Rock & Roll Werewolf

The cake that ROCKED Dawson's 6th birthday party. My kids are direct - "Mom none of that fondant and I don't care what you put on it as long as I like it."..........which leads a mom to wonder - how do I know what you want as a decoration if you don't tell me. So all I had to go on was that he wanted a Rock N Roll Werewolf Party.
The main game we were going to play was Pin the Guitar on the Rocking Werewolf.........so I just copied the picture of the werewolf I made up to be on the cake. Tah Dah.

As you can see the kids were WAY impressed (hehehehe)....at least Dawson was into it.
But once you put a blindfold on the kids the fun began and everyone was excited to give it a try. Some were obviously not as good at finding the wall as others.
The Rockin' Gluten Free Vegan Chocolate cupcakes to make sure our food allergy friend had something yummy to eat.
and the Birthday Boy and his Cake...........where is the excitement man?

Meow - Fushia Kitty Print

Here is another cake that is from last year - or at least January - which kinda seems like last year at this point. Having raised a daughter that has made a personal pact NEVER to like pink (although I think at 11 she may be changing a smidge)........when this person asked me to do a leopard cake and then said in Fushia my head went into a clicking mode. Leopard print I could totally envision - and I thought SUPER COOL - but when I had to switch gears and envision the print in a shade of pink.......all those years of thinking "No Can't Get Her Anything With Pink" "No Pink" "Shun Pink" came crashing in and it was almost like my brain could not even fathom pink.
Even the beginning process of painting the print in pink was overwhelming, but that may be because the first step was to paint a bunch of pink blotches/circles/odd shapes all over the white fondant - and those shapes were VERY bright without the black outline. VERY PINK.

But I trudged on and eventualy had the whole cake finished. Made some fushia balls to place around the edge and called it done.

Then my Anti-Pink daughter came into the room and said, "Wow that looks really cool!" I mentioned the pink being not her color and she said, "It isn't my cake, but you did a really good job!" Yea - even an Anti-Pink person thought the cake was nice - which was good to hear because my retina's were burning from pink shock and I couldn't tell if it was nice.

Sports Theme Baby Shower Cake

Here is a fun little easy buttercream iced cake that was set for a baby shower party at our elementary school for one of our teaching assistants. Not too long back I was asked by my sister in law to do something in a sports theme for her sister for a baby shower and I started searching Sports Theme'd Baby Showers. A cake popped up that had a border of various balls used for sports and I filed that away in my head.

Then when my friend, Tim, husband of Catherine, asked me if I would make the cake for the teacher and that it was going to be a baby boy and they would do sports.........I already had my idea.

I took some fondant and shaped some easy baseballs, footballs and golf balls. You can't see it, but the golf balls have a texture to them. Supposedly making them more golf ball like.

Then I drew a bunch of green and blue lines - AS YOU CAN CLEARLY SEE. Cute & Easy!!

This cake was half Chocolate and half Butter. Iced in a Vanilla buttercream and just a touch of vanilla fondant for deco.

It's Almost Easter.....

It's almost Easter and no matter what your beliefs are it seems that Bunnies & Eggs are always part of the day. You are bound to see them.

Each month the church we attend serves a meal at Jesus House Coffee Shop. Jesus House is a Missionary church run by the two Christians who lead the services and organize the coffee shop. A place where people gather to have a church service, some to be inside, others to have a meal - or all three. This month my friend Pennie and I thought it would be nice to make some treat bags for the kids who come in for the service and meal.

While Pennie bought ALL THE CANDY TARGET HAD......I made these cookies. Then we bagged 'em and donated them for the meal.

These were Shortbread cookies with Vanilla Royal Icing. Yummy.

Happy Easter!!

Chilly Birthday

This is another birthday treat that made it onto Facebook, but never made it to the lime light here on the blog.......oops. This is an example of the Gum Paste. Can you tell any difference? Gum Paste vs Fondant doesn't really look much different when finished. However, the gum paste dries much quicker. Well fondant dries quickly too........let me explain better. When I am using fondant to make figures it tends to stay soft longer when I am doing the actual moulding. So it is hard to get a specific shape - most frustrating a ROUND shape. Because one side will want to start to rest and become the kinda flat side. Which isn't a big problem for something like a cake because you want it to have a somewhat flatter side so that it won't roll off the cake or require so much icing to make it stay in place that it shows a lot. Gum paste will set up (dry) a little faster. So the resting doesn't cause the figure to fall out of the shape I want. Does that make sense?

Also - gum paste is a little more forgiving then fondant when it comes to creating figures. If I mess up a figure with either modeling medium I have to wad it up and start over. Sugar dries - as we mentioned before - and it is useful sometimes to have powder (in the form of powdered sugar or corn starch) on the mat I am creating on so that the figures don't stick - if they do stick then I have to tug on them to pick them up and they easily stretch out of shape (imagine playdoh). After wading up a piece of fondant that has been touching a powder you are also adding in the powder that is attached - thus causing the fondant to dry out a bit more. You can counter this by adding a little smidge of shortening or butter (very little), but still you are altering the original texture.

Gum paste doesn't seem to stick to the mat as much - so I can create more without using a powder substance to keep it from sticking. Thus when I mess a form up..........and let's just say that happens with every new thing I create....because the cake pops have now proven I am not perfect every time. With the gum paste I can wad it up - use it - wad it - use it. Not forever of course - but for a little longer then the fondant.

One additional pro for gumpaste over fondant for making figures - you can roll it out MUCH thinner!! Fondant will tend to tear if you roll it out too thin - or crack - or break after it has dried a bit and you try to move it. Gum paste has more elasticity to it. This stretchability (my word - yes you can copy it) helps when you are making roses, flowers, or other things that you mess with to give edges shape. Gum paste also costs a bit less to make - but oddly if you buy it at the store it costs more to buy. Weird huh?

Now in covering a cake - I would go fondant. It is softer in my opinion and easier to place over the cake. Tastes a bit more like icing. I know there are lots of folks who say.....ick fondant tastes awful. Well most likely the person who made your cake did it with store bought fondant. I am always amazed that people doing cakes don't just make their own fondant. Easy to make - and you can flavor it. I make 5lbs for half the cost you buy it at a store. Yes I know - convenience.......that is a whole other blog.

There are tons more Fondant vs Gumpaste issues in my head - but I can stumble into them later. Personally I was resistant to gumpaste - for no reason other then I was getting good at fondant and not wanting to add another trick to my bag. Now I am seeing that there are definite pro's and con's on both sides.

Penguin cupcakes were a hoot to make. And they were fun because it taught me I am getting better at moulding things. They went to one of our Boy Scout families. The Birthday Boy had recently done a project on penguins and he is currently in love with them. Fun!! Learning and Cakes combined with Birthday - LOVE IT!

These were Chocolate & White cake cupcakes with a Vanilla Buttercream icing.

Have you heard of Slinky Malinki?

Have you heard of the book series Slinky Malinki? I hadn't. When I first got the call about doing a Slinky Malinki cake I thought the graphics would be cartoony and I could copy them like a Winnie The Pooh or Diary of a Whimpy Kid. So while we were talking I looked it up on the computer and found this picture. Sure I could copy the cat in fondant..........probably close......with effort..........but the rest of the graphics I would be lost on - well not lost, but it would be a challenge the first time out and a lot of small pieces - but still not impossible. And I agreed.

Then I thought about it for a week. I looked up Painting on Fondant - thinking maybe painting this would be easier then creating each small piece and putting it in place. Sure.......PAINTING it would be a great idea. Quicker. Cool looking.

So I baked the cake - cooled the cake - iced the cake - covered the top of the cake in white fondant and then covered the sides in a lavender grey color to try to match the cloud coloring of the book cover. Then I looked at the cake and thought...........whose idea was painting this??

Oh, that is right it was MY idea to paint this. Quicker. Cool looking. Only now that I was doing it I had to add Intimidating......Impossible......Incredibly Silly........Needs to be done in 2 hours.

My husband is a sweet man. He saw the dilemma. Me standing in the kitchen next to the cake with my icing tints out - my paint mixing palette tray out (I made that name up - what are those paint palette things called anyway? I just bought it, but didn't look at the name) - paint brushes sitting - kids jumping and yelling about - not a serene setting for painting on fondant - well painting on anything really. I asked him if he could do something with the boys so I could do the painting. He not only did something - he loaded them up and took them away to do some grocery shopping!

For awhile I just stood there enjoying the quiet. Then I realized I was just pretending to enjoy the quiet because I was too afraid to actually put any paint on the fondant - once I did that I was committed and any other medium to finish this was gone. So I dipped my brush in the brown tint/water mixture and started on the clouds - sure that was easy - clouds.....so then I did some fencing.......

By the time the boys got home I was amazed with myself. The clouds, the fence, the plants, Slinki himself (or is Slinki a girl?), I was working on the glove and getting ready to do the wording. 1 hour had passed. AND they brought me a latte!!

I was very excited about how this turned out!! I knew I could paint - shoot Way Back Before Kids I used to paint things. Every once in awhile now I get to paint walls - and not just flat wall paint, but murally stuff - still it isn't painting a cover of a book on fondant - much less scary painting a wall.

The kids and Dave gave me the "Great Job" "That is Amazing" feedback. So I felt good boxing it up. My friend, Catherine, came with me on delivery - she was also a friend of Stacey, the person receiving the cake. Neither of them had seen the cake - so when we got to Stacey's house and opened the box up their "Oh my gosh" response was TOTALLY COOL!! Stacey ran to get the actual book to show Catherine just how close I had gotten.........That is the kinda excitement that makes me want to do another cake!! Thank You Ladies........


This cake was half Chocolate Chocolate Chip and half White. Topped with Vanilla Buttercream icing and then covered in Vanilla Fondant.

Underwater Musical First Birthday

This is my first cake for a total stranger. Sure they know a friend of mine, but basically they were going on Barbara's suggestion that I could make a nice cake for them. The mom said it was a First Birthday for her daughter and they were having it at KinderMusik and she wanted an Underwater theme with musical notes. Hmm.....

So I googled it. And found that there were a TON of Underwater theme'd cakes, but none with musical notes - so we decided to go with Underwater and add musical notes - easy enough.
















Oh - and there were 2 cakes needed. One for tearing apart by the little one and one for eating. My thought was a 1 year old might have trouble ripping apart a fondant cake - but at the same time giving a 1 year old a cake iced in blue buttercream might stain what was likely a really cute birthday outfit. Being a non-messy mom I thought fondant was the lesser of the two evils.
















After laying the fondant I popped on some underwater friends. All of them were made from fondant and set to dry for a day before placing on the cake. Octopus.....fish......

















Walrus, some sea coral, anemones, bubbles - do these look like bubbles? Maybe more like pearls?

















Oh and there are some of the musical notes - and the things that look like clouds when up close looked more like waves when further away. And in the back there is a stingray - he was my personal favorite.

















Some shark fins along the sides with a few more musical notes and a sea plant or two. And down on the table you can see my handy dandy edible marker - LOVE those things!!

















Then there was the babies cake - it was very cute - much smaller so it couldn't hold as many sea creatures.
















Although I failed to take a picture of it - I also made a one dimensional sign that said ONE in letters - different colors with bubbles and fish on it. I was hoping to receive a pic of it placed on the cake - it went in the space right behind the Octopus and next to the Stingray.

Sadly when I delivered the mom wasn't there - only my friend was there setting up for the party - although I was happy to see her. My understanding is that the cakes were a hit and the mom loved them - she emailed me later.

These cakes were White Cake with a Vanilla Buttercream icing and Vanilla Fondant cover with fondant figures.

Magic Hat Cake

This cake was done the same day that I did the Electric Guitar cake AND we were throwing a birthday party for Dawson.............and I might have also been dealing with a sinus infection.........so I am not surprised I forgot that I took any pictures of this cake!! Yet today I ran across them. And I have to say that even though I felt I wasn't giving it my 100% on this due to focus problems - it was really cute.



I completely didn't take any "construction" photos until the end - and there were a few flaws on this - although the Bunny was so darn cute I don't think people realized that my Top Hat has NO BRIM!! In original measurements the brim of the hat would sit over 1" of the 8" round cake. Then after adding about 1/2" of icing on either side of the hat the brim disappeared - POOF!! - Like Magic!! Ironic right?

Now I have learned a thing - or twelve - about fondant through the past few months - and I learned that you do not wait until the last minute to make figures that hold weight in them. Like the Bunny - and even like the Daisy. I did all the figures about 4 days prior to the event - and honestly - the head could have used a few more days. Cheeks - Bunny Feet - Nose - all that was good, but the main portion of the head was dry enough that it didn't morph shape when you touched it - however, the center was not dry enough that when I tucked the ears in the weight of the ears pressed the inside dough around a bit.

So we waited until right before the party to pop the ears on. The Magician Scarf was done the day of - just draped some red fondant over the edge to look like a scarf. I believe that it was the scarf and the Daisy that throw the eyes off from noticing there is no brim. The base of the cake was done just super plain so that all the attention goes to the Top Hat.

Once the ears were on the Bunny it was perfect. You might notice that one ear has a bend - that was intentional and dried to do that. The ears still probably could have used another day themselves to dry too though. But they were super sturdy.

The kids LOVED the cake!! And the adults wanted to know what I made the hat out of and seemed genuinely tickled that the hat was also cake and everything was edible........and yes - the Birthday Boy got a Bunny Ear!

This cake was 2 flavors - the Top Hat was Chocolate Chocolate Chip with Vanilla Buttercream (2 layers) - the base cake was Pumpkin Spice cake with Vanilla Buttercream icing. Vanilla Fondant was used for decorating.

Hoo Hoo..........Owl Cake

Do owls really say Hoot? Because sometimes it sounds more like Who..........to me. And more recently it sounded like a piercing scream that would be more like a woman being murdered in the woods...........but I understand that was the sound of a Screech Owl - perhaps a Normal Owl does say simply "Hoot".........when he wants a Tootsie Roll Sucker I guess.

This particular owl was a copy off of something I saw on the Internet again. It was a flicker post otherwise I would link to the website/blog it came from. Usually when you find something this cute you also find other cookies really cute too.

So this cake was also for the Craft Show Bakery - and it went home with a nice family too. A good friend of mine who said it was yummy.

The cake was Carrot Cake with a Cream Cheese icing and a Vanilla Fondant.........the owl being brown makes you think Chocolate though doesn't it?

Copying Is Fantastically Fun

I LOVE LOVE LOVE it when someone gives me something and says "Can you do this?" Sure there is a lot to be said for just CREATING whatever I want, but when I am doing it for another group of people it is much less anxiety ridden when I can just bang out what they want. And Copying something is my total specialty. This cake was one of Those.

This summer the kids were in a play at the local community theatre. Fantastic Mr. Fox. This is the billboard poster. So so simple. So so easy to copy.


First I copied it in making Thank You cards from the cast to the crew/staff of the show. A tad time consuming cutting out all those trees, but easily done. In fact, doing the cards made my brain very familiar with the curves and design of the plays poster so it made the next task much easier...


Creating the cake that we took to the Cast and Crew Picnic. Mr. Fox was most easy of all the cake. Honestly he was also the most fun.


The only real challenge to this cake was that one of the younger actors had serious allergies. Nut allergies for certain, but there may have been other ones mixed in there too. Dairy and Wheat were not though. So the father asked me to be very careful in how I made the cake. I decided to look for a new chocolate scratch recipe. Give me an excuse to look for new things and I will these days.

I threw a lot of cake away that week. Too picky you think? I also sprayed down my entire kitchen with a mixture of bleach and water.......just to be safe.


Everyone enjoyed the cake tremendously. Yea!!! My favorite part of the whole thing though - overhearing Ben brag to those who stopped near the cake not knowing that I made it - he went on about how talented I am - made me swell up that I made him so proud!! Another really cool thing......everyone with a phone took a picture!! Never saw that happen with one of my cakes before.

Happy Birthday Tiger

"I want a Tiger who is sitting on green and blue." At first that meant (in my head) that he wanted a tiger who was sitting on Blue - you know, from Blue's Clues. And when I tried to help him envision that he giggled and showed me a crayon and we talked about colors. Again still I thought he meant TIGGER.......you know, from Winnie the Pooh. Again......nope, just a tiger.

So this is what we agreed to. He found a picture of a tiger that he liked and I copied it. He was so happy. Roared about it even. Always nice to make the customer happy.



This cake was half Chocolate Chocolate Chip and half Banana Spice. Buttercream was the flavor of icing.....easy to change colors like green and blue.

Baby's First Ribbit

Now this cake was about 3 years ago......in a few months it was 4 YEARS AGO!! Can you believe my BABY BOY is going to be 5 Years Old!! True - so sadly True. Yet at the same time it is so exciting to see him grow up each and every day.

The first year of his life he seemed to be quite a jumper. Sure he was a baby, sure he wasn't really "jumping", but his energy was the same as jumping all the time. Thus a frog seemed the perfect symbol. This was his little 6" baby cake - that he got to mash up and eat all on his own.


Then this cake was a half sheet of goodness. Half Banana cake and half Chocolate Chocolate Chip cake.....covered in Vanilla Buttercream. Yummy!!

And just in case anyone is a Stampin' Up! fan....yes this image is very similar to a stamp they make.

Swinging with Banana's

Monkeys are always fun! This cake was based on a Baby's Room Bed Set. The Mom To Be's sister asked me to match the set they were using for the baby. Easy enough. Wish I had a picture of the set so you could see how easy it was to copy.


The cake was Marble.........although come on now - everyone knows this cake should have been a BANANA cake!! This angle shows more specifically how the banana's were raised up off of the cake to give it a slight 3D effect.


The Monkey Baby is holding a slightly peeled banana. This is basically the beginning of the sculpting that I have learned to do with fondant. And the first time ever that I thought ........... "hmmmm....I can probably paint this with food coloring right? That is edible." Duh!!


So this was a lot of fun and a first to learning a few new things that I could use on future cakes. Again - it was a Marble cake - the icing is Vanilla Buttercream (another usual favorite).