Easton's Birthday Cake

 try not to look too closely...I didn't ice the cake perfectly :) and my lettering is horrible!

This was so much fun to make. I have been wanting to try this method forever. All you do is find a picture, I printed one of Optimus from the internet, then tape it down to the back of a cookie sheet, then tape a piece of waxed paper on the back of that. Use black icing with Tip 1 (Wilton) and outline everything. Then use other colors to fill in where appropriate. Then use white icing and ice the entire thing. Stick it in the freezer and then quickly put it on your cake! I'm sure you could google it and find some great videos. Seriously anyone could do it with just a few supplies. So fun!

Farm Cake!

It was Uncle Charles' birthday a few days ago and I wanted to make him a cake! I had 3 ideas for a cake: golf, Cardinals baseball, or the farm. I asked his daughter and she suggested a farm cake. The kids LOVED watching me make it (Easton has all his birthday cakes planned out for the next 5 years and this was 4th on the list), and I think he really liked the cake. So much so that he didn't want to eat it, just save it for awhile. I'm not going to lie, this cake was a LOT of work! I tried to add things from his farm, like the pumpkins, pigs, and sheep, and he also has a new little friend that has come to live under his barn. Can you tell what it is? Oh and a huge thank you to my friend Christy who helped me dye the fondant! It was sooooo helpful! And she made a few of the pumpkins too! :)

Take 2!

Turned out better! The best thing I've ever done for myself was buy a garment steamer to steam the cakes. It gets rid of the powdered sugar that I use when I roll out the pieces to make them more manageable.

*i still got too tired to put the dots on the mat part, but the green really helps!

So the kid loves balls...

It was perfect for him!! And such a fun cake to make!

A smash cake!

I LOVE the colors the mom wanted for her one year old's smash cake. So fun!

Arrr Mateys!

This was literally a last minute order but I could not be more excited about it! Despite some serious fondant issues (I am going to start buying fondant. I don't care if it doesn't taste good), I really love the way it turned out. A big thanks to my sister in law Emily for helping paint the coins. I was SO tired and so grateful for the help!

There are 3 layers of cake on the bottom tier. That is SO much cake! But I think I love the height it gives to the cake. It was a chocolate cake with chocolate sour cream filling. I'm not really that good at fillings. I need to work on that one...

Easton's Cake!!

I've been having some serious issues with blogger tonight. Grrrr. So here is Easton's cake...I can't change the order of the pictures. Sorry. I saw a ton of these cakes on Cake Central and Easton got excited about it so I gave it a go. I learned a lot. I need to buy an exacto knife because cutting out the letters with a big bulky kitchen knife makes it really tough to do. I used MMfondant for the grey on the etch-a-sketch. That was not a good idea. Everything else was real fondant. I was going to tint some leftover marshmallow fondant a darker brown for the fence but when i realized how hard it was to work with I just used the same brown I had for the rope. When I was making the etch-a-sketch I didn't dust the surface I was working on with cornstarch and it made it really difficult to keep its shape. Thankfully I learned that before I tried to attempt the Toy Story Logo.

I'm happy with the way it turned out. The kids loved it and I learned so much!

Kara's Cake

For Kara's 1st birthday. I don't like how I can see the frosting holding the bow together. Oh well.

Chanel

I asked my sister in law what cake I could make her for her birthday and she found this one. So here is my Chanel cake in all its glory!




It is a white almond sour cream cake with cream cheese filling and marshmallow fondant. I was pretty happy with the way it turned out, although I might have done it a little thinner (it was 11x6...Maybe I should have done it 11x5)and instead of fondant for the edging I would do just black icing next time...maybe it would have turned out better. My finger nails are still black around the edges from dying the fondant black! YUCK! I also would use the little silver balls instead of rolling and painting fondant silver for the rivets. It didn't look as clean as I would have liked. Oh and it was so hard to put the logo on right! The fondant was thin and it stretched a lot when I was moving it. Didn't turn out too bad but not perfect. Hmmmm...there's got to be a technique for that! Oh and definitely would dye the fondant gray before painting it silver for the zipper and metal rings. The silver just didn't make it dark enough!

All in all this was my favorite cake yet!

Giraffe

You cannot imagine my excitement when I got my very first cake request last week for my friend Mikelle's** birthday. I was thrilled! So here is what my very first customers got:

Mikelle LOVES giraffe stuff and wanted it on her cake. So I said OKAY!!!!

I love the way it turned out. It's clean and (I think) elegant but still a little funky!

I'm really looking forward to the month of March. There are 3 birthdays in the Judd family and I am going to of course make a cake for every one of them. A golf bag cake for Nathan, a purse cake for Emily, and some sort of first birthday cake for my little niece. I'm hoping they will all be a challenge for me so I can learn. AND I hope to take the last cake decorating course!

**Mikelle is an up and coming photographer. You can check out her website here. She is currently offering discounted photo sessions so she can learn her way to becoming even more awesome! She already does great work. Some of my favs are here, here and, of course, here.