Is It June Already?!

Once again, it has been a while since I last blogged. How does that happen?! Well, seeing as how today is the start of a new month, I figured I can start over too!

We recently had our monthly SAGNFL meeting and we experimented with rice (or wafer) paper. I have only used my rice paper once for my grandmother's birthday a few years ago to make butterflies. But they did not turn out so well, so I kind of put the rice paper on the back burner.

But when the president of our guild asked me about making feathers and flowers for our meeting, I was thrilled to try it out. I had previously seen this gorgeous cake on Cake Central...

I then found through her website the instructions for how she made her breathtaking feathers. Not sure if I've previously mentioned this or not, but my husband and I are renewing our vows this year! And when I saw her feathers, I knew I had found a starting point for our cake!

I also tried my hand at making flowers, but the result was not what I had expected. The shape came out fine, but there was no texture. When we tried at the meeting with Jane's wafer paper, the texture was there, but it was very difficult to get the paper onto the mold. We'll keep practicing! And if you want to try it out, check out these amazing instructions.

But our feathers turned out better. See for yourself...

Gorgeous! And they weren't even finished. The instructions say to dust with luster dust and hold them over steam to set and give the feathers movement. I will be doing this in the future and posting the results.

I'll be back soon to share some more love...really I will!

Royal Wedding Cake

I don't know about you...but I am excited to see what William and Kate's wedding cake will look like! Not to mention her dress, flowers, etc. I could really go on and on!

I do know a couple things about it the cake though: The cake, a traditional (for over there, not so much here) fruitcake, will be made by Fiona Cairns. What a lucky (but seriously stressed) lady!

It will be a tiered, towering beauty, with a cream and white palette, and decorated with sugar flowers! They will also be serving a chocolate groom's cake that will be made from a secret royal recipe. You can read more about it here and here.

Good luck, Mrs. Cairns!

Can't wait to see your creation!

Next Generation Decorator?

In the past I've talked about some youngsters that are making their way through the cake world. And I think I may have a budding artist on my hands as well...my 3 year old daughter, Lily.

Here she is in a recent picture (after her first haircut, which she loved by the way...the lady cut and braided her hair, then added sparkles!).

She has always taken an interest when I'm working on cakes, from mixing the batter to frosting the cake to rolling out the fondant. I usually give her her own piece, which she plays with then makes it disappear into her little tummy!

But yesterday I caught her playing with hand sanitizer, making a row of blobs on top of our television. I asked her why she was doing it and she said she wanted to "decorate with frosting". After looking back at the mess, I thought she did a good job (had it actually been frosting). Piping is hard, and for a 3 year old, I thought the spacing and sizing wasn't too bad.

Not that I encourage her to destroy our electronics, but next time I'll make sure she has a decorating bag filled with icing and a proper place to use them instead!

Do You Know The Cupcake Girl?

If you know me, you know I spend 90% of my computer time on Cake Central (and you're probably tired of hearing about it), but you see, hear, and learn the most interesting things, not to mention people, there!

Earlier today I was browsing CC and came across this gum paste doll...

All meticulously hand molded, even the face. Pretty impressive, right?

Would you be even more impressed if I told you a 13 year old made it?

I know I was! Then I looked at the rest of her pictures and found her blog. Such a talented young lady! She has been baking for a long time and decorating for the past two years. Just amazing! Take a look yourself and see what you think.

I can only imagine what is in this girl's future.

I wish her the best of luck on her caking journey!

I'll be keeping an eye on your work!

Mardi Gras

Since Mardi Gras officially ends tomorrow, I think it's appropriate to post my sister-in-law's cake. She decided this year, for her 3oth birthday, to celebrate at Copeland's, a New Orleans Restaurant. Sadly, I had a very busy schedule at the time (a trip to Orlando and back, working every night, a baby shower and a cake for it) so I didn't have much time to make an extravagant cake like I would have loved to do! So I had to make the best of the time I had.

I made a mask out of gumpaste and then decorated with my lace mold and painted it with some gel food colors (again, not as extravagant as I would have liked).

Then I made her favorite flavor cake, chocolate with raspberry filling, iced in buttercream. I decorated with Mardi Gras colors, yellow, green, and purple. And of course I had to add the "30" for the birthday girl's milestone!

I had to leave the party early to get to work so I didn't get to taste a piece, but I heard it tasted great! I also missed out on some awesome food, but I did get to taste some appetizers which were heavenly. Maybe someday I'll get back to Copeland's....tomorrow would be perfect to celebrate the end of Mardi Gras!

Hope you had a great 30th, Heather!

Baby Ava's Cake

Now is the perfect time to post about the baby shower cake I made for my sister-in-law...because she just had her baby!!! That's right, baby Ava is here and we are all so excited (which I'm sure you'll figure out with all the exclamation points in this post)! She came a week early, but both mom and daughter are doing great! She was born last night, weighing in at 7 pounds, 2 ounces and 20" long! Sounds like a perfect baby to me! I can't wait to make it down there to see and hold her!!!

Okay, on to the cake...

Cristina had shown me a picture of a cake that she liked with pastel green, pink and yellow polka dots, a bow, and some baby booties on top. She also wanted Ava's name on it, so I took it as inspiration and put my own ideas to work.

I started by making the baby mary janes so that they had time to dry for a few days. I used a template found on Cake Central from member PDXSweetTreats. Pretty simple to make and they look so cute!

Here is the whole finished cake! I was actually happy with how (most of) this came out!

The top tier was chocolate cake with whipped ganache filling, covered in ganache. The bottom tier was white cake with strawberries and cream filling, iced with buttercream. Then the whole cake was covered in a pale pastel green fondant. I added all the dots and decorations and the ribbon borders and was done. I'm thrilled to say the Mom-to-be loved it! Look at her glow!

CONGRATULATIONS CRISTINA AND JOHN!

CAN'T WAIT TO SEE YOUR NEW BUNDLE OF JOY!!!

The Cake is on F-I-R-E!

Well, it really wasn't, but there were "flames" on it. I was asked by my sister to make a cake for her friend that works in the Fire Department. I had seen two awesome cakes on Cake Central, (where else, right? LOL) one by CC member cassiescakes and another by myKzooKid.

There were also a lot of cakes with fire hydrants on them, but I just took a picture of a real fire hydrant and tried to get it as close as I could. Here is my first, all edible, fire hydrant...

For the flames, I made my own template, then used it to cut out gumpaste "flames". They were all white to begin with, but I sprayed them with Wilton's Color Mist in orange and yellow. One day I will have an airbrush for better, more precise results!

Then I made the fire hose out of fondant, spelling "happy" with it, then attached it to the hydrant. With tinted piping gel, I made the word "birthday" and a couple splashes of "water". I thought this was such a cute idea! And I liked how it turned out.

Here's to you, Frankie! Hope you enjoyed it!

Makin' Whoopie!

Where should I start? I guess where I left off...Back in December, my daughter wanted to take some snacks for her Christmas Party at school (not to mention I had a cake club meeting coming up). My girls had recently asked to buy the "Whoopie Pies" book, so I figured it was time to try it out!

I made the "Classic Chocolate Whoopie", filled with the "Classic Marshmallow" filling.


I have to say I thought they were delicious, which was obvious to my family when I ate all the leftover ones! However, they were kind of a pain to make in large quantities. I baked almost 100 halves to make the 4 dozen whoopies! And you can only mix enough batter for 2 dozen at a time. On top of that, I also had to make the filling. It was a lot of mixing and cleaning and mixing and cleaning. And if you're like me, that is not my idea of fun. I learned my lesson...I don't think I will make that many at one time again!

But back to the yumminess! For my daughter's class, I rolled the whoopie pies in festive sprinkles to add a little color and texture.


And for the ones for my cake club, I added a mint drizzle to the top.

Either way, they tasted scrumptious!

Like the back of the book says,

" Is it a cake? Is it a cookie? Who cares!"

If you haven't yet, try some out for yourself!

Where Have I Been?!

Well, I have missed posting for over 2 months!!! So sorry about that! After my last post I was rather busy with working, birthdays, holidays, a baby shower, a cake challenge and a drawn-out illness! Right before Christmas, my whole family (my husband, our 2 daughters, not to mention a large number of other family members) came down with walking pneumonia. It was not pretty...we were sick and sleeping about 16 hours out of the day. That lasted for about a month, well into the new year. SO, I know it's late, but I hope you all have had a great new year so far! Also, hope your Valentine's Day went lovingly! Am I missing any holidays?

I know for me there has also been many birthdays, 6 to be exact, including my own. And today is my Mother-in-law's birthday! Happy Birthday, America! Hope you had fun in Colorado!Hopefully *soon* I will be posting a bunch of pictures of cakes I've made for some of those birthdays.

I also have pictures to share from my sister-in-law's baby shower, a cute baby I made for display at a cake challenge, and some of my daughter's party pics from last weekend...which was a blast!

But for now, I have some housework that needs to be done and also I have to get ready for work! Thanks for waiting so patiently for me to return to the blogging world! I am back and ready to GO!