Texas Hold ‘em Cake

Some friends of ours were having a summer picnic and a Texas Hold ‘em game, (yes I am slightly behind in my posts).  I was asked to bring a cake and decided to make a small poker table. 

I started with a round cake and cut the sides to make a six-sided table.  The cake was frosted with green buttercream frosting, and black fondant around the edges of the cake. I used square pillars with a Wilton cake plate under the cake and covered the pillars with black fondant to look like table legs.

The playing cards and poker chips are made of fondant and I used fine tip edible markers to draw the cards.   The fun part was deciding the how the hand was going to play out.  Even Doug got involved in helping with this part.  Can you tell which hand wins?

The not so fun part of this cake was the fact that it was WAY too hot for fondant.  I used a brand of fondant that didn’t hold up well in the heat and it was melting pretty bad.  Now I know some people don’t put their cakes in the refrigerator, but I always do and 99% of the time I don’t have a problem.  Plus with this soft fondant I wanted to try to firm it up a bit.  But it was so hot and humid that when I took the cake out it literally started dripping black liquid!  I set it up between two fans and dabbed off some of the moisture.  The texture you see on the black was from me dabbing with a paper towel.  The funny thing is, everyone kept asking “how did you make it look like leather?”  I just said “bake on a hot summer day!”

African Violet Cake

I had seen this cake on Pinterest and thought it was the cutest thing. So when Administrative Professional’s Day came up I immediately thought this would be a cute little cake to make. 

The cake was made using a 4” round cake pan, covered with fondant.  The “soil” was crushed Oreo's.  The flowers and leaves were simple fondant cut outs. 

Dinosaur Cake

Every year I donate a cake to a silent auction for our local food bank.  Last year’s winner wanted a dinosaur cake for her 3 year old son Ian who loves dinosaurs.

The dinosaurs were made from chocolate lollipop molds.  I used gumpaste to make large leaves for the trees, and when they were dry I attached them to pretzel rods with melted chocolate.  I actually found the large chocolate boulders at the grocery store a few months earlier and said to myself “I need to remember those, they look like real rocks!”  I think they look much better than if I had tried to make boulders from fondant.  Plus they’re chocolate!  Some chocolate covered bridge mix and buttercream leaves were the final touches.

Happy Birthday Ian!

Star Wars

A simple Star Wars cake.  Buttercream with fondant accents.

Graduation Cake with Cheetah Print

Dallas was very specific about her requested cake design.  She gave me details with combinations of pictures and notes.  I like a girl who knows what she wants.

The cheetah print was something new for me.  I practiced using some gel icing colors and the print turned out well but it also never dried.  I decided to try some airbrush colors and they worked perfect!  It was really pretty simple, just blobs of silver paint surrounded by black squiggly outlines.  No pattern, all random.

I made the graduation cap just like I have before using a mini wonder mold pan and a square of dried gumpaste. 

Pigs in the Mud

Most of my friends have little boys and I don’t get to make too many cute girly cakes.  So when a co worker said his daughter wanted a cake for her birthday I thought – cool, maybe a pink castle or lots of flowers.  Then she said…pigs in the mud.  Hmm, OK.

The little fondant pigs turned out so cute. I added some water, grass and a few flowers to prevent the cake from being all brown, and I just love this cake!  And so did Alyssa! 

Did you see the little pig butt in the mud?  :)

iPod Touch

This is the third cake I’ve made for William.  He requested an iPod playing his favorite song.  He even drew a picture for me so I would know what it should look like.  The design is all fondant cut outs. 

Funny story…William is a very sharp little boy.  And I know his cakes have to be right on the money or he will notice.  I was all done with this cake, everything was all cleaned up and put away.  I had even gone to bed.  I woke up and sat up straight in bed as a thought came to mind.  I proceeded to get up and head to the kitchen. 

Doug:  “what are you doing?” 

Me:  “I forgot the buttons!”

I then proceeded to add the buttons on the sides of the iPod  :)

Super Mario Cake

This was the second Super Mario cake I made for Gyasi.  I used the same process for the fondant design as I did for his first Mario cake.

Happy Birthday Gyasi!

Pink Converse Baby Shower Cake

A baby shower cake was requested for a colleague at work.  My only guidance was pink with dots and stripes.  I had been wanting to make these baby converse shoes for a while so I figured I’d give it a shot.  I did a search for how to make them online and found quite a few resources, this template and tutorial is what I used.  They were quite time consuming but lots of fun and I think they turned out soooo cute!  I also brushed them with petal dust to make them sparkly.

I used the globe pillar set from Wilton.  The rattles and baby bottles were made from a chocolate mold and the dots and stripes are fondant.

Cowboy Cake

This was one of those cakes that really comes together at the last step.  I wasn’t sure as I was making it but once all the pieces were in place it looked awesome!

I made the base of the cowboy hat ahead of time using fondant and gum paste so it would dry and hold it’s shape.  I didn’t use a pattern for this I just looked at lots of cowboy hat photos and made it up as I went along.  I decided I would use 6” round pans for the hat part so I placed one on a large sheet of parchment paper and drew a large oval around it.  I rolled out the fondant/gum paste and trimmed to match the oval, I then placed it on a large cooling rack to allow air to circulate underneath and used a few small kitchen towels rolled up underneath the edges to create the curve.  Once it had dried a few days I turned it over to make sure the bottom was dry as well.  It took about a week for me to feel comfortable moving it.
For the top of the hat I stacked 6” rounds and carved out the shape at the top and covered with fondant.  Once I placed the cake on the base, I just smiled.  It looked so cool.  A small band of black around the base and some lettering and it was done!
The cupcakes were strawberry and chocolate with raspberry filling and a 1M vanilla buttercream swirl. Each cupcake had a chocolate topper of either a cowboy hat, cowboy boot or rocking horse.
The stand is from The Cupcake Tower and it’s one of my new favorite displays for cupcakes!
This was Britton headed for cupcakes…

 Happy 1st Birthday Britton!

Cute as a button

This cake was for a baby shower.  Beth couldn’t decide between a ruffle cake and a button theme.  I suggested…why not both?  Beth agreed and this is what I came up with.

The cake is a 6” round, the ruffles are buttercream and the buttons are fondant.  I used the Wilton Fondant and Gum Paste Silicone Mold to make the buttons, it was very easy to use.

The cupcakes each have a 1M buttercream swirl and a button topper.  The cupcake flavors were vanilla with raspberry filling and chocolate with peanut butter filling.

The cupcake tower was a recent purchase I splurged on. You can find it at The Cupcake Tower. It’s a really great product, I started with the tiny size and I’ll be able to add more layers if I need to.  It comes apart and stores flat which is awesome, because I’m running out of room for my cake supplies!

 

Chocolate and Peanut Butter Overload!

This cake was made for a teenage boy who loves chocolate and peanut butter.  It’s a 4 layer chocolate cake with peanut butter dream buttercream filling and chocolate frosting.  Reese’s Pieces top it all off!  I think that’s enough said.

 Happy Birthday Andrew!

Blue & White Graduation Cake

A graduation cake for about 100 people.  This cake is made of 14", 10" and 6" square cakes stacked.  I used plastic separator plates and the globe pillars from Wilton. All cakes were covered in fondant with LOTS of fondant balls for the border.  The topper is made from gumpaste.

Just the cakes please....

I have recently created a page that shows photos of all my cakes.  Click on the "Just Cakes!" link under the Pages heading on the right hand side of my blog.  I will continue to update and will also work on linking the photos to their respective blog posts in the near future.  Unfortunately updates to this page do not show up in readers or RSS feeds.  Sorry.

Thanks for looking!

Green M&M cake

This was a fun cake!  Rich is a retired gentleman who collects M&M memorabilia.  His wife and I decided that the green M&M would be a perfect fit for his birthday cake. 

The body is made from RKT covered with fondant and fondant accents.  The arms and legs are lollipop sticks covered with fondant. 

Happy Birthday Rich!

A Golfer, a Swimmer and an American Doll

I had a request for 3 birthday cakes within 2 months for children of the same family.  We decided on 10" x 10" 3-layer cakes.  They requested one dimensional decor on the cakes so here's what I did...

Vanilla buttercream to create the field and sky. The golfer was cut out of black fondant. Small fondant golf balls at the bottom corners of the cake.

Vanilla buttercream to create the "water".  Swimmer is cut from black fondant.

This last one was the one I was most nervous about.  This is the American Doll Lanie in her nature outfit.  The face is what made me nervous.  Cartoon caracters, sure...but real people faces, terrifying!  It took a few tries but I think it turned out pretty good.  BTW - Kake was the birthday girl's nickname for Caroline.

By the time my co-worker picked up the last cake I said "you must be pretty sick of cake by now", he said "Never!"  Now that's what i  like to hear :)

Daffodil Cake

Whenever I see a cake design I like, I make sure to save it in an "idea" file that I have.  I've had this cake design saved for a while now...just waiting for the right occasion to make it.  I was asked to do a cake for a Mom turning 60.  I turned to my idea file and pulled out a few designs that I thought looked like "Mom" cakes.  This was the one that was chosen.  

It is an 8" round cake with a dome of rice crispy treats covered in fondant on top.  I decided to use fondant so I could "glue" the daffodils to it.  I was afraid if I just used buttercream that they would not stay on.  The flowers were made ahead of time out of gumpaste.  It took a little while to figure out how to make them but once I made a few I was in the groove.  I primarily used this tutorial from http://www.make-fabulous-cakes.com/gum-paste-daffodil.html to make the daffodils.  The stems were piped with a #12 round tip using green buttercream.  The ribbon is not edible.

Honestly, I'm not happy with how the white shows through between the flowers, and I haven't come up with a solution for this if I need to made this cake again.  However, "Mom" loved her cake and that's what counts!



Now that's a Twinkie!

I'll admit I never really was a Twinkie girl.  My favorite was Ho Hos.  Gosh, I haven't had one of those in forever....mostly because we have no local Hostess distributors, so no Twinkies or Ho Hos to be found around here.  But ever since I started thinking about this cake all I want is a HO HO!

The request was for a Twinkie cake to feed about 40 people.  The most challenging part was scaling the dimensions so it looked like a Twinkie and not just a plain yellow cake.  I decided to show the Twinkie broken in half so the filling would show.  This Twinkie is about 7" wide, 5" tall, and 17" long!  I started with a 9" x 13' cake, cut it in half and rounded the tops.

Happy Birthday Twinkie Twerp!

In case you are wondering, Twinkie Twerp was a college nickname because the birthday girl was always craving Twinkies.

Super Mario Cake

I found a great pose of Super Mario for a cake design.  I decided to do a flat fondant image on the top of the cake.  I started by printing out a few copies of the image.  The cut out made it easier for me to determine what size pan I wanted to use too.  I just had to lay the image on my different size pans to see which one looked best.    Then I cut one of the images into "puzzle" pieces.  Here I am ready to begin...

Next I rolled out the colors of fondant I needed and placed a cut out piece on top.  I used an Exacto knife to cut around the piece.  Some of the pieces like the nose and eyebrows I just molded by hand.  I used my gumpaste tools to add "seams" to the pants and texture to his moustache.  After almost two hours I had put the fondant puzzle together! 

I made this a few days early so I just wrapped him between two pieces of cling wrap coated with crisco to keep him from drying out.  I also placed this into a ziploc bag.

Two days later it was still pliable so I could easily place him on top of my cake.

I had to come up with a design to add around the sides of the cake.  I wanted Mario to be the focus so I decided on a simple blue border with a few 1UP mushrooms.  I used different circle shape cutters to put this little guy together.

Mario was looking a little lonely on top of the cake so I added a few clouds around him, he is jumping after all.  And here's the finished cake...

 

Open Rose Patchwork Cutter

I ordered some cake goodies for myself for Christmas and one of the items was a patchwork cutter.  I have been looking at these for a while and decided to give it a try.  The cutter looks like this…
I purchased mine from Global Sugar Art.  I was originally going to use it as a stamp for brush embroidery but since the cake I was making was iced with buttercream I decided to use it as a cutter this time.  Hopefully I’ll have an occasion to use it as a stamp soon!
The cake was a small oval and I used a line impression mat on the sides to give it some interest.  I cut each flower out of fondant and dusted them with luster dust.  Then I placed one rose at the bottom on each side of the cake.  I was going to write Happy Birthday on the top because it was a birthday gift but I decided the single rose on top looked best.  Here is the finished product!

Happy Birthday Betty!

And because I always take multiple pictures I thought I’d show you all the views…



This cutter was very easy to work with and I can see multiple uses and lots of different styles that could be made with it.  Now I just need some time to play!