Super Cakes

Last August was my son's 5th birthday.  I think he's in to just about EVERYTHING that has to do with being a boy. :)  This particular week he was extremely fascinated with Captain America and Spiderman, so we decided to make his whole birthday party revolve around Super Heroes.  Here are the cakes that I made to go with his party theme.

Spider Man Cake  

What I learned:  Make sure the cake case is TALL enough for the cake before you put the lid on.  I was bummed when I squashed the piping for the web.

Captain America Cake

What I learned:  Buttercream CAN be fun!  It's been a while since I made a buttercream icing ONLY cake, but it was fun to pipe it all on and see the smiles on the kids' faces

RAD(iation)

A good friend of mine was working in the Radiology department at the hospital and asked me to make this cake for her (okay, technically TWO of these, but I digress).

I have to admit this is one of the fastest and easiest cakes I've ever made... and one I love the most!  It was SO awesome and I was really pleased with how well it turned out. :)  I'm glad she liked it as much as I did!

Enjoy!

What I learned:  Black fondant is more easily achieved when it is chocolate, because it's already brown.

Cindy

Halloween Hoopla

We trudged through grass, tree roots, and mud for two days and finally found our way back to our resurfaced parking lot from the street parking we had to endure. We are okay.  We made it!

So, back to business here.  I'm going to throw a couple of Halloween-related cakes on here today.  One of them was actually a birthday cake for a friend of mine last February, but it is more closely related to Halloween, and I didn't dare put it in the "Beautiful Birthdays" post last week.  Seriously.  I don't think you'd count it as beautiful!!

Enjoy!

 Topsy Turvy cake for a church Halloween party.

This was my first attempt at a Topsy Turvy cake. 

All decorations were piped on.

What I learned:  Sometimes when working on a cake, you just get lucky!  

There had to have been Divine Intervention for it to turn out this well!!

 Halloween Party Haunted Castle

I used the Wilton Castle Kit for this cake, though I was rather unimpressed with it.

What I learned:  Royal icing breaks when it drops.  Royal icing is gross.

Zombie Birthday Cake 

See?  Not exactly something you add as a "Beautiful" cake.

The eyeball on the side had a 23 written in 'blood' (which was just decorator gel)

What I learned:  carving the cake to the right shape makes the fondant layering much easier.

and:  it's hard to achieve the right skin tone.  Coloring this fondant took me a LONG time

Thanks for looking again!

Cindy

A Short Break

Hi there!

    I regret to inform you that I will have to take a short break from blogging.  Our apartment Management has decided now is a good time to re-pave the parking lot, which means we can't drive our cars anywhere near our building.  In light of this, and the fact that we haven't gone camping at all this Summer, we have decided to leave and pitch a tent for a few days of outside fun!

    We won't be headed very far... my husband and I both can't get time off of work on such short notice, so we'll be making camp in my in-law's back yard for a few days.  While I will have internet access, I will not have immediate access to my cake photos.  Thanks for being so awesome and checking back now and then to see what my blog has to say.  I will be back in a couple of days.  My bet is that I'll have another post up on Saturday night. :)

    Meanwhile, here's a cake to look at:

My sister's High School Graduation Cake

What I learned: Junior Mints make a GREAT cake filling!  YUM!

Cindy

Wedding Bliss

Well, here I am for a Third day in a row.  This is the most committed to something I have been in a while, and I'm hoping that it doesn't wear off.  I'm not the type that typically finishes a big project, though I've been working on that for quite some time.  I typically get started on a project in full gusto, and then, around 3/4 of the way finished, I get burned out.  Then said project sits on a shelf and waits for me to decide I want to finish, which sometimes can take months or even years.  For instance, my sister and I started my son's 1st-year scrapbook 2 years ago, and nearly finished it.  All I really have to do is go back and glue the pictures into their spots.  Have I done that?  Nope.  Will I?  Probably. :)

Today is Wedding Cake Day.  We'll start with the first and move to the most recent.

Here is my first wedding cake: my brother's wedding cake I made around Thanksgiving of 2009.  He and his then-fiance decided they wanted to have a beach-themed wedding and I immediately started looking for pictures of beach wedding cakes.  I came across a few that I really liked and sent them photos and they asked me to copy one that they liked.

It was SO fun to do!  I had never done a completely blue cake before!  Because the bride needed a recipe that is low protein, we only made the top of the cake actual cake.  The other two layers are Styrofoam, frosted and covered with fondant. All of the seashells on the top layer of the cake were edible (thanks to my little sis for painting them in our time crunch), and the rest of the shells were ones we picked up at a local craft store.

What I learned:  Wedding cakes are FUN!  Sure, there's all that pressure, but it's worth it!
(and)  it's easy to create a fancy base for a cake.  Just turn a few glasses upside down, set the cake on top, and put flowers underneath.  Instant pretty!

Wedding Cake #2 - The first wedding cake I have been paid for.  (My last was the gift to the bride and groom.)  This was done for a girl in my church who had been referred to me via Word Of Mouth (I LOVE WOM!!!).  She, just like every bride, was sticking to a pretty strict budget and wanted something really nice. She brought me a picture of the exact cake she wanted, and during our consultation, she mentioned that her colors were black, red and yellow with a bit of orange.  I immediately asked her if she'd be interested in a black cake.  She was VERY interested, called her fiance, and we decided to go ahead with it.

The original cake was white with red-ish ribbons and cherry blossoms, so we doctored it a bit and made it black with her roses.  Beautiful roses, by the way, with the red, orange and yellow all infused to one rose.  I don't remember what she called them, but WOW.  Striking against the black fondant.  I purchased an air-brush machine so I could color the fondant easier (black fondant is REALLY hard to make... it takes a TON of color), and the cake came together in about a day.

What I learned:  black fondant will turn your teeth black.  Luckily, the bride didn't have that problem during her photo ops at the wedding!

Cake #3 - Beach Themed and Whimsical!  A friend of mine called me a couple of days before her son's reception and asked if I had time to make a cake.  (Of COURSE I have time!  I ALWAYS have time for another cake!)  She explained to me that her son and daughter-in-law had already had their wedding in Hawaii, but they were doing a reception here in the area and they needed a cake for a centerpiece!  Okay!  We talked about a few different ideas and she told me that they already had the really nice, elegant wedding cake at the actual wedding, and they'd like to have something more whimsical.  I can DO whimsical!

This cake was pretty easy.  Took a little extra time with all the elements I added to the cake.  All figurines, aside from the Bride and Groom, are fondant.  The sand is made from finely chopped graham crackers.

What I learned:  Palm Trees are harder to make than they look, and can break easily!  I really need to learn to use Gumpaste...

     I hope you enjoyed these cakes!  They have been sooo fun for me!  I really appreciate those of you who have asked me to make cakes so I can get more and more practice.  I love having a creative outlet!

Cindy

All Things Boys

Every time I look at these photos, I remember how much sugar I had spread all over the house.  Of COURSE the kids helped with some of these!  Especially since these are boy cakes.  My boys LOVE cake.  They tend to run up to me during cake time and say "Mommy can I please have some of your fondant?"   And, as you would expect, they get some.  On occasion, I have caught the kids pushing chairs up to the counter to grab fondant out of the plastic wrap, and once in a while I won't catch them, which results in dried out fondant, which has to be re-made.  Oh the joys of parenting and decorating at home!

In light of the fact that I have already done a tribute to girls' cakes, I suppose it's only fair to include the boy-themed deliciousness!  I get to do a lot more of this with my 3 boys at home, so there are a few more here to look through.  I hope you enjoy my small collection.

 A friend of ours LOVES the Seattle Seahawks, so I felt it was completely appropriate to honor that.  

I should have turned the helmet a full 90 degrees, but I was happy with the outcome anyhow. :)  

Happy Birthday, Heath!

 Credit to my bestie Cassie:  Fabulous job on the detail work and face mask, Cass!!  

What I learned:  It's great to work in a team when you have 4 hours to do a cake start to finish

(and) ALWAYS check the pass reports before deciding that it'd be EASY to get over the pass with a cake in the front seat.  Closed roadways, rain, children, and cake don't mix...

 Mr Potato Head cake for my son turning 3.  SO fun!

Five 6" cake layers stacked on top of each other and carved.

What I learned:  Fondant arms won't stay if they haven't dried out properly!

 My husband's white water rafting cake.  Fun, easy, and delicious!

What I learned:  Powdered sugar sprinkled on a cake doesn't make it look like white peaks of water.  

It makes it look like snow.  

 Backhoe cake when Mason turned 2.  

What I learned:  Candy makes everything more delicious!

 Leaf Blower cake for my father-in-law

What I learned: RKT needs to be REALLY sturdy before adding to a cake

(and)  Men are weird.  They like cakes shaped like their tools...

 Mario Cake for my brother

What I learned:  I have a real problem with sculpting people.   

(Something I need to work on)

 Props to my best friend, Cassie, on an AMAZING job with Bowser!

 Cake balls and a wrench (for my hubby)

Fun and easy cake - German Chocolate with coconut/pecan frosting

What I learned:  Cake Balls are perfect for kids!

 Sports/Construction Cake

See "Train Wrecks."

One of my favorites to date:  

Happy Birthday to former Betty Ford Falcons member Ralph Eronemo.

What I learned:  skewers make for really great tools when needing a straight line

(or a microphone stand!)

Cindy

Photos! Ye devious photos!

Well Hello Again!

Today looks to be a pretty good day.  I started out at 7:00 this morning sorting through the 2,600 photos that I have sitting on my computer in a folder.  That's right.  2,600.   It might as well be a million because don't see these photos EVER ending!

I tend to be one of those people that bug you.  You know the type: organized down to every single little detail that it annoys you, but if you were to walk into their home, you would see a bunch of clutter because their organization is linked to one centralized type of material.  Yep.  That's me.

I take each photo and look at it.  I identify all the people in it, and then I sort it to various photo albums or folders.  For instance, if I have a photo of my husband, my two kids, and my dog, I put a copy of the photo in the dog's photo album, a copy into my husband's album, and a copy in each child's album under the correct month of the year.  I know.  It sounds a little extreme, but it works well for me!  This way, if I say "Man, I need a good picture of my husband" I can open up his folder and find EVERY photo he is in.  Also, if I say to myself "I need a picture of the boys from when we were on vacation last July" I can look up the "July 2010" folder, and I'll find pictures of both of my kids together, whether I open the one under "Mason" or "Andrew." Crazy, right?

So, when I put a "new pics" folder on my computer 6 months ago, and just kept adding photos, but never sorted any photos, the 2,600 photos became a task of epic proportions!  It literally took me 2 1/2 hours this morning to sort through half of them.  But hey, halfway is better than "still accruing...", right??

In celebration of sorting through that many stinking photos, here is one of my favorites over the last few months.  I hope you don't mind seeing my kiddos and family in this one, but I just had to share because they are just too stinkin' cute!  Enjoy!

Cindy

 Our Fam at St Edwards State Park, Kenmore

Piggy Backs at St Edwards State Park

Muscle Men!