Monday, June 15, 2009

Piano Inspired Cake

This cake is one of my favorite cakes that I have made! It was for a milestone birthday for a friend who is an awesome keyboardist and singer.

It started off as 2 tiers of 3 layers each of white chocolate cake. It was filled with milk chocolate ganache, then iced in buttercream. The top 8" tier was covered in black fondant and the bottom 12" tier covered in white

Then I cut some keyboard keys out of white fondant and stuck them on with piping gel.

At this point I was scared of how it would turn out because it looked kind of silly

But then with the black keys it started to look great!

Around the bottom tier, I piped the music to Happy Birthday out of black royal icing.

One musician at the party even recognized it!

The cake was starting to look great. Then I added the flowers and it went from great to fantastic! It was my first time working with real flowers on a cake and it definitely won't be my last! The pretty orange and yellow colors of these flowers totally suited the occasion!

Yes, definitely one of my favorite cakes! It turned out classy and fun and everyone loved the look and taste of it!

We had a great time at the party! Happy Birthday Dickson!

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Cupcakes, Cupcakes, Cupcakes!

I've been doing a rather large amount of cupcakes lately! More than usual. Most of them have been for my own personal use, but I've had a couple actual orders for cupcakes.

The first was for Dale's workplace. I have been doing cakes for them every month up until now. This month I only had time to whip up some cupcakes. So I made some yummy chocolate cupcakes, frosted them with whipped ganache that was part Bakers chocolate and part melted Lindt chocolates (and part cream of course). Then I topped them with a Lindt chocolate each and some rainbow sprinkles.


Then I made a bunch of cupcakes for a client for a wedding shower. There were 5 dozen cupcakes in total. Half of them were white cake and half were chocolate. They were all iced with ganache. 4 dozen were decorated with simple white sprinkles and large flower. The final dozen were decorated with handmade fondant roses.


The client also requested 6 cupcakes for her grandfather who is a big Red Wings fan.

I also made some extras of these for my sister-in-law's birthday. They were delicious :)

Friday, June 5, 2009

Sugar Shoes

I've decided to try my hand at making shoes out of gum paste. I've always thought it was a really cute idea and just recently got some good gum paste that I could use to try it out. I left the gum paste white since it was just an experimental shoe and I didn't want to waste time coloring it.

I found a great tutorial on YouTube for a simple shoe to start out with.

I took a few photos along the way:

The shoe sole with a heel

With the lining, complete with "stitching" around the outside

The top of the shoe

The finished shoe! I added a little fondant bow for a finishing touch.

Watch for some fancier/sexier shoes in the future! The process was pretty easy, so I'm excited to make some cuter shoes now that I know the basics.

Greek Scroll Cupcakes

My best friend passed through town on Monday on her way to seminary in Michigan. We celebrated our birthdays together since mine was in April and hers is this month. For the occasion, I baked up some cupcakes. She had requested a cake a while back in the shape of a scroll with some Greek lettering on it because over the summer she will be studying Greek. This changed to cupcakes for portability (easier to eat while traveling) and this is what I came up with.


I made strawberry cupcakes and iced them with some leftover lemon cream cheese icing and also a few with some leftover white chocolate icing. The scrolls are gum paste painted with brown food coloring, then dusted with some gold pearl dust for shine.

Closeup of theta :)

I miss you Massiel! One evening just wasn't enough!