Clay's Ocean Birthday Cake & Cookies

Last Tuesday was my son's 10th birthday.  Ever since we went to California a few weeks ago (Sea World, the beaches, etc.), he is crazy about ocean themed things.  He especially likes dolphins now, since we had a special visit with a mama dolphin and her baby at Sea World.  He asked for a swimming sleepover at a hotel with an ocean themed chocolate cake.  He wanted sea creatures made out of glazed sugar cookies placed around it, as well as dolphins up on the top.  At this point, I kind of feel like I could glaze sugar cookies in my sleep :).  The sea shells are leftover white chocolates from the luao cake earlier this week.  The dolphins, waves, and presents were made out of marshmallow fondant.  The white foam and caps of the waves were royal icing.  On his actual birthday, I made these orca and angelfish cookies for his class at school.  Happy Birthday, Clay!! 

Luao Teacher Appreciation Cake

I made this Luao themed cake for the PTO for Teacher Appreciation Week.  The sand on the island is crushed Nilla wafers.  The tiki torches are bamboo skewers with Tootsie Rolls on the end and fondant flames.  The tiki hut is a jumbo size cupcake with pirouette rolled wafer cookies around it.  The thatched roof is light brown buttercream that I piped on with the grass pull-out tip.  I used a chocolate mold and white chocolate chips to make the seashells, and then I painted them with edible color dust and vodka.
Thanks to all the wonderful teachers out there!

Artist Cake

This weekend I made a birthday cake for my friend's little girl who was turning 8.  She loves art and was having an arts & crafts themed party at Michael's.  I was excited to finally get a chance to try out a technique I learned in a Wilton class a few years ago-striping.  In order to get the multi-colored effect on the shell border, you use a food-safe paintbrush dipped in gel color and paint a stripe down the inside of the bag.  This was the perfect cake to use it on.   I also had fun sitting down with the b-day girl in advance and watching her sketch out her dream cake for me.  Happy Birthday, Savannah!

Green Bay Packers Cake Pops

I was asked to make these special cake pops for someone who is a huge Packers fan.  One half are carrot cake with cream cheese frosting (really yummy) and the other half vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream.  The details on the helmets are piped in royal icing.  These took many, many hours to make, but I think they turned out cute.  The cake pop stand was made by the friend who asked me to make the cake pops.  I think it turned out amazing!

Monster Baby Shower Cake

This past weekend I had fun making this surprise baby shower cake for some friends of ours in Cub Scouts.

Since the couple had tons of little monster items picked out on their registry, I decided to put a monster up on top and put a pacifier in its mouth and gave it a fondant diaper.  The funniest thing was the reaction of the person who put all the monster stuff on the registry (daddy to be), who fell in love with the monster on top.  I don't normally do people photos, but there were some very funny pics snapped of him with the cake, so I wanted to feature them here.

Candyland Cake

Today was my daughter's 7th birthday party, which was a Candyland theme.  I just tried to re-create the game board and used sugar cookies on cookie sticks with edible images of the characters.  It was lots of fun!

Teapot Cake & Cupcakes

Last weekend I made this little cake and cupcakes for a 50th birthday surprise party.  I used the Betty Crocker Bake & Fill dome pan, frosted it in an ivory color buttercream (it looks yellow in the picture for some reason, but was a creamy ivory color in reality).  The handle, spout, and lid are shaped out of gumpaste.  I painted the knob on the lid with edible gold leaf and then piped a random lacey pattern using the same ivory colored buttercream with dots in between the squiggles, and on some of the dots, I painted the same gold leaf on to give the teapot some interest.   I also added some pink drop flowers and ivory colored leaves and vines on various parts of the teapot. I used the large star tip to pipe the pink buttercream on the cupcakes and then made a simple 5 petal flower in a slightly darker pink colored gumpaste and used a gold dragee for the middle of each flower.  I made the tea bag tags out of gumpaste and wrote different tea names on each one using an edible marker (ie:  "chamomile, Earl Grey, English breakfast, etc.) and the hostess set each cupcake in a porcelain teacup to put around the cake on the table.  I poked holes in the gumpaste tea bag tags before the gumpaste dried hard, and then after it dried, threaded some white thread through the hole and let each tag dangle out of the teacup/cupcake.  I think they all really liked it, including the birthday girl, who collects teapot and loves tea.  This was very simple and fun to do.