F.F.F - Minecraft Bus Birthday Cake.

What do you do when your about to be six year old declares that he wants a Minecraft birthday cake (for the second year in a row), but it has to have a school bus?

Give it to him.  And let him lick the spatula of course.  It's his birthday after all.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I've been sitting on these pics since before Christmas, which just goes to show how busy it gets around here.  But now I've got time so you get to see them.  

I'll also admit this wasn't my best work.  His birthday is very close to the holidays and by the time I get to his cake, all too often I just want to get it done.  However, no worries, because as imperfect as it is, Little Guy loved this cake!  After it was finished, he decided we needed to add some animals.  I let him put the animals on by himself, which may explain why the pig has so much personality.

I'm also left wondering about the placement of the cow, but he liked it so who am I to judge.

F.F.F. - Mickey Mouse Clubhouse cake edition

On Friday, I was working on a cake for a friends daughter, and promised to  post an update with pictures, and here they are.

From the first swipes of icing

to the piping of pretty borders 

and cutting out the fondant decorations on top

this was a really fun cake.

And although I was able to do most of the work at home,

those big chocolate lollipops had to be put on at the party venue.

The birthday girl is a huge Disney fan liked it so much that she wanted to take a bite from a lollipop right then and there, but mom put a stop to it.

Happy Birthday Lizzie!  

You are one very special

 little girl.

F.F.F and I'm back!

I took a long break from blogging, but that doesn't mean I was goofing off.  Nope, It's been crazy busy here, but not too busy to help out a friend who needs a Birthday cake for her little girl.  So today's F.F.F. (Fun Food Friday) is all about that cake.

My friend and her daughter really liked this cake from  Disney Living Online, but wanted to personalize it a bit.

Instead of the number "1", they want the top tier to be a circle, and instead of stars for the her name and age, they want "Mickey" heads, plus this beauty needs to feed 60.  

The party isn't until tomorrow, so I'm just in the baking stage right now, and my house smells wonderfully of chocolate cake, which is so good, and so bad.  I recently found out I'm sensitive to gluten, so taste testing the batter and the trimmings is a job I've had to hand over to the kids.  At least they do the work for free.  

Once the layers are all baked and iced, I'll post an update with pictures.

Fun Food Friday - it's a frosty one

Little Emily is a cutey who knows what she wants.  After pouring over lots of Pintrest cakes with her mom, she knew what her birthday cake should be.  

It needed ombre icing similar to this one from Carolina Cake Artistry, 

with white chocolate snowflakes.

Except it needed all the figures like this one from

Sugar Love Cake Designs,

but iced in butter cream, instead of fondant, 

with lots of "glitter"

and absolutely no pink!

Oh, and she has tons of friends so it needs to feed 60 people with extra for the family. 

Often, a fondant covered cake just can't be translated into butter cream, and I'm willing to bet the ombre colored icing on the 1st cake was done with an air brush, which I don't possess.  

But I thought I could swing it.  Luckily it is 2014, and  there is a you tube video for everything including ombre icing a cake in butter cream.  The finished cake isn't perfect by my standards, but I think it turned out o.k. and Emily was happy with her birthday present (the cake) which is what matters.

Don't forget to check out past Fun Food Fridays.

Cake and Crinoline

As if I didn't have enough unfinished projects. (grin)

I haven't forgotten about the charging station plan, or Freddie Mae's cabinet, nor the multitude of other projects I've finished and am just waiting to blog.  And I haven't completely forgotten about my garden just yet either.  However, they are all going on the back burner while I work on 2 very important projects and they will be 

FUN!

The first  is a cake that a friend has commissioned for her little girl.  It's "Frozen" themed, 3 tiered, with blue and white swirled vanilla cake, iced in butter cream, and embellished with figurines (provided by the mom), and white chocolate snowflakes.  It is due for delivery this Sat.  so Hopefully I'll have nice entry on that coming up.

The second project is for my cousins wedding at the end of September.  They are having a 1940's/1950's theme and have encouraged guests to come in costume.  I am so excited about this.  My cousin and his intended are amazing, intelligent, and vibrant  people so I know this event will be unforgettable.  Still, it'll be a challenge to get an ensemble for myself and my daughter done in time.  With choices to make regarding patterns, fabrics, hairstyles, and accessories, my decision making skills are going to be strained to the limit, and  I can't wait to get started.  

Check back in later to see my progress. For now, I'm off to visit every crafts, fabric, and cake supply store in the city. 

Wish me luck!

Relatively Easy Minecraft Cake

My little guy, William, just turned 5.  Yay Will!

O.K. technically, he turned 5 about 3 weeks ago, but in mommy land that's pretty recent.  In an attempt to keep things "even Stephen" with his older siblings who had a big birthday bash when they turned 5, we rented out Kidventure, one of those kids play places, and invited his preschool class, plus all our friends who have little ones. 

Of course Will choose the theme of his cake.  True to his current obsession he chose Minecraft and was very specific. It had to have land, water, dynamite, a creeper, and be chocolate.

I tried to keep it simple, since his birthday is right before Thanksgiving and we had family coming to stay with us for the party.  Some parts didn't turn out exactly as I wanted them to, but all things considered, it isn't awful and he was delighted.  

Two  9x13" chocolate cakes cut and stacked, with some chocolate icing, and a bag of crushed Oreo cookies later, it looked like this:

I know, it doesn't look like much, but pipe a some green stars on top, add some Krispy treat cubes for stones and a tower and it's starting to get there.

Next, add some blue raspberry Jello Jiggler cubes for water.  I put Swedish fish into the Jigglers before they set completely.  It looked really neat, but I don't recommend it as the texture of the fish changed in a weird way.

Finally, hand it over to hubby, big kids, or anyone else just standing around doing nothing and let them do the final placement of toys and candy "jewels".  Add a sign made from a dowel and some card stock, top it off with a candle and for the effort that went into it, or lack thereof, it looks pretty good.

Beautiful Butterfly Cake

Remember the Owl Baby Shower Cake?  This super sweet beauty of a butterfly cake made her way to one of the little girls in that family for her 5th birthday.  

It was inspired by this cake on Pintrest, but we customized it for the little girl Emily who loves pink and purple and is even sweeter and more adorable than this cake..  

To make the butterfly, I used 3 heart shaped cakes, one for each top wing, and the third cut in half to make the bottom wings.  The center was made of rice cereal treats.  The cake was iced with buttercream and accented with Sixlets and M&Ms.  I had some flower picks that matched the colors nicely, so they became the antenna.

What's my favorite thing about this cake?  That's easy.  Emily's reaction when she saw it.  She leaned over to her mommy with a huge grin and whispered secretively "It's beautiful."

Click to see my other cakes.

Owl Themed Baby Shower Cake

A very dear friend of mine is expecting a little girl very soon.  She is such a special lady and I am always in awe of her abilities.  When I was approached about helping with her baby shower, it was a no brainier to offer up my services and provide the cake.  However, it took a bit more thought to come up with just the right design.  At first, being unaware of the recent "owl" trend in home decor and all things baby, I was a bit stumped by the owl theme of the party.  I know, I know, how could I not have known.

 5 minutes with Pintrest and my attitude went from

"Really? Owls?"  

to 

"YES, of course! OWLS!  

The guest of honor already has two girls and is a super busy always on the go, never gets enough sleep, but always smiles about it kind of gal.  Her husband has a job which requires him to travel alot especially recently.  He'd been gone for over a month by the time her shower rolled around.  Can you imagine?  8 months along and taking care of two demanding little ones on your own.  

I don't know how she does it. 

So the sleepy Mama owl and her little owl to be sit at the top of the cake.  Her two owlets perch on branches below. 

  

Since her husband was still out of town for work at the time of the shower, papa owl is out of the nest, but was represented on the back of the cake by a bird flying away, or back home depending on how you look at it. 

 Luckily, she found the humor in that like I knew she would.

Don't miss my Other Cakes.

Eagle Scout Cake

My husband's co-worker recently asked me to do a cake for her son, Forest, who just earned his Eagle Scout Award.  Here's what we came up with.  

It's a 2 tiered cake.  The top tier is smaller than the bottom, giving space for the words on the bottom tier. The seal/patch is made from royal icing, while the ribbon is a made using candy clay for the ribbon portion, and royal icing for the eagle.  

Considering this is the first big sheet cake I've done in a while, I think it turned out well.  I'm especially proud of my eagles that were piped by hand.

You can see my other cakes here.

My Twins turn 10

I suppose that should really read My twins Turned 10, since it was back in June.  With the events of the summer, I just couldn't get around to posting pics any sooner.  We celebrated with a small family gathering at home, but one must always have a custom cake made by mom, especially for the big 10!  So here they are.

This year, the theme was hobbit-ish.  With a Smaug type dragon asleep on it's hoard and my rather loose interpretation of Mt. Doom.  The really cool thing about the volcano/ Mt. Doom cake, didn't get captured on film, but built into the top was a reservoir for water and immediately before serving, we dropped in some dry ice so the mountain had smoke/steam escaping from the top.  Made for a really neat effect.  

Next year or sooner, I want to do a hobbit hole.  Hmm... we do have an anniversary coming up.

You can see other cakes I've done here.

A Cake of Day Dreams

Posting this year's birthday cakes got me thinking about  last years' "family" birthday cake.  It is my all time favorite of the cakes I've made.
This is it's story:

Once upon a time, a boy and a girl fell in love.  Unfortunately, their love blossomed at a time when distance tore them apart.  While the miles could separate their bodies, it could not separate their hearts. 
The strength of their feelings created a magical land where they could be together.  Stone by stone they built a castle overlooking the sea.  A  magnificent place with self washing dishes, instruments that played themselves, pet wolves, and owls.  And  of course, a tremendous friendly dragon living in a cave beneath, breathing fire to heat water and occasionally singeing the pet rats tails when he caught a case of the sniffles.

 

Catching a nap

The Creation

 

Last Air Bender meets Emperor Palpatine or "Birthday Cakes"

My wonderful twins will be 8 in late June.  This year, we celebrated their birthday early in an attempt to allow more friends from school to come.  Another thing we did this year was to request donations from our friends rather than presents.  The kids each chose a local charity and we divided the donations between them.  My daughter chose the Ark, a no kill animal shelter, while my son chose a local branch of the red cross where donations will stay in our area and help people affected by the recent storms. 

BTW, The Ark is a wonderful no kill shelter run by some very kind and loving volunteers. It is always in need of our support. If you haven't checked it out, please visit their site and consider making a donation or adopting an animal in need. You can visit them here:

http://www.arkinc.org/

I am so proud of my kids.  I gave them a choice of getting presents or taking donations and they very excitedly chose the donations.  Naturally, I wanted to give them whatever they wanted for birthday cakes.  So my daughter chose Appa and my son chose Lego Emperor Palpatine.  I also ended up making a special cupcake for a classmate whose birthday was the following day.  Everyone sung happy birthday to her, and we got her a special balloon.



The cakes didn't turn out exactly as planned, but overall I'm happy considering this was a single days work.

For the first time ever, my husband can say he helped me with the cakes.

The sign Appa is holding as well as the round things flanking the stairs of the Palpatine cake are his. 

L to R:  Avatar the Last Air Bender for my daughter, cupcake for a friend, Emperor Palpatine's throne room for my son









Appa was a mint chocolate swirl cake filled with chopped Andes mints. I'd planned on using a star or grass tip to pipe Appa's fur, but the icing consistency was all wrong and it was so late that I wasn't going to fuss with it. Instead, I just spread the icing on and created the best texture I could with the spatula.  The white lines between the layers are divider plates. 



Emperor Palpatine's throne room was chocolate cake with a dark blue swirl, as requested by my son, iced in dark fudge icing with mini chocolate chips pressed onto the sides. The top and candle holders are fondant. And of course, a cake for my son isn't complete without legos.

Cupcake for a friend.

Closeup of the edible star glitter before the flower decoration was added.
 This glitter is sure to become a favorite of mine.

Like what you see?  Be sure to check out my Dragon Castle Cake.  It's amazing.