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!