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.