Ups and Downs of Cake Decorating

In August I had the opportunity to work with a sweet lady on her wedding cakes. Yes, I said cakes. 34 to be exact. She wanted a small round to be the centerpiece for each of the tables at their reception, and a larger, 3 tier for the wedding parties' table. I had a lot of fun working on these cakes, learned a LOT, and would have probably had a nervous break down if it weren't for a sweet friend from church who came to my rescue and lots of strength from the Lord. 

I mentioned a "blow out" in my last post.  This, my friends, is what a blow out looks like. 

 

Isn't it lovely? I spent 3 days baking, frosting, and covering all 36 cakes, getting them ready to decorate the Friday before the Saturday wedding. It rained all day Thursday. I woke up Friday morning to find half of the cakes in very similar condition to this one. Much of the fondant was tacky and wet feeling. :o( To say the least, I got slightly stressed. However, I spent some time with the Lord and realized Phil 4:13 was meant for such a time as this. "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me." Now I realize that this is referring to many other areas of our lives besides actually having physical strength to do something, but I also knew that I couldn't possibly do this without God's help. Throughout the day, as I saw the cakes sitting on the shelves waiting to be finished, I just had to remind myself of this and my attitude quickly changed from one of stress, to one of peace.

 As I mentioned, one of the young ladies from our church had offered to help me with these cakes, and thankfully she is a very quick learner. She was rolling fondant out as quickly as I could make it. She stayed till about 10pm when I sent her home and I stayed up till about 5 am finishing what I could. Here are all the cakes in the back of my van ready for delivery. It's hard to see, but the 3 tiers in the far right are the main cake. I had to decorate it on site because of the design.

Since my hubby came along to help deliver, and he didn't have much to do while I finished the main cake, he decided to get a couple of pictures of me. I'm not usually on this side of the camera. Here I am using a lace mold to make the decor for the cake.

Here's a shot of the cake in progress. Because the lace draped down below the tiers, I had to do the decorating after it was assembled, and I wasn't even going to try and travel with it stacked.

We had 3 designs for the table centerpieces. One third of them looked much like the main cake. These stands were made by the bride's father. Aren't they awesome?

One third of them we called the "garter" cakes.

 And one third of them were ruffle cakes.

 Here is the main cake table. I didn't get a good shot of the whole thing, but she had this large cake, and one of the garter and ruffle cakes on it.

I'm happy to say they all turned out well, I finished the cakes on time, and the main cake didn't topple over. :o) What did I learn from this? Never, never, never, NEVER have windows open on a rainy day when you're working on cakes. Fondant and humidity do not play well together.

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!

Sweet Baby Shoes

Just thought I'd drop in here and post another cake from a while back. I was asked to do a cake for a baby shower for a little girl, and since I'd been wanting to try my hand at baby shoes, this seemed like the perfect opportunity.

Here are the shoes I made. I started with a pattern I found online, and then tweaked it to get a couple of different looks. The shoe laces were the hardest part. Of course, this was before I bought an extruder. That little tool would have made them a whole lot easier.

Here's the finished cake, all pink and white and girly. It was so long ago, I don't even remember what flavor it was. Also, in looking back at these photos, I notice that there was a blowout about to happen on the left side of this picture on both tiers. A blowout is when a large bubble develops under the frosting. I don't remember seeing them when I took the cake to the baby shower, but I can definitely see them in the photos. Some day I'm going to learn the secrets to getting perfectly smooth fondant and what causes those annoying blowouts.

I really do need to find a place to set up for photographing my cakes. I tried doing this one outside, thinking the sunshine would help, but it only managed to wash all the color out.

Well, I'm trying to be better organized in my days and have made a schedule for blogging. Hopefully I will be able to keep up with it when life gets crazy.

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!

Apple Basket

I did this cake for our church's September Fellowship Supper. The cake itself is spiced apple with caramel buttercream. Yum! The apples are rice crispy treats covered in chocolate and fondant, then hand colored with petal dust. I used the apple on the table as my model.

I'm not super thrilled with the basket part, but I didn't get the idea for this cake until Friday evening and didn't have time to make one with fondant. Oh well, I hope to get to do this design again sometime and I will make a better basket then.

Glass Slipper cake

I did this cake for a little 4 year old. I seldom get to see the faces of the little ones when they see the cake for the first time, so I was happy when the she came by with her mom to pick it up. I was a bit nervous because I was told the birthday girl kept changing between Cinderella and Dora and I was worried she would be disappointed, but she wasn't. She was quite thrilled at her "Rella" cake.

My 31 cake

Here's a another blast from the past cake. I was asked to do a cake for a lady's 31st birthday. In that honor, they were hosting a My Thirty One party. I had never heard of them before, but had a great time browsing through the catalog and planning the cake. I asked which bag was the birthday girl's favorite and planned it around that.

The bags were rice cripies covered in fondant. I hand painted the stripes and flowers to match My Thirty One patterns. 

I wanted the main cake to look like a table with the bags on it. I then did cupcakes to go with it. 

Half of the cupcakes I put a pink flower to match one of their flower pins and on the other half I hand painted to match one of their fabrics. I was ecstatic to find cupcake liners that almost perfectly matched another one of their fabrics.

Here's the cake next to the inspiration bag. The background color isn't exactly the same, but I only had a photo to go by so I was happy about how close it was.

This was one of the few cakes that I didn't have any inspiration from other cakes, and it was one of the first times I've painted on fondant. Definitely a learning experience.

Till next time...
God's love and blessings.

Carson's Barnyard Cake

So, Marci called me this year to do Carson's 2nd birthday cake. This is the cake I shouldn't have done. I was already over-booked for cakes that weekend and I couldn't possibly add another one onto the list. But, she just wanted cupcakes, and a barn yard theme. My mind was racing...cupcakes are easy to frost, I can make the figures ahead of time...sure, I can do it.

I have to say that this was really one of those "God" things. He knew I needed to do these cupcakes that weekend. All week long, as I started to stress about how much I still had left to do, I'd look over at those cute little critters and my stress level just dropped. I mean, who could be upset when looking at these little guys?!

As per usual, I saw several barn yard cakes and cupcakes online and picked and chose the details I liked from each one. The barn was rice crispy treats covered in fondant, and the critters were all made with fondant.

One of the young ladies from our church came by on Friday to help me out so I taught her to make grass and she helped me with the last little piggy. He was by far my favorite. Too cute!! I do believe I squealed every time I looked at him. Marci seems to have a way of making me squeal. :o)

I was totally in love with this cake and was actually sad to deliver it. I miss those little guys hanging out in my kitchen. :o(

Well, I don't have any cakes scheduled to do this weekend, so hopefully I will have time to put some of my older ones on here before I have new ones to post about.

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!

Carson's Dr. Seuss Cake

When Marci called me about a year ago and asked if I could do a Dr. Seuss cake for her son's first birthday, I think I squealed. I have always wanted to do a Dr. Seuss cake. I pulled together ideas from various other cakes I have seen on the internet along with some ideas of my own.

As with most of my cakes, I learned quite a few new things along the way. I wanted the cake layers of the hat to be red and white, so I layered vanilla and strawberry cakes with strawberry buttercream. Unfortunately, that many layers stacked up proved to be quite wobbly and difficult to cover in fondant. I ended up wrapping it in plain white fondant, and then layering red and white on top of that. I didn't think about which side would end up being the front, and if you look closely you can see the seam from the under layer along the left side. Like I said, I learn by doing.

The yellow and green layers are buttercream with fondant decorations. I drew the designs on paper, cut them out for templates, cut the fondant out and let them dry. Once I placed them on the cake, I outlined with black buttercream for the details.

My favorite part of this cake was the fish. I knew I wanted to do him on top of the hat, but couldn't find one online anywhere that I liked, so I had to figure out how to do it on my own. I used a Coca Cola ornament shaped bottle for the fish bowl and fondant for the fish, bowl's rim and water. I poked a plastic decorating nail through the bottom of the bowl before I put the "water" in so I would have something to hold the bowl on the cake.

The hardest part was transporting this monster. It wobbled and jumped with every bump in the road. I've since learned that I should have poked a sharpened dowel all the way through the center of the cake to help support the layers. Oh well, it made it safely, and I only had a slight nervous break down on the way.

Tomorrow I will try and post the cake I got to do for Carson's second birthday. :o)

Till then...
God's love and blessings!

A blog for my sweet passion

Hello there! Welcome to my little corner of the blogging world. I am a child of God, a wife, a mother, and a crafter. I love to work in all kinds of mediums, paper, fabric, paint, wood, and sugar. Yep, sugar. I love to make cake, cupcakes and other sweets, and I love to decorate them in fun and unusual ways. This blog is a place for me to showcase some of my sugar art. :o)

Here's my most recent cake. It was a strawberry cake with dark chocolate filling. Yum!

I was asked by a friend to do a cake for her friend who happens to be an interior designer. The fleur-de-lis is her trademark so I wanted to work that into the design of the cake. This was my first time doing heels. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, but it did take a bit of time to allow the gum paste to fully dry between steps.

Before you ask, I do not have a cake decorating business--yet. I do it because I enjoy it. I would love to make money at it, but our government doesn't make that easy. There are tons of regulations and restrictions to having a home-based baking business. We are working on building a separate kitchen for me to do my baking in, but we are trying to do it without going into debt. I want this business to remain something I enjoy and do because I want to, not because I have to pay off bills. From time to time I will post updates on our progress with the kitchen. In the mean time, all of the cakes you see here are done on a donation basis.

We have collected a few of the items I will need for the kitchen over the last few months, a commercial stove, stainless steel counters and a sink. Here's my most recent addition.

Don't you love my wind-blown hair?!

That's a 3 door commercial fridge. My mom owned a food truck that she would drive around to businesses and sell them breakfast or lunch. She makes the most awesome breakfast burrito around. She recently retired from the business and decided to let me have her fridge! How cool is that? We just had to figure out a way to get it from Colorado to Wisconsin. I have to say that it was quite an adventure towing that thing over the Rocky Mountains. It took us 19 hours to get out to my family in CO, but it took almost 24 to get back home.  We did make it safe and sound, and it is currently sitting in my garage waiting for its new home.

I will try and post some of the cakes I've done in the past, but right now, I'm off for some snuggle time with my baby.

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!