Bridal Shower Cookies

A very busy event planner that I know wanted these cookies.  She sent me a picture of them and I knew I could do it.  I thought about making my own cookie cutter to use, then realized that I could take one of my medium sized heart cutters and do it myself.  I cut the top and bottom with the top of the heart, then took another cutter, one with a sharp angle, and cut out tiny pieces from the bottom to form the 'legs'.  I was very excited that they came out so well!

The decorating process was not hard, just had to have the three different colors of icing.  You can't really tell from the photos, but the line details were ivory, not white.  I really enjoy making cookies, there are so many things you can do with them!  Thanks for looking!

Trumpet Cake

This was a tricky one!  The client wanted a trumpet cake.  I decided to make a trumpet in a case.  The trumpet would be gumpaste and the case would be the cake.  I loved making the trumpet!!  I made all the little tubes, the bell and the keys separately, then used little dots of gumpaste to piece them together.  I used edible gold spray paint on it, like I did previously with a saxophone cake (which I just realized I never posted-oops!).

After spraying the gold on it, I painted on the metallic silver details.  Too much fun!  The 'case' was just a couple of marble cakes stacked.  I scooped out some of the cake so that the trumpet would fit, then covered the cake in fondant.

Again, learning from my mistakes, I would have done this cake different.  The structure wasn't that great.  I did not like the dowels showing.  I've seen some cheats online on how to build this cake without dowels, so I would follow those next time.  Over all, the effect was fantastic and the birthday girl thought it was amazing!

Mother's Day

This was supposed to be a jewelry box cake.  I think it looks more like a hatbox.  Talk amongst yourselves...

The client wanted all types of flowers and pearls.  The theme was 'Momma, you are my pearl'.  I made a mixture of gumpaste, fondant, and buttercream flowers.

I learn something on every cake.  If I were to do this one again, I would have made the lid separate instead of the illusion of being open.  I could have put a lot more flowers inside.  I hadn't made buttercream roses in quite some time, so I actually made 20-30 of them before getting back into it!  It's a rare occasion when I make traditional flowers!

I hope all the mother's had a wonderful, blessed day!

Zombie Birthday

My son is crazy. He reads, writes, watches and talks everything zombie related. I've watched several zombie movies with him, including Night of the Living Dead (my favorite thus far), 28 Days Later, and one strange one from the 80's that was so bad neither of us can remember the name. He just turned 15, so needless to say, I made him a zombie cake.

There was a face coming up from the dirt with a tombstone above, and a hand breaking through the ground. The hand was made of fondant and the dirt was crushed up chocolate sandwich cookies (we all know them as a certain name, but I don't want to get into any trouble or advertise for free on their behalf!) Anyway, there were several boys over at the house and they all loved it. It ended up being way too big, and I realized that teenage girls eat a lot more than their counterparts! After three days, I threw the remaining cake away!

Scary Flower Cake

This was an amaretto cake and my first time decorating a cake with real flowers. The florist told me to build up the buttercream, then place the stems in it, so that the caterers wouldn't have to worry about where to cut and which part to eat.

Well, I did that and as you see above, it turned out beautiful! However, after driving the cake to the client, and after the chef told me where to place the cake, most of the flowers had fallen off along with the buttercream.

Instead of freaking out, which I was silently doing, I took a knife and got as much buttercream as possible to build up again, then stuck the flowers in all over again. I did not get another picture of it, but the catering staff all thought it was beautiful! Whew!

Lesson learned - the next time real flowers are used, I will put them on at the location! :)

Over the Hill Cake

This was yet another cake for a friend from high school! I have been fortunate enough to do graduation cupcakes, baby shower, baby dedication and now this one for her mother.

It is actually a square cake with a football pan size cake cut and put on top. The signs were gumpaste, and I used white royal icing and edible markers to write on them. It is a very simple layout, but it really ended up being a large cake!

Thanks Stacey!

Copy of an Invitation!

This was an interesting one to do. The invitation was beautiful and I thought I would try to recreate it. I decided that to do it 3-dimensional would be quite time consuming and costly for the client, so I did a simpler version of 3-D.

All the details were made from fondant. I rolled it, then flattened with my finger where needed. There were a lot of dragees used on this! Also, royal icing was used for the beaded look on the crib, sides and bottoms.

Copy of a Napkin!

The napkin looked just like this, just with the writing along the bottom. This was the first time I had covered a board in fondant, it was actually pretty simple. I tacked it down with piping gel and it did the trick!

The CELEBRATE along the side was done by using alphabet cookie cutters as a template, then painted with black icing color.

The '8' was chocolate and the '0' was yellow cake.

It was a hit!

Chocolate Ornamint Cupcakes

Chocolate orna"mint" (ornament) cupcakes by Janelle Weeden are the hit of the Christmas party! Happy Holidays, Happy Hanukkah and Merry Christmas!

After looking thorough some past pictures, I found that I had not posted these. The credit card was a fun one to do. The numbers all represented a member of the family's birthday. The expiration date was the anniversary date and the name was the birthday girls, who happened to work at Chase in the credit card division! Pretty fun!

These were done at the same time I did the ivory and green wedding dummy cake. These were real, however, and were just for show. The mini cakes were vanilla with vanilla bc. The cookies were sugar and were made to match the mini cakes. It ended up being a lovely display, and a few visitors to this show actually took them and ate them!

I was really surprised to see that I had not posted these. They were fantastic and fun to make! The cosmetic purse was carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. The MAC tote was chocolate cake with chocolate filling. The lipstick was fondant. The shoes were all gumpaste, my first attempt at shoes!

100 year old birthday party!

These were amazing! The yellow ones were white cake with lemon curd filling. The pink ones were italian cream cake with raspberry filling. Delicious! Everyone loved these!

My daughter decorated this carrot cake. It was for the man of the house, and he barely had any left to enjoy after the party! Everyone loved it.

These were a repeat of a design that we have done before. The design is from a little notepad. I think my daughter did a better job of re-creating it the first time!

More adorable little dresses with matching handbags!

Henna Scrollwork

This is another dummy cake that I totally loved doing! It was alot of little, detailed, time-consuming work. I like the way it turned out, but of course I learned a few things that I would do differently the next time.

Henna has such neat designs and I think black and white are perfect for it! I would like to add some white flowers on the top with black centers to set it off.

Fun One!

I was asked to do a cake for and 18th birthday. The birthday girl loves socks and cell phones and I was asked what I could do to incorporate them together. This is what I came up with. I would not use the shimmer silver luster dust next time on the blackberry, it made it too shiny. I'm really starting to enjoy mmf!

Wedding Cake - Hunter's Green Country Club in Tampa

This has been on the books for about 7 months. It's exciting to finally be doing the cake. I have learned alot on this one! I would like to learn to do large gumpaste flowers, instead of having to purchase them. Will post pics soon!