Family and Friends

I see a lot of posts on people not liking the fact that their family and friends want to get cakes for a much cheaper price than they would sell to the public. I, frankly, don't understand what the problem is. These people are FAMILY and FRIENDS. These people aren't just using you...they are your FAMILY and FRIENDS! Your supposed to help out your family and friends. It is just what I believe in and I think it is a shame that more people don't believe in it. I was made an absolutely beautiful 3 tiered cake for my wedding...all buttercream...absolutely lovely by my husbands (now ex), ex sister-in-law...that's right ex sister-in-law and she did it for FREE! Otherwise we couldn't have had a cake at our wedding because we could not afford that. I made the Elsa cake for my niece for $20, which is about what the ingredients cost me. I have no problem with that. She loved it. It was so worth it! So give your friends and family a break on your cakes and if you aren't too busy try to make them a priority...your friends and family are definitely worth it...aren't they?

The Camo Cake

Since Phil is just all about the Army, I had to make a camouflage cake for him. I watched some videos. It wasn't difficult to make but the fondant stretched a lot more and I felt it would have looked better if the pieces were smaller...anyway, next time. The little grenades were easy to make and the letters came from my new letter cutters. You really have to hit them hard against the edge of the table to get the letters out but they look so much nicer than the block letters. Phil did really like this cake. It was a green key lime cake.

Michelle's Cake

My daughter's 22nd birthday was July 19th and she wanted a Reese's cake. I was a little worried about doing the peanut butter cake part since the recipes I had gotten off the Internet so far hadn't been all that good but I found a promising peanut butter cake and we went with it. It did come out a little dark and I had to trim all the edges and made sure to give it a good dousing of sugar water when I put the cake together.
Since I really couldn't decorate the chocolate frosting much, I decided to use my little flower LED lights. I had one string of flowers and one of butterflies but the flowers were more colorful so I went with those.
I also tried the fancy flower candle. It is a firework, that lights other candles on the flower petals and is supposed to spin. It never did spin but the firework shot way up and was scary enough. It did light the candles though.
I have no complaints about the cake on this one, it was wonderful. My worst problem was getting the sprinkles to stay on...

4th of July

This was not exactly what I pictured when I pictured my flag cake but it was really, really warm in my house this day the the fondant did not want to cooperate and the flag wanted to fall apart...still it wasn't too bad. I got to cut out some letters, make lots of stars, and do a cake that was 2 colors. I did not do so good at smoothing the buttercream but the house was so hot that I just couldn't spend a lot of time on it.

A Birthday Cake for Maddie

I agreed to dry and do a Frozen-like doll cake for my niece Maddie's 4th birthday. I was so nervous about it. I already had a doll and had watched the videos. I did have a moment of panic when I found I didn't have any snowflake cutters like I thought, but I ordered them and had them sent with 2 day shipping. I made a blue raspberry boxed cake for this with some substitutions (butter for oil, milk for water). It was also frosted with blue raspberry buttercream frosting (another little packet of flavoring). It was 4 layers.

I had never really worked with fondant before and didn't really realize how much it stretches and can break. A few nicely placed snowflakes took care of it. I didn't like the seam in the back so I put snowflakes all down the seam. If I had had any little bow molds it would have been better (I have them now) but it still looked much better with the snowflakes.
I was so incredibly pleased with this cake and so was Maddie.

A Chicken Cake

This cake was made for my sister-in-law who discovered the joys of owning chickens after I gave them some for Christmas. This one had cotton candy flavored frosting. I had gotten some little packets of cotton candy flavoring at the store and decided to try it on this cake. It was actually pretty good. I really enjoyed doing this cake because I got some practice on a lot of techniques like making the chicken out of fondant and making the feathers by clipping it with a very small pair of scissors all over. I also got to make those nice long leaves and use my new letter cutters. I felt this cake turned out pretty good.

Reese's Cupcakes

These were chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting and broken up Reese's peanut butter cups on top. It was a recipe that I found online but the cupcakes were a little hard on the bottom and sides. The frosting however was really, really good.

My piping skills were not too great even on these but you really can't tell.

Butterflies and Flowers

This cake didn't have a reason. It was just a cake because I wanted some more practice. I love the color of this cake and I liked making the butterflies. I need lots more practice on my piping but it is hard to get practice when you only make a cake once in a while. The little candy pearls in the centers of the flowers I actually colored with petal dust and they turned out pretty nice. Next time I would like to try to think out the butterflies some. This cake was also almond buttercream which I did smooth out with the Viva paper towel method.

Flowers

I worked on making my first roses. When you see them made you think they are so hard but they really weren't, even if you mess one up, you can still make it look good. These came out pretty good. They are half fondant and half gum paste.

I also made flowers for a Mother's Day cake. It seemed like I made a lot of flowers but on the cake it didn't amount to much. These are gum paste flowers and leaves on this cake. This cake had cream cheese frosting on it and I never could get it to smooth down nice but maybe all cakes are just not smoothed perfectly.

Here are some close ups of the flowers.

St. Patrick's Day Cake

I actually made this cake for a family get together we had when our cousins came down to visit but it was right around St. Patrick's day so it got an Irish theme to it. It is almond buttercream (which is my favorite now) and fondant decorations and sprinkles. The cake inside was supposed to be green as well but turned out to be a very dark green and it wasn't very tasty. Not a recipe I will use again. But this was definitely a pretty cake and I was proud of it. I got practice piping buttercream shells around the bottom (I need a lot more practice..).

The Caramel Cake Disaster

It doesn't look like much of a disaster but trust me it was. I saw this cake and just really wanted to try the technique because it is so simple. You basically pipe a large dot on your cake and take a tip of a spoon or knife and draw it to one side. So simple...if your caramel frosting will cooperate and if your mixer doesn't break whilst making caramel frosting..which mine did...which caused the frosting not to set up well and in the heat of our kitchen..it tried to separate. I had to keep mixing it--by hand--and putting it back in the refrigerator but I finally got it done. This was a very nice tasting cake though and I will use that technique again because it is easy and turned out so nice.

Cake Number 2

Cake number 2 was a cake I made for my daughter Michelle's friends birthday because when you are just learning to make cakes you need any excuse to make one. Michelle has a very nice friend as well and I wanted to make my first flowers. They weren't that great and the lettering was terrible but it is all learning. I did get to use a mold for the bottom border as well.

It All Started...

...with a video on Craftsy. It showed how to put fondant on a cake. I had never even heard of fondant but I loved it right from the start. Then I watched more cake making videos and learned how to make buttercream. I had never really used anything but boxed cake mixes and store bought frosting. This cake was my first attempt. It uses almond buttercream frosting and fondant hearts and sprinkles. I was pretty pleased with how this came out for a first try.

I continued to watch more videos, meet more cake people and ask more questions. I am slowly learning and this is my journey.