Playing Catch Up!
These are alot of the cakes, cupcakes, and cookies I worked on this summer as I learned.
As is probably evident by my HORRIBLE post record (4 in 4 months MAYBE) I'm not the best at keeping up on blogging. So I'm going to post new decorating and baking experiments and how-to's as they occur to me. If you have any special requests for how to's write it in the comments section and I'll try to cover it!! I still wanted to show my projects, I think I'm missing a few but I'll add those when I find the pics. Alot of these pictures were taken on my or my husbands phone- so excuse the quality. ;)
My very favorite cake project this summer...
My daughter's 2nd birthday!
it was a gardening theme
I found these Mary Englebreit silicone cupcake pots at Michael's (my home away from home) they inspired the entire party.
The cupcakes were chocolate, of course, with a mud filling (crushed oreos and thick chocolate pudding) and about half had a gummy worm nestled in the mud filling for an extra treat! The dirt on top was also crushed oreos- which made piping the roses and hydrangea's directly on top of the dirt really hard! The sunflowers centerscenters are Oreo's and the ladybug is a red skittle, I used a grass tip with multiple holes for the sunflower petals- though a leaf tip would have looked nice I liked how dynamic the flowers were for a toddler party. The pink roses were topped with edible clear glitter flakes, and the hydrangea's had dum dum's poking out the top!! So kid friendly!
I also dipped some Oreo's in red melting chocolate and pipped some dots to make ladybugs for the party! They turned out adorable!
Especially in this bowl I turned into a platter by gluing it on top of a candletick that I found!! I'll have a how-to on that sometime. It's one of my FAVORITE new tricks!
My next favortie cake was my Fourth of July Cake!!
The fireworks were fun and and it had a cute old fashioned patriotic feel but it ranks as one of my favorite's because of the special suprise on the inside, and I don't just mean the pina colada filling...
Ta-da!
The American Flag!
Mini Cakes
I started looking for any and every reason I could think of to make cakes this summer, but an entire decorated cake is usually massive and feeds way more than the average sized family. So I started making mini cakes!
This first one's top teir is maybe 3 inches around...tiny and SO cute.
I made these chocolate butteflies!
They are so simplistic and fanciful but you can make them much crisper as you like. Making them out of chocolate meant they were super delicate and melted to the touch. I'm planning a tutorial on royal icing and color-flow butterflies...coming soon ;)
This next one I made for the cutest little girl Grace and it was my very first fondant covered cake.
I loved this summer babyshower cake.
It was a lesson in time management and proper materials...
I spent so much time making sure the structure and base white tiered cake was perfect that I left less than an hour to decorate it...AH! It was a gorgeous smooth white buttercream, which is my absolute favorite icing to work with because it not only taste's amazing but it also has a beautiful vintage look...not quite perfectly smooth.
My second mistake was using buttercream on the decorations, they were heavy and too soft to sustain the heat and my sunflower melted...next time royal icing.
Even with the melting and quick decorating time I love how the cake turned out. I wish it was cleaner and that I'd had more time to hand paint the bottom teir with more flowers and make sure my strips were impecable- but I'm still proud of this cake.
It was a lemon basil cake, something fresh for our outdoor shower!
This was my first experiment with gumpaste flowers, and since this class I learned an absolutley easy way to make roses...minus the cutters! You can see the more pinkish roses in the bunch are the ones I learned without cutters and the violet ones are with them.
I made this for a friend, Amber, for her birthday!
It was my first experience with covering a cakeboard and using an imprint mat.
I love the victorian-gothic feel of the cake. Originally this was supposed to be 3 tiered cake, but the middle teir met it's demise when I dropped it flipping it out of the cake pan to cool...it made awesome cakeballs though!
This last cake was so fun to make...first of all I am obsessed with these gumpaste bows- I think they are so fun! And the marbled fondant technique was really fun to impliment, plus I got to use the little bits of fondant I had that would never be enough to cover a cake by themselves...
waste not, want not ;) lol
