Monday, May 24, 2010

Megaphone Cake


This was my 3rd cake in one week. I usually try to keep it to 1 a week, just so that my "hobby" doesn't take time away from my sweet daughter. But for one reason or another, I ended up with 3 during one week. This was for a little girl's birthday party. Her mom said she wanted a megaphone in Mississippi State colors. She just wanted a flat sheet cake cut into the shape of a megaphone. I want to try this one again when I can build the megaphone up so that it is sitting like real megaphone would be! I free-handed the Mississippi State logo.



Retirement Cake (for a teacher)

I got to dig in my huge boxes of pans again for this cake! I knew I had seen a book pan in my boxes at some point so I dug it out! A friend that I teach with wanted me to do a retirement cake for one of our teachers. I thought the book would be a cute idea for this. She gave me the teacher's favorite quote and then I just added some other teacher touches to it!



The book is covered in buttercream and everything else is fondant.

Basketball Cake

I've used my sports ball pan for almost every type of ball there is at this point! I was excited to get to do a basketball cake since my husband is a basketball player.

The Northwest Middle School basketball team wanted a basketball cake for their coaches and pretty much left me with free reign to do whatever I wanted to with it. This is how it turned out!



I promise I am not obsessed with cakes covered in black icing, but for some reason they just keep turning out that way!!! Everything is buttercream on this cake except for the rim and the backboard.

Princess First Birthday

My friend, Heather, wanted her daughter Bella's first birthday cake to look like Taelyn's crown cake. She sent me a picture of the plates and napkins that they bought for the party. I baked the cake in the same crown pan, but I carved it to look more like the crown on the napkins.



Baseball First Birthday

I had a request for a first birthday cake that looked like a hat. So cute! They wanted the smash cake to be a baseball and the hat to be the cake for the rest of the guests. I was worried that the hat wouldn't be enough cake to feed everyone, so I put it on a small square and made it look like it was sitting in the grass next to some baseballs.



Wedding Shower

I tend to shy away from doing cakes for weddings, or events associated with weddings, because the cakes are such a big deal!! But when my biggest fan, Kacey, asked me to do her sister-in-law's wedding shower cake, I couldn't resist! She wanted it to somewhat resemble my in-laws anniversary cake, but they had these cute invitations for Marianna's shower and wanted it to match the invitation. This is probably my favorite cake to date.


Golf Cake

Ahhh... which brings us to one of my favorites! Remember I told you about my "biggest fans, " Kacey and Matt Ginn? Well, Kacey decided to do sweet Myers' first birthday party with a golf theme. She found a picture of a cake that she loved and wanted me to do one just like it for Myers' cake. She wanted a golf ball on top, which would be Myers' smash cake and then a 2-tiered round cake decorated in golf theme. The top tier she wanted to look like a golf course and the bottom tier she wanted in argyle! So cute!! This is the end result!



Easter Cake

I have a good friend whose grandmother used to make cakes. That family gave me 5 boxes of her old cake pans! They were all different shapes. I still have to go through those boxes on occassion to remember what all of the pans are!

Taelyn was having an Easter party at daycare and I thought I remembered there being a 3D bunny pan in those boxes. I dug and dug until I finally found it. This was a cute, but quick cake to make! And it wasn't nearly as difficult to bake as that silly duck! Or maybe I've just gotten better at it! Taelyn's teacher hates all of these 3D shaped cakes because she can't cut them without having to chop of their heads!!! I think it makes her feel bad!


Rattle Cake

On the constant search for new baby shower cake ideas, I decided to do this rattle for our sunday school baby shower. I had 3 cakes in one weeked, so I needed to do something quickly. Carrie told me the week before the shower that she was craving marshmallow fondant (pregnant, remember?!), so I wanted it to at least have a little fondant on it for her. The square base is buttercream and the rattle is covered in fondant. I don't remember what the cake flavors were, but I am wanting to say that the base was french vanilla and the rattle was strawberry.


This is not one of my favorites, but like I said, it was a quick one. They told me to just do something plain since it was such a busy week, but I couldn't do that. Just a plain ole' square?? That would have been much too boring!


Saints Cake

My sister-in-law, Tara, wanted a Saints cake for Cade's birthday this year and it needed to be large. I couldn't really find any pictures of Saints cakes online that I particularly liked, so I resorted to their logo. I decided to do a huge square and make it look exactly like the logo. This was my first time using luster dust to make the shimmery gold. I was going to try to stencil the word "Saints" down the side so that the font would be right, but I gave up on that quickly and just did it free-handed. The black is buttercream and the gold is fondant.


Once again, there were a lot of black mouths running around Cade's party!

Mickey Mouse Cake

Like most 2 year olds, Taelyn is OBSESSED with Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. So it was really the only choice for the theme of her second birthday! I looked at Mickey Mouse cakes online for weeks... and let me tell you, there are some GREAT ones! It took me forever to decide what I wanted to do for her cake. Usually I shy away from fondant for younger kid's birthdays because it is a little gummy and can be hard to chew. But Taelyn loves my fondant, so I wanted to cover her cakes in it. This cake took HOURS! But I loved how it turned out.







Crown Cake

For Taelyn's birthday I had to make her 2 cakes. One for daycare and another one for her real birthday party. I finally pulled out that old crown pan from 2 years earlier. This was the very first cake pan that I bought, but I had never used it. I decided it would do for her daycare birthday party! I Googled images of cakes made with this crown pan, but couldn't find very many good ones. I finally just decided to come up with my own design for it. This cake was also done very quickly, but I was pretty pleased with how it turned out. And Taelyn said that it was "nummy," so that is good!




Super Bowl Cake

Taelyn's daycare was having a Super Bowl party, so once again, I signed up to do the cake. I didn't spend very much time on this at all, and it is a very generic football cake. I wish I would have had the time to do a cute Saints design on it. But for a quick football cake I guess it will do.





Pregnant Belly Cake

Not sure if that is really what I want to title this cake, but I guess it is appropriate! My college girlfriends and I were having a shower for Kelsey, so once again I was searching for something different to do for a baby shower. I decided that I was going to finally try covering a cake with fondant (for people other than my immediate family!!!). I have seen this cake done several different ways, so I took my favorite parts of several different pictures and combined them to make this. The great news: everyone at the shower was talking about how good the fondant was!

That opened up an entire new list of opportunities with cake decorating because I knew that I could use fondant and people would actually LIKE it! I know that fondant is pretty. But I get so tired of going to weddings where the fondant is left on the plate after the cake has been finished. It may be pretty, but it is cake and it is meant to be eaten. If it doesn't taste good then what good is it? So that has been my dilemma all along. I wasn't going to make a pretty cake that was gross.

I was ecstatic after the shower! I couldn't wait to try more cakes with my marshmallow fondant!!

Poker Party

My best friend, Kelsey, was throwing her husband a poker party for his birthday. She wanted a spade cake. We couldn't decide if we wanted to do a regular sheet cake with a spade piped on the top of it, or if we wanted the whole thing shaped like a spade. Well, my preference is to do exciting cakes. I get bored easily with plain ole' squares and rectangles. So that made the decision. It took A LOT of black icing to cover this cake. And I'm sure they had a lot of black mouths at their party!





Cowgirl Birthday

My great friend, Amy Hunt (we coached cheerleading together - nothing bonds you like dealing with cheerleaders!!) wanted to throw her precious little girl a cowgirl birthday. We looked at different pictures for weeks and I finally just took little details from about 4 different pictures and put them all together to make this cake. Once again I used fondant, but I was still too scared to cover an entire cake with it. I just used it for the details. I really wish I had this cake to do over again because it would have turned out so cute if I would have used fondant to cover the entire cake.



The top layer was Addison's smash cake. I really liked how the bandana turned out.

Christmas Bear

For this cake I used my bear pan but made him look like Santa. This was for a Christmas Party.



Sunday, May 23, 2010

35th Wedding Anniversary Cake

This cake was for my wonderful in-law's 35th wedding anniversary. This was the first time that I made my very own marshmallow fondant. I didn't really know what I was doing, but I finally got brave enough to try, especially since it was for family! It doesn't look great, but I was encouraged enough to keep trying with fondant! And I realized that marshmallow fondant actually tastes good!


Oh, Fancy Nancy

Some great friends of ours asked me to do a Fancy Nancy cake for her daughter's birthday. I had never heard of Fancy Nancy before so I had to do some Goggling! This turned out being a collaboration of a few different Fancy Nancy cakes that I found. This was, by far, the largest cake that I had done! It turned out so cute!


Stroller Cake

Once again I was searching for something different to do for a baby shower. I found this cute stroller cake on Karen's Facebook pictures and copied it. This was one of the easiest cakes that I've done but I probably have gotten more compliments on it than almost any of the others!


Halloween Cakes

I signed up to do the Halloween Cake for Taelyn's daycare party. After searching pictures on the internet this is what I came up with.

The inside of this cake I tinted purple and green and swirled it. So when you cut into him it was purple and green inside. So cute!

My sister-in-law was having a Halloween party as well, so I did the same thing for her party.


Bora Bora!!

One of Scott's best friends needed a cake for their wedding reception and they wanted Bora Bora since they were honeymooning there. This was an interesting cake to do! That mountain took some time!


Football Birthday

A friend of mine from high school said she needed a "small" football cake for her little boy for his birthday. Well, sometimes I get out of hand with my cakes. This one ended up being HUGE for what started out being a small cake!