Whooooo's Turning One?!

Bad joke, I know. But I did a couple of very cute first birthday cakes for this weekend! And one of them had an owl theme. It is soooo cute! Sweet Blaise's mom is a graphic designer and made the cutest invitation for his first birthday party. I designed the main cake to match the owl on his invitation. The main cake was milk chocolate fudge covered in buttercream icing. I have attached the invite and the cake below. Let me know what you think!

This was the outfit that Blaise had to wear at his party. I designed his smash cake to match the bib. The smash cake was french vanilla covered in buttercream.

This was another first birthday cake and smash cake that I did this weekend. Both of these cakes were designed to match plates that were being used at the party. Both cakes were french vanilla covered in buttercream. Below are pictures of the plate and the cakes.

Stroller Cake

This has been a popular choice this summer! This stroller cake was dark chocolate fudge with buttercream icing. I used the colors and a little of the design from the invitation (posted below).

I LOVE this cake!!!

I made one of my most favorite cakes ever this week!!! Two of our very best friends, James and Mary Margaret, are missionaries in Zambia, Africa. They have been home for about 7 months, but are heading back to Africa in the next few weeks for another 3 years. These two show more faith than I can wrap my mind around! Mary Margaret has had both of her precious children in Africa and they are faithfully raising them in their home there. Me... I would be a wreck if I couldn't call my pediatrician every other day when I feel like something is not quite right with Taelyn! Anyway, Mary Margaret had a birthday recently, so while all of our best friends were together yesterday I wanted to celebrate her birthday. MM and I share a deep appreciation for the Twilight books, so I immediately knew what kind of cake I wanted to make for her. I have seen some Twilight cakes on the internet so I have been wanting to do one of these for awhile now and her birthday was the perfect excuse to make one!

I wanted to make it look like a book, but wanted a representation of all four covers. And, of course, the inside of the cake had to be red velvet! I love the way this cake turned out and I think MM loved it too! She was really excited!

I put both of these pictures up because I wanted you to be able to see the "pages." Let me know your thoughts of this cake!! 

If you'd like to keep up with what is going on in the world of James and MM once they are back in Africa, I have their blog in my favorites list to the left. 

Cake Catastrophe

I've heard about it. I know it happens to others, but it had never happened to me. Until now! I was completely finished with a cake - had taken finished photos and everything - and I had a cake catastrophe. It all happened very quickly, so quickly that I can't really remember vivid details, but it involved a fondant rolling pin in my hands and a dog under my feet. And the fondant rolling pin piercing the bottom half of the cake. Sigh. Oh, and some tears. And a lot of freaking out.

This is the bachelorette/lingerie party cake that I mentioned in a previous post. Like I said, we had decided to do a Victoria's Secret bag. And like I mentioned previously, this was my fourth cake of the week and I had a lot of packing and cleaning to do before I left on an 8 day vacation the next day. So once I ruined the cake, I knew that I wasn't going to be able to start from scratch because I just didn't have the time. Plus, Kacey, who was attending the lingerie shower and requested the cake, told me at the beginning of the week not to stress out over this cake. I felt like I could do something to salvage the cake and make it semi-cute without having to start all over again. So I chopped off the ruined bottom half and added some fondant "pieces" to the bottom of it. I was hoping to pass it off as tissue paper, but in all honesty it looked very ridiculous. Kacey assured me that it was fine and still looked cute, but I know that she was just being nice. Here are before and after pictures.

Before

After

Then the cake had to travel 6 hours to Destin. It made it in one piece, luckily. Kacey said everyone at the party loved it. Sigh. 

Busy Week!!!

It has been an incredibly busy week for me! But as I am writing this we are in a wonderful condo in Destin, Florida relaxing so I am starting to come down from the whirlwind of it all! I'll tell you briefly about my week (because I know that you don't really care), and then I'll get to the cakes I made this week!

Okay, so in my busy week I made a record number of cakes for one week - four! I've never made this many cakes in such a short time before, but at the very beginning of the week I took some time getting organized and figuring out exactly what needed to be made when. That helped me keep my sanity through it all! So, not only did I make four cakes this week, but I also managed to fit in a pre-beach mani/pedi (thanks to my sweet husband for the mother's day gift certificate to Trio!), I went to see Eclipse (all by myself at 10:15am on Thursday - I already know I'm lame so you don't have to say it!), I packed for an 8 day trip for Taelyn and me (started with this on Thursday night after my last cake was finished and we left today, Friday, at noon. I only packed for Taelyn and me because I let Scott pack for himself - I'm nice like that), and I also managed to clean my house from top to bottom before we left today because let's face it, there isn't much worse than coming home from a long vacation to a messy house. As much as I hated to do it, now when we get home we will have clean sheets, clean floors, laundry is all done and put away (other than the massive loads that we brought with us), and everything is dusted - okay never mind on that one - there will be dust waiting for me on every surface despite the fact that I dusted every inch of the house today, but the others still apply. So... that was a synopsis of my week. Now on to the cakes!

I already posted the first cake that I did this week - the brown and blue paisley stroller cake. I did another stroller cake in addition to that one. It was brown and aqua harlequin pattern, which is how the baby's room is decorated. Nothing gives you a hand workout like piping harlequin pattern, but I think this cake turned out cute. It was dark chocolate fudge with buttercream icing. I realize that in the picture it looks aqua and black, but trust me - it is just a dark brown. The coloring is a result of me taking cake pictures with the camera on my cell phone. Which is a result of me finishing most cakes late at night and being too lazy to get out our good camera.  I hope you like the cake!

The next cake that I did this week was a horse cake for sweet Reagan's birthday party! She wanted a cake that looked like a horse, so that is what she got! I really enjoyed this cake because it was a challenge for me. I love doing cakes that I haven't ever done before! The cake is french vanilla with white chocolate chips covered in buttercream with marshmallow fondant accents. 

The fourth cake that I did this week deserves a post of its own, as I am still recovering from it! I will try to get it up in the next few days. I'll just tell you that it was for a lingerie/bachelorette party. Have you ever googled "bachelorette cakes?" The results aren't pretty! We finally came up with the idea to do a cake shaped like a Victoria's Secret box/bag. The one idea that didn't make me blush with just the thought of cutting a cake shaped like it! Pictures to follow!

Stroller Cake

It is a busy cake week for me!!! I have 4 cakes in all this week and 2 of them are stroller cakes. This is the first of the stroller cakes. I will post pictures of the other cakes as I get them finished.

5th Wedding Anniversary

This weekend I made an anniversary cake for Scott's sweet aunt, Mamie. She and her husband, Randy, have been married for 5 years this week, so we had a little celebration for them. I wanted to do an all white (or pearl) cake for her. I decided to do the inside red-velvet and cover it with marshmallow fondant, which I dusted with a shimmer dust. It was a nice combination - they tasted great together. I made a white chocolate "B" for the topper (their last name begins with a "B"). Happy Anniversary, Mamie and Randy!

On a different note, I used my beautiful, new stand mixer for this cake and it was amazing how simple it made everything! That thing made fondant like it was no big deal! Everything was so easy to do and it really cut down on the amount of time it took me to actually make the cake and icing. What a great purchase that was!!! Just in case you are interested... I have narrowed the name choices down to Scarlett (suggested by Kelsey) and Esmerelda (suggested by Mary Margaret). I think that I need to get to know her a little better before I decide on one, but I am leaning towards Esmerelda. Then I can call her Esme when I am particularly fond of her, and any of your Twilight fans out there will appreciate that reference!!

New Toy

A new toy was delivered to my house today! I am so excited about this new toy because it is going to make my cakes so much easier! Up until this point, I have always used a hand mixer to make all of my cakes and icings. At the suggestion of my sweet, thoughtful husband I decided to use some of my cake money to buy a stand mixer. I got an empire red kitchen-aid artisan series stand mixer, and I cannot wait to see this thing in action. As soon as Taelyn goes to bed tonight I am going to make a batch of fondant to try her out. May as well start her out with something heavy-duty and see how she handles it!

Now for the important details. She needs a name. A highly suitable name that says just what a strong, yet beautiful woman (er, mixer), she really is. I take this seriously!! Please comment to leave your name suggestions!!

And... if anyone is interested - the beautiful silhouette lady carrying the massive cake in the header of my blog - her name is Charlotte. A lot of thought went into this. I think it fits her... do you?

Plain Ole' Chocolate Cake

My Sunday school class had a baby shower this weekend for two very sweet girls and, as the title implies, I decided for this one to make a plain ole' chocolate cake. Part of the decision stems from a very busy week and not much time left for cake making - VBS every morning with some adorable 2 year olds, a night of eating and painting with Theresa Friday night and the fabulous opening ceremony of the USA International Ballet  Competition on Saturday night. Yes, my husband was wonderful enough to watch Taelyn for these weekend events! He's a keeper!!!

That being said, chocolate cake it was. And I took the opportunity to try out some new recipes. I tried a new buttercream recipe, which I liked, but not as much as my regular. Because of this, I ended up embellishing the plain buttercream for the cake filling and turned it into white chocolate, chocolate chip buttercream.

The outside of the cake I covered with a chocolate ganache mix. Then I topped it all off with broken pieces of chocolate. It was very rich... great for the chocolate lover, which I'm not! Here are some terrible pictures. I forgot to take pictures before we cut it, so these were taken with my phone after the shower was over.

Welcome, Baby Lucy!

My best friend in this world, Haylie Mulliniks, is having a baby girl next month, and I think I am almost as excited as when I had Taelyn! Sweet Lucy Caroline is truly a blessing from God and maybe one day I'll get around to posting Haylie's amazing story! This past weekend we all loaded up and headed to Olive Branch for a shower for Haylie, Nick and Lucy. I made the cake for the shower and this was an interesting task, for one, because I had to make it in Haylie's kitchen instead of my own kitchen with all of my "cake supplies" on hand!

Secondly, this was an "interesting" task because my friend, Haylie, is "particular" - not to be confused with "difficult," because I would never call her difficult (at least not on my blog that she reads!!!). You see, Haylie is in that small percentage of people that does not really like cake. Even at her wedding she nibbled at the cake and didn't touch any of the icing. She also won't hardly touch a hamburger, and she orders BLT's without the L's and the T's (She is going to disagree with this, but it's true!). So I called her before the shower and asked what it would take for her to actually eat some of the cake that was being made for her shower. She said that she likes cream cheese icing as long as it is not too sweet. So that was my task for this shower, not-too-sweet-cream-cheese icing that you can use to decorate a cake with.

The cake turned out delicious and everyone loved the not-too-sweet-cream cheese icing (especially Haylie), but it was a huge mess as far as decorating goes. The icing was sticky and wouldn't get smooth, and the fondant accents were soaking in moisture from the icing, leaving the cake looking wet (Haylie said it looked "glazed!"). I kept shooting Haylie looks every time someone would comment on how "great" the cake looked. I did like the chocolate plaque that I used as a topper though. I copied the exact stroller from the invitation and it turned out cute!

After the shower I told Haylie that was the last time that I tried to cater to her tastes! Of course I am completely kidding - I'll make her a plain bacon sandwich anytime she wants one!! And the next time we are throwing some sort of party for Haylie, she will get her very own miniature cake with not-too-sweet-cream cheese icing and everyone else will get a beautifully decorated buttercream covered cake!

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!