Happy Birthday Carter!

This week Lisa, one of the moms from our playgroup ordered a cake and cupcakes for her son Carter's first birthday party! She decided on the adorable theme of Winter ONEderland! She showed me a few photos for inspiration (gotta love Pinterest!) We went with red and blue and snowflakes for the major ideas to coordinate.  I think everything turned out pretty cute. The snowflake design was MUCH harder than I anticipated for the cake.  I tried a few different methods and ended up royal icing stenciling the big snowflake on top and doing the sides freehand. I did add pearl beads to the snowflake on the top. I think it def added to it. I forgot to take an updated photo afterwards.  The toppers turned out cute considering my photoshop was not working and i had to improvise. I would of loved to done more detail work on them.

Happy 1st Birthday Carter! 

Mom's 50th Birthday Cake!

I decided to make my mom's birthday cake for her suprise party! This time I wanted to try royal icing stenciling. I'd seen it online and in magazines and it always looks so awesome! But when i looked online for "cake stencils" i was FLOORED at how much they can be. I'm talking 50+ for a stencil! SERIOUSLY!? So being the frugal mom I am i went to the craft store and looked for small enough stencils to fit a two layer cake. It ended up only costing me with coupons(of course) $3 for each one.  Gotta love that! 
Since my mom's favorite flower is the white daisy I started with that and decided to do yellow so i could find other color daisy's to match for the cake topper.  For my first attempt i think it turned out pretty good. I am not happy with the border on each layer. I should of just did it in white icing or another technique, but i had a lot of extra royal icing that was already tinted that I didnt want to waste. 

So here it is!! It's a home made poundcake (my grandmothers recipe) with buttercream frosting, with rolled fondant!

PS! Fondant does burn! lol Since i had flowers on top and I insisted on putting 50 candles on it, all the heat stared to singe the cake and flowers! lol 

Cakes, Cakes, Cakes!

I have SO many different types of crafty things that I love to do. Everything from photography to home decor to crafting.  My latest endeavor is making cakes/decorating. In the past I haven't really done too much in the decor department other than working with fondant. Even then my skills are solely self taught based on whatever knowledge I have gotten from online.  (gotta love you tube videos lol).  My first attemt at fondant was my sister Amy's baby shower cake almost 2 years ago. I did a belly cake and honestly i think it turned out great for never working with the medium before.

So I decided for Brayden's Christening I would take on the challenge of another fondant cake. It turned out okay. Of course being the hyper critical person that I am I am never fully satisfied. I definitely learned a few things.. like don't make fondant pearls by hand.... they are a huge PITA and are not "perfect" looking. Next time i'm looking on the plastic mold online! :)  So here's how it turned out.. Took me about 6 hours total. 

It's a 2 layer fondant cake. With diamond quilting and pearl accents. 

I also signed up for a Wilton Cake decorating class at my local AC moore. It's 4 weeks long. We have done  2 classes so far. Since i have NO expericne working with actual icing i thought it would be a great idea to take the course. Right now we are learning decorator basics and the other 2 courses you can take get in to the really fun stuff like gumpaste and fondant.For now we are learning basic piping and design. Here's what we have done so far. 

week 2: tracing designs on cakes and filling them

week 1: making icing, cake basics and using star tips

I can't wait to learn how to do much more... I really making things (when i can find the time) so pass the word on if you want me to make you a cake :)