guitar hero

my first guitar cake made of buttercream. so many issues but that is what makes me better fixing the issues. the strings are spaghetti noodles sprayed with silver luster dust. the accents are all fondant.

get your drink on!

an order was placed for a 1/4 sheet cake for a grandmother who's nickname is burgundy. why you ask? it's because she likes her red wine. my kind of grandmother! they wanted martini glasses. so here is the design i borrowed. they say imitation is the best form of flattery!

pardon my reach...but that's my name

this was a request from my girlfriend for her parents anniversary. she wanted the print of her father's tartan (the pattern on a kilt) to be the fondant drape on the cake. WHAT!!! i thought how am i going to do that?? fondant dries so fast and i need time to put the lines in and then fold the fondant without it cracking....enter fondarific! you may have hear the name on ace of cakes. this fondant doesn't dry as fast which was a huge help! looking back i would have made some changes with the lines but i liked how it came out. they loved the cake...which is all i really wanted.

here is her father's kilt.

here is the cake.

beachy bridal shower

i know. i know. i have been away for a very long time. but i am back!!! woohoo! so this is what you have missed.

here is the cake that i made for one of my closest friend for her bridal shower. she likes the beach so her than to be sister in law created the design of the cake. buttercream, sand, shells and coral. okay it isn't exactly what she designed...i kinda took some liberties with her design and simplified it. what? i was busy that week. i need my beauty sleep people. anyhoo. here are the pics. the shells and the coral are made with fondant. the sand is brown sugar.

hello...kitty

so my friend dee loves hello kitty. yes there are some of us that have that deep lust for all things hello kitty. since she graduated and it was her birthday i figured it was the best time to grant her wish. to have hello kitty's head on a plate. :) again i had bubble issues with the fondant but it was my first time fondanting anything that wasn't round or square. i have to pat myself on the back for doing a good job. :) not the best but good. doesn't she look cute!!

986 cupcakes on the wall....

this was cupcake hell week. 986 cupcakes...all for me to decorate. unfortunately, i forgot to take pictures of the wedding ones. but i got pics of the graduation ones. the lady who ordered them wanted 1/2 the cupcakes to read '09. let me tell you the ' was a hard thing to place. i like them though. but the red was a bugger to make. i had to cut out 268 which was the class number for a high school in red. but it wasn't red enough so i painted them with red food coloring hoping to make them redder. it didn't make them look so hot. the gold '09 though...HOT! love gold luster spray!

in midst of cupcake hell week i was asked to make a dead head design for an ice cream cake. i think it looks great. the paint could have been better but i tried my best!

the trouble with fondant is...

so debbie called and asked for a tennis cake. i thought cool, tennis court with rackets and tennis balls and a net. so i put it together and it looked off...i wasn't completely happy with it. but i figured it was fine so i sprayed a pearl sheen and was ready to box.

i turn around and i realized...oh crap there is a net that i totally forgot about. that means i need to change the cake since the "l" was on the net line. but i already sprayed the pearl sheen. so i move some of the letters insert the net and spray the pearl sheen again. you can kind of see where the letters once were but the cake looked much better.

this wedding cake was for a couple that had a small wedding. because of the number of people they had to pay the minimum amount for a wedding cake. so i advised them to go all out and get fondant. they wanted to use a flower off their invitation. the color fondant was the color of their napkins. now i usually do buttercream cakes. i rarely get an opportunity to fondant cakes. it was a pain but it looks okay...thanks to the ribbon. the fondant traps air bubbles...i need to learn how to get rid of the bubbles that the cake produces so that i can have a perfect fondant cake. :) i think the cake kind of looks wintery to me. the flowers look like snowflakes.

this cakes was from a picture of a bridal magazine. the bride and groom wanted a small wedding cake to cut. fondant again...those air bubbles kill! but i think this cake looks awesome. i tried white chocolate fondant that says you roll it thin...it didn't work for me. but then again i am a novice. i think after more practice i will be ready for the white chocolate fondant.

toba garrett's cake class

so i found a place that did cake classes near me...when i say near it is in MA and i am in PA.  it was a 5-6 hr drive.  i wanted to added to my decorating repertoire.   i never really learned how to make gum paste flowers and i liked her bride's dress cake.  so i signed up and this is what i learned.  

i could have done better but hey it was my first time and practice makes perfect.  the flower would have worked better if it was gumpaste but i ran out and had to use fondant.  oh well. 
i think my lily came out awesome.  the only thing is they are so breakable.  it chipped on the ride home.  :(
this is my fixed orchid.  the petal in the middle cracked, so i took it apart to fix it.  i should have read the paper to tell me what color to make it but pink is cool.  :)

16, race cars and cupcakes

this week was about sweet sixteens, fast cars and pretty cupcakes.

the sweet 16 cake order was straight to the point. in the shape of the number 16, add flowers, and only use silver and fuchsia. well i got most of it right. i thought the pearl spray would be give it a silver sheen on the white flowers but i was wrong. you live and you learn but i think the cake looked great with the pearly flowers.

then i had a race car cake. that was an interesting ride. the catering company was suppose to send the pictures but they had computer issues so i didn't get the picture until the day before the car was due. i thought it was a nascar car but it turned out to a specific car. here is his birthday cake. too bad i messed up on the flag...it isn't a perfect parallelogram.

there was also an order of wedding cupcakes. they liked the fondant design i made during their tasting. here is what i did for them. i think they look pretty. :)

colorful birthday cake

so debbie called to place an order for a birthday cake.  all she said is that she wanted it to be brightly colored.  did i mention i hate when she does that.  at least put me in a direction of what to design.  it was for a 50th birthday, i think but for a woman.  so i looked for some ideas on the internet.  it just so happens i went to charm city's website and saw a stacked flower cake.  this is my take on charm city's flower cake.  their's is better but mine did the trick with debbie.  she loved the cake.  :)  whatever takes to make the customer happy.  

crinkle ribbon cake

the bride wanted a crinkle ribbon and a second ribbon in purple.  i crinkled the ribbon using a skewer.  the purple ribbon, i used an extruder the circle one and then flattened it.  i think the green is a little too dark.  i need to work on coloring but i think it turned out well. 

color and lines cakes

cake number 1, the meeting with the bride and groom was very interesting. from the beginning of the meeting both the bride and the groom stated they weren't cake people. oh good, this meeting should be easy, right?? wrong. they didn't like any of the cakes i brought for the tasting.  well when i mean they it was really the bride. it took her a while to state what she really wanted was red velvet cake.  it would have been nice to know that before the meeting but i digress.  so i said we could do that but she was hesitant.  so i said i would be happy to bring a sample to her.  unfortunately they wouldn't be able to make it in to the city so the bride suggested that the aunt at the tasting should taste it. the aunt who was already  that is when the groom stepped in.  stating that it would only cause more problems.  they already stated they weren't cake people.  what happens if the aunt doesn't like the cake??  then what?  i like this groom.  hehehe.  so the bride agrees and just goes with red velvet.  as the meeting is closing up she is asking the planner what the cost would be to use an outside vendor for the cake.  ouch....my feelings are hurt.  really, you couldn't wait until i left to say this??  but then again, i don't want money from an unhappy customer.  but in the end she choose to go with us.  she wanted a light gray buttercream cake with a dark gray fondant ribbon and white dots, she sent a picture.  dealing with colored buttercream is like a pulling teeth, you can only do it once so you better do it right the first time.  otherwise you will have streaking and streaking sucks because you can't fix it.  the fondant color on the ribbon was more of a charcoal then a dark gray but in the light is looks right on with the picture.   

cake number 2, this cake helped me build nice forearm muscles.  the picture looked like it was piped lines.  so i tried piping on the anniversary cake.  if you ever want to test something on a cake always do it on an anniversary cake.  i realized i need to work on my piping.  no matter what i did, piping was not the way to go.  so i thought fondant would be the answer and it was.  i remember i had an extruder so put the fondant through the extruder to created the lines.  of course i had to mix the fondant with shortening otherwise it would have got stuck in the extruder. that took some time.  it was like using those hand grippers, i managed to build some forearm muscle while using the extruder, a plus.  :)  i don't think you can really tell it is fondant.  

orchid wedding cake

so i ordered sugar flowers for this cake.  the bride chose it from the pictures, trying to keep costs down by ordering instead of making them.  the cake was for a friend of a friend.  i didn't bother to look at them until the week of the wedding cake and notice there was a big color difference.  it was less purple than the picture.  so i thought maybe dusting them would fix it.  that didn't work.  i thought all was lost until i remembered an ace of cakes episode where they were painting a design on a cake.  so i tried it with the flowers.  it worked.  i made it more purple.  as you will see below.

the the hardest thing about this cake was matching the fondant ribbon against the colors she gave me.  in the end, i looked like i killed something pink and purple with my bare hands.  the delivering the cake wasn't all that fun either.  not only did i have to drive like an old lady for an hour but i had to deliver it to the restaurant that is in competition with my family's.  i noticed that restaurant has this weird smelly old moldy scent that hits you as soon as walk into the door.  and the people there weren't really helpful when i got there either. the owner just told me to put the cake there.  there was through a maze of tables, across the dance floor to the stage.  that was until the wife came up and said why don't you drive around to that door which is next to the stage and bring in the cake that way.  wow, that was nice of her.  so i did just that, did she send someone to open the door for me...of course not.  so i had to walk back and open the door myself.  and the whole time i was thinking...really, people like this restaurant more than my family's?  so this is what the cake looked like.

cupcake tasting

here are some of the cupcakes i decorated for a cupcake tasting.  this is the first time i used more fondant than buttercream.  some of them are lumpy because i thought i would be able to stamp designs on the fondant once it was on the cupcake.  i was wrong.  trial and error, people.  i was always in awe at some of the cupcake i have seen on flickr.  these are my take on some of the cupcakes that inspired me.  

playbill cake

so we have an event planner who orders cake from time to time.  we will call her debbie because she cause me to be down after she calls.  she never gives us any details except what it is for (birthday, anniversary, etc), and that gives her the ability to call back and saying that isn't what she wanted.  so she called and ordered a playbill cake for a bat mitzvah (side note:bat is for girl and bar is for boy). so i did some research and realized that i need more info.  i had my boss call her for some more information like what theatre i should put, what colors to use.  she called back with the wording and left the colors up to me.  i hate when she does that.  so this is what i came up with. turns out she loved the cake.  who would have thought it was possible. 

first wedding show

i was asked by my boss to create a display cake for a wedding show. i got a little nervous because it was my first wedding show. i wanted the cake to be memorable. so with the help of some friends i was able to narrow it down to this cake. i saw the original cake on flickr but this is my version of this cake. i was worried it would be too whimsical but i think it made us stand out. i had a topper but my boss forgot to bring it. oh well, you just have to go with it. at the end of the night one of the planners said we should enter the let them eat cake event in philadelphia. now that it something to think about...my first competition....