Minion Cake!!

This is one of my ALL TIME FAVORITE cakes to have done. Not because it was hard and I felt like I accomplished anything, but more because I love love love Minions!! I love that they have goofey names like "Dave" and "Steve" and yet look so not like those names. Plus I like the movie they come from a ton too.

This cake is really a copy of something I found on line though. I can't take original creativity for myself. My friend, Bryan, asked kinda short distance from the date of need (which many of my friends do) and so I didn't want to waste much time trying to think of anything. I cheated and CASE'd this.

It was for his oldest, Lucy. Their family comes up with some of the funnest things to make. I am never disappointed by their ideas.

My own kiddo's said the hair sticking out of the top of the Minion's head was their favorite part. Mine too kinda - well I liked doing the over-all's and the one eye too - and the cake in front - okay I just really had a fun time making the whole dang thing.

Inside the Minion is Red Velvet Cake and non-dairy Cream Cheese Icing. I mean - Tofu Cream Cheese Icing really. What you are scrumpling up your eyes right now? Well don't!! It was delish - HONESTLY!! I even took a spoonful to my husband and our neighbor while they were working on our schools trivia questions - both had made a face when I told them what I was making. They both looked concerned as they began to eat the icing........then raised their eyebrows and admitted that it was really good! See the youngest in their family has a dairy allergy so Lucy was making sure that her little sis could eat the cake. Sweet right? Plus - Tofu Cream Cheese Icing barely tastes any different at all!!

Take Me Out To a Baseball Cake

This was a fun cake to make..............a few months ago. OHMYGOSH I have become so awful about posting cakes that my friend, Catherine, has chided me about keeping them updated.

Ah well - what can I say? I am a busy person with too many kids and an inability to say "No" to things. Eventually I will get cakes posted...........and honestly........I cheat on the blog with my Facebook blog page. It is kinda easy to post stuff up on that and I get a little lazy about doing it here too.

Regardless - this was a fun cake to make for my friend Angies son........

Littlest Pet Shop

I LOVED this cake!! A Girl Scout friend asked me to make this. Her daughter - who is a year older then my own - still loves Littlest Pet Shop - so she asked me if I could make her a cake with the horse on it. Fun!! And she didn't want any fondant. Easy!!

The result was of course this........I did add a few fondant flowers that I had from a previous cake to accent the sugary cuteness that is Littlest Pet Shop. Otherwise.......this is all Butta'cream baby!!

The real fun was delivering the cake to Kathy at the GS office. As I walked in with her cake her daughter (who is homeschooled) and hubby were standing there at her desk (Kathy works in the main entrance area of the office). Kathy about JUMPED OUT OF HER SKIN when she saw me. She was checking another customer out - but No One would have been the wiser to me with a cake box if she hadn't started hyperventilating and looking at me in a way that looked like she was trying very hard not to look at me. It was worth making the cake honestly. I simply walked in - asked if another friend was there and then walked into the back area and popped the cake into an office for her to collect later. It was a total hoot!!

50th Anniversary Pontoon Cake

Yes - this was made forever ago. I really had not paid much attention to how many cakes I let "float" by without posting. Then I was sorting and organizing them (because they are beginning to fill up our computer) and I am finding that there are a TON of cute cakes I never shared!@!

This one was for a neighbor. Her parents were celebrating their 50th Wedding Anniversary and she wanted to tell a fun story about them. They live in Florida a good part of the year and go out on their Pontoon boat a lot.

On one particular outing they ran over a crocodile. Well I am not sure you "run" over in a boat - do you? Or since it isn't a car to you "boat" over? You don't "car" into things - the boat is "running" as it has a motor so I guess it is still "run" over. Geez. Who knows. Now do you see why I sometimes do not get things on this blog - because my mind zig zags around and then I find myself doing something totally different.

Needless to say - Marci asked for a Pontoon boat, with her parents inside, running into a crocodile. I add a dock and some yellow rope to fill the cake space up a bit. She said the whole thing was a total hoot and everyone is still talking about it (see if you wait months and months to post something you can then add in things like "folks are still talking about it at family gatherings").

2 Brides and a Cake

This was a VERY FUN cake to make!! Interestingly the week that this cake was requested by my friend I had been gearing up to create a Bride & Groom in fondant, but I was being a bit lazy about it because I figured it would be difficult and I had enough kinda big tasks sitting in front of me at the time anyway. So I was doing what many folks do best.........Avoiding!

I searched 2 Brides on a cake and 2 Fondant Brides, etc.......and I found nothing on the internet that matched. So while I am SURE there are wedding toppers of same sex unions - I couldn't find any made in fondant. That led me to just start creating it myself. I thought leaning in toward one another and holding hands would be a nice touch - and making them sit would make my first attempt easier then trying to make them stand.

However, once I began to put the brides together (which I did several days before I made the cake).......I realized that it wasn't nearly as hard as I was thinking. I wish I had taken pics of the pieces going together, but as I said it was a busy week. So "End Results" were all that were photographed.

The cake itself was totally simple - traditional wedding cake - White Cake - White Buttercream icing.......easey peasey.

The dresses were surprisingly simple. Fondant draping with a synching at the waist. Then I added some seed beads and little pearls and a tiny bit of icing work. I was a bit afraid to make it more then simple for fear of overdoing it. First time out I think not too frilly.

My understanding through my friend who suprised the Brides with the cake was that the cake was a True Hit of the dinner. And that was the goal.......to make something totally Fun and Cool that was the Icing of the Day.....pun intended. Plus - now if someone searches 2 Brides on a cake or 2 Fondant Brides - they might find something to look at!

Drumming Up New Ideas......

This was a fun cake that I did for a neighbors son as he graduated from High School.

This is all buttercream - no fondant. While fondant might have made it easier to create the details - I kinda enjoyed that I wasn't rolling and cutting.......especially rolling fondant for such a BIG cake! This was 3 layers of 12" cake!!

The drum sticks ARE made from fondant though.

In the end I think that it all turned out really really nice! Many folks thought the drum sticks were real.......yea!!

Key Lime Cupcakes & a Week of Cupcakes!

July 24th huh? That was my last post here and yet it was not the last cake that I did..........so I could think of this as slacking - only with all the kids home for the summer I am hardly getting to sit down let alone SLACK! To save you all from a rant about my having to chase children around to clean or shuttle future adults to library weekly for books and movies - we will just forget that stream of thought and do a Week Of Cupcakes!!

This cupcake is a Key Lime Cupcake. Now as usual nothing is original in my mind. This cupcake I am 100% certain has been done a million times over - I think this because I did a search to see if there were recipes and how folks did them. Why I did the search though is because a friend, Pennie, made a Key Lime pie. Never having made one myself I asked what goes into it. She explained it - surprised me that while there were separate steps NONE of them sounded all that hard, just time consuming a smidge (tiny smidge). The pie was wonderful!! It was totally gone by the end of the evening. A few days later she mentioned her husband suggested I try making a Key Lime Cupcake. And thus the search for what makes a Key Lime Cupcake to folks all over was mine.

There are TONS and TONS and TONS of different recipes. Key Lime cake as the base of the cupcake - Key Lime filling - Key Lime icing - and combinations of many different. To me it seemed like many of them were missing the Graham Cracker bottom - only then I noticed that many of them had Graham Crackers sprinkled INTO the cupcake paper and then the cake batter placed over that so it baked into a pseudo crust. Not what I was envisioning.

Finally I figured out what would be totally Yum and kinda close to Pennie's Pie - because that was my personal goal - a Graham Cracker cake. Figured that out in less time then it took to search all the Key Lime stuff. Substitute pureed Graham Crackers (cinnamon grahams are the best in my opinion - but I would put cinnamon in everything - except my husbands rubs for smokin' - he does that, but cinnamon doesn't belong there I think) for part of the flour in a basic Butter cake recipe. Gave that a WhipUp and taste tested it and OHMYGOODNESS that was YUMMY all by itself!! I immediately envisioned a Ton of different cupcakes I could do with that and sent the recipe to my Sis-In-Law who was looking to do a good S'mores cupcake.
So then there was the figuring out of the main part of the cake - Key Lime. I did more research on this then I would have thought because of the egg involved. The cupcake wasn't going to go into the oven a second time - the filling would be inserted into the cupcake after baking - that created a problem with the eggs. Although much research about the egg being combined with the sugar and the sugar/egg ratio then eliminating the possibility of salmonella poisoning being gone........it still made me nervous.

Key Lime makes me think of Lemon (duh) and one of my favorite Lemon treats is a Lemon Curd that my friend, Sarah, made me years and years and years ago. So my thought was why not make a Key Lime Curd which would kill off the salmonella problem - mix that with the Sweetened Condensed Milk that goes into the pie filling and pipe that into the center of a cupcake? Genius right? Again - surely someone has done this, but I didn't find it on line this time so I wasn't 100% it would work.

First task - Squeezing all these dang Key Limes. I did it with my glass lemon juicer - see it there in the back of the pic? Took me a whole piano lesson + some time to do it - Key Limes are way too tiny!!! Don't do that!!! See a few days later guess what I saw that someone had done.......used a Garlic Press because half a Key Lime fits perfect into a press - DUH!! Brilliant!! So do that - don't do what I did.
Then there was the melting of some butter. Do you love watching butter melt? At first I do. Not sure why. Then I become incredibly impatient and start moving the butter around to get on with it already.

Added the egg yolks - the Key Lime juice and a bit zest - the sugar - and waited - well didn't really WAIT.......

Rather I stirred and stirred and stirred and stirred until the wanted thickening happened and the consistency that was desired was reached. I have finally figured out that you do not want it to be thickened completely on the stove........that took a few doings years back to realize. See how Instant Pudding ruins our ability to learn things the right way? It will thicken a bit more as it cools off.

So a smart girl who runs a hobby blog about cakes and things she creates would have taken a picture of the process of adding the cooled Key Lime curd in with the SCMilk right? Or maybe a picture of the delicious Graham Cracker cupcake? Yeah probably - but who knows a smart girl like that around here?

What you see is what you get I am afraid. Hulled the center of the yummy cupcake - filled it with Key Lime filling - topped that with a White Chocolate Icing - sprinkled a tiny bit of the crushed grahams and then started taking them around the area for testing.

Only one person suggested a change.......which I was totally ready for - only after saying that he had something to say it turned out to be, "This is probably the best cupcake I have every had".

So I am going with this one is a winner. The next day I started getting calls asking me if I would make them for a neighbors Red Hat meeting - Winner.

Bachelorette Cake

This was a fun cake. A friend of mine - and my FAVORITE Girl Scout at the main office - asked me if I would do a "fun" cake for her friends bachelorette party. We joked around about the different theme's they might have.........I sent her some pictures of things that they could do I found on line.......she didn't even trust me enough to look at them without sending a note back that said something along the lines of "are these appropriate enough to look at here at work?"

They were. Mostly. There weren't any totally rude body part type cakes like I did happen to find. I mean let's be honest - who wants to eat a cut into body part? Ewww.

So what we decided was that "yes" I would get to do a fun cake for her party - but she would consider what she might want it to look like. And she did..........she did another search and came up wit this design. Very cute - Very fun. Time consuming to make all the little detail pieces, but easy enough to actually do (does that make sense?).

In fact, the more challenging part was that the Bride To Be was asked what flavor she would like the cake. I believe that Amanda sent her my blog - which lists flavors I have tackled on the side - and the answer that returned was ...........White with White Chocolate Chip cake (okay done that) and a White Chocolate icing.......ahhhhhhh.......my response was, "Ah does that exist?"

Of course it exists - but I have never done it. What we are finding is that EVERY flavor in the world has already been done. The challenge is generally NOT creating a new flavor, but more tweaking the flavor to be what you and those you are serving it to will enjoy. So after a quick search I found several several several recipes for White Chocolate Icing. Certainly not hard - it only included 1 double boiler adventure.........but also not as easy as a Vanilla Buttercream. Totally yummy though. I have already found 2 more cakes that it matches up nicely with.

So once finished this is what the cake looked like - and my understanding was the party group really enjoyed the flavor of the whole thing. It was the hit of the party (so Amanda said) - although cakes are fun, what I find is if you think something like the above cake up - most likely YOU are the hit of the party because you have spunk and a creative and fun energy about ya.

As you know - this cake was a White Chocolate Chip cake with a White Chocolate Icing. Vanilla fondant was used for the cake and Gumpaste was used for the Personal Items.

Baby Showers should be all about the Mom~To~Be

I wish wish wish wish I could find the napkin that this image was copied off of!! My friend suggested me to her friend and asked if I could do a baby shower cake. Red Velvet. Red Velvet is one of those mystery cakes to me. What is the draw? It isn't Chocolate cake exactly because there are about 3 TBS of cocoa in it..........but it certainly isn't a Yellow or a White cake because there are about 3 TBS of cocoa in it. Yet is vaguely tastes like both. My family didn't have Red Velvet hanging around our house. We had White Cake White Icing. That was it mostly - and Chocolate Brownies...........and tons of cookies at the holidays. My mom would bake a MILLION different kinds of cookies. For almost a month she was baking them. Then we would make huge trays of cookies to give to folks and to have around for holiday gatherings. But after that we had Carrot cake and my favorite as a kid German Chocolate Cake (loved the coconut).

What were we talking about?? Oh, the Red Velvet. So Red Velvet. Don't exactly get it. I will however admit that it is kinda yummy - and definately pretty.

So anyway...........this friend of a friend asked me to copy the party napkin she had. This is just a cute cake if you can't see the napkin. It was fun to make. I never heard back from her when I asked how it went...........so hopefully they thought it was as cute as I did - and my friend, Pennie, who I was with when I brought it by the hostesses house on our way to Sam's..........which is a whole other topic.

The cake was Red Velvet (obviously) with a Vanilla Buttercream icing. Now - speaking of Red Velvet and icing. Again - didn't grow up with this cake, but there seems to be A LOT of different trains of thought on what icing goes with the cake. Some say a basic buttercream - some have said a cream cheese - and still others have mentioned a special icing that you cook in a simmer pot on the stove top. If you are a Red Velvet Cake Specialist would you please weigh in and let me know what icing you have experienced on this cake?

Do You Know When State Farm Founders Day Is?

Nothing Over the Top Crazy about this one............but it is fun to know that I can do Logo replica's.

A few months back I did a few cupcake toppers for a friend who had a sister graduating from ISU. They were Red Birds (sure he has a name, but I am not great at knowing the names of bands or names of mascots - my brain is cluttered enough. I can remember the words to American Pie though). Another friend pointed out that by copying the mascot I could be tagged and prosecuted by ISU because they hold their bird tight. Which is probably true. However, I copy tons of licensed things........and when I google the ideas I see tons of others who have copied them too. Which made me wonder just how likely it was that Disney, Nickelodeon, STL Cardinals, Cubs or any other company would be sending me or the thousands of others using their image court papers - or how often they see how much thier image has been used and say "YES!".

Now if I were a big company mass producing the licensed item to a GINORMOUS profit - well then I would TOTALLY expect a phone call, court papers and a cease order. Since I hardly even charge enough to make a profit off any cake I won't worry about it for now.

Watch - Monday papers will show up after this is posted............where is some wood to knock on?

This cake was a Celebration of SF Founders Day. Half White and half Chocolate with a Vanilla Buttercream for my favorite last minute ordering Queen Taunia. I heard it was yummy!!

Princess Castle Cake

Here is a cutie and a Quickie. I really wish that I took more time to take pictures of things as I put them together. Because the one thing that I am really giggly happy about this cake is the edging on each tier. Kinda like a railing to keep the princesses from falling over the edge........

Yet at the same time totally similar to a Crown.........yet completely edible. The person who asked me to do this cake sent a picture - and I was doing a sort of a copy job of that cake. As I looked closer at the cake I realized that the railing and the windows were plastic add ons. Disappointing, yet at the same time understandable - but copyable too. So I tried. I am pretty sure I got it. There was also a purple crown at the top (that I forgot to take an aerial pic of!) and a flag that went into the center and had the Birthday Girls name on it. Those things were given to the family to put on right before the party......so no pics for me, but safer for Michelle so she didn't have a crying princess.

Speaking of Princess - Michelle had a totally clever idea! In the original cake all the windows held princesses. Michelle sent a note saying, "What if we add my Princess into one of the windows?"..........Totally Clever!!! and.........Why Didn't I Think of That!!?? See her in the window above the door?? So cute!

I love it when the people asking me to do a cake have specific and clever ideas of things. Makes it more fun!

this cake was Chocolate in one tier and White in another tier. Vanilla Buttercream icing (we were trying not to cover the cake in fondant) and then Gumpaste for the railing crowns and Vanilla Fondant for the other additions.

Taking a Tractor to a Wedding

Okay I should have posted this AGES ago!! That comment was primarily for my friend, Pennie. She was talking to another friend the other day saying how my website is updated so often and then I pointed out how almost all my posts start with - "I made this cake MONTHS ago".......because really I have a million no posted cakes. Okay not a million (don't have that many friends - close though)........but I have been super busy this spring working in the various committee's I am on and doing things for the kids now that they are home.


But......this cake was SO MUCH FUN to make!! It stretched some of my thinking a bit - kinda like the Rapunzel cake did. The whole "how do I get that to stay put" and "what shape would I need to cut this into to reflect what it is supposed to be" thing was a bit exciting and terrifying all at the same time. Primarily because - while this person heard of me through another person I know from our elementary school - I didn't really know this person - and more scary - this was for her wedding as a SURPRISE gift to her Brand Spanking New Hubby!! Technically I know she was under way way way way way more pressure for perfection then I was........but somehow I was able to create enough pressure for myself that I could live enough stress to exhaust myself for a day too.


More so then the stress though - This Was So Much Fun To Make!!


What is it? Oh......well the title kinda gives it away, but the two shapes above are the start of a Kubato tractor. You don't see it? Oh.........well the big hunk of cake is the base and the little hunk of cake is the cab on top. You still don't see it? Oh.......well let's keep going then.


Here are the dowel rods that I cut down BY MYSELF with the high tech tools my hubby keeps in the garage that I have not ever touched due to wanting to keep my fingers. However, Dave wasn't home so I had to risk my fingers to get this done.


These keep the cake in place so that they don't slide around a bunch.

Okay NOW do you see the tractor? NO? Well the dowel rods are in place. The short ones went into the Base of the cake and then the 2 longer ones went through the cab piece & base piece. Now (hopefully) this won't slide. And I promised myself I would NOT obsess over this and NOT invite my friend Sheri over to confirm that it wasn't sliding because she totally tells the truth too much. Here is a twist. Rice Krispy Treats!! Yea something new to try. See I may never have lived on a farm OR be a farmer (which makes sense since I have never lived on a farm - although maybe you can BE a farmer without LIVING on the farm.....but that would seem difficult) - however, I do know that tractors have GIANT wheels - especially in the rear of the vehicle. I was not at first certain how I would make such big wheels and then I flashed to every cake show I had ever seen and realized - they generally use Rice Krispy Treats.

So I searched something similar to "using Rice Krispy Treats in cake decorating" and found nothing really. This shock shock shocked me. I kept finding references to this RKT stuff and how great it was for molding shapes and when set it was lightweight and didn't hang on the cake much. So I did a search for RKT finally - hoping that the cake stores near me sold it so I could mold the tires - without some direction I was worried about using Rice Krispy Treats - I mean this was a gift to a brand new husband AT the wedding reception - no way did I want to mess this up!!

As I watched a video of a caker (my word - caker - definition: person who makes cakes for fun and decorates them and is so dedicated to the fun they do something weird like a blog of informative videos or start a business) using RKT to see if I wanted to find some for the tractor. Now - since you all are not blinded by the fear of goofing up the tractor cake I am sure you have already figured out what RKT is - yes, Rice Krispy Treats. As I watched the beginning of the video I couldn't help but laugh at me. Geez O.

Then I went and mixed some RKT up.

Here is the beginning of a tire. I have to say - molding stuff with RKT was quite fun. And in the end I had enough left over from the tires to do the arms and legs of a Sponge Bob cake too!

The big square thing is the roof for the cab of the tractor. You will never see that in another picture. It wouldn't set enough to not be at least a smidge floppy on the edges - and since I have never seen a tractor with a rounded roof I figured I needed to let it go.

Back to the tractor. Stacked - Dowel roded - and not Iced. Kinda looks like a shoe right?

Still kinda looks like a shoe. Insert the beginning of Cake Worry here. See there is a point with every cake that I look at it and say ............"ugh what am I doing?"......well almost every cake. Some really are just fine through the whole process - some cause me to freak through all of it - and some just get a moment of doubt.

So then I began putting on the "touches". The dark trim at the bottom is to give the cake the illusion of standing off the ground and having a hollow area where the wheel would be. I considered making a cake stand that would elevate the cake, but I didn't want to lose the servings.......and since Dave was busy wasn't sure how I would craft it and have it be sturdy.

The green around the edge of the board is - well grass. It will look more normal in the next shot.

Aerial.....cool right? Can you picture me on a giant crane looking down taking the photo? Yeah, I know - just a step stool.

See now the grass is filled in a bit more - there is ground up Vanilla Wafers and Graham crackers for "dirt" and I made a few fondant hearts & wedding rings for the scoop. The K&J are initials of the bride & groom. I tried to write them in a font Kubato uses on their tractors.

The scoop. The scoop was a bit easier to make then I would have imagined. Honestly most of this was easier to make then I imagined - I mean certainly not easy, but I envisioned fearful moments with tears and

The tires........cool right? Once the RKT was set and dried enough that it didn't more around I covered it in black fondant. The cut strips to place on the edge to look like treads. After that was set I added the rims......the orange part is a rim right? I need to brush on up car lingo - tractor lingo - vehicle lingo. I thought they turned out really cute. And the fact that you can just bite into them is fun too!

Final picture! When I went to deliver it to the banquet center they had almost everything set and ready to go. The Bride looked like I would have imagined - scanning the room - excited - more focused then I remember myself being. However, I had Dawson with me. Couldn't find a play date for him and not a single person in the family was home. Ironically the cake was at the golf house banquet center here in our neighborhood - so it was not far away at all - but you can't leave a 5 year old at home alone even for 15 minutes.........too many possible adventures they could get into that might end poorly. So he came on delivery - and flopped all over the floor doing Super Hero Ninja type moves. I tried to be In & Out of there fast enough that nothing would be damaged. Given our stealth delivery - I am pretty sure that the Bride loved the cake - and the Grooms Mom..........so Success.

I know I loved the cake - because I can now say that I built a 3D Tractor out of Cake!!

This cake was one of my personal favorites - Pumpkin Cake with a Cinnamon Buttercream icing and Vanilla Fondant. Yummm!!!