Some Cake Decorating

I have not been doing much cake decorating of late, but in January I had two opportunities.  Both went fairly quick and smoothly.

These cupcakes were the first.  They were for an open house, for a friend who just adopted three kids.  The trees were in honor of their family shrub growing into a tree!   

The second was for the birthday of the daughter from a friend from work.  After which I had "Do You Want to Build a Snowman" stuck in my head for days afterwards!

Cakes for Hire

In 2011 I did my first cake decorating for hire. All were for people at work. Taking all those cakes for the birthdays at work sure "paid" off :)

Here are photos of 3 of the 4 I did. I guess I missed that last one, oops.

Here is the first, for a co-worker's daughter's birthday.

This is for a co-worker's wife's birthday.

This one was for a co-worker's daughter's first, first day of school (she started Kindergarten this year).

The last one was a combo for a co-worker's two children's birthdays. Their birthdays are within days of each other and they were celebrating together so half the cake was girly for the daughter and the other half was more manly for the son. It was quite fun to do, too bad I missed taking a photo.

Celebrating Birthdays at Work

My company does a great job of celebrating co-workers birthdays. A card is sent around a few days early for everyone to sign and when it's delivered it contains a Cold Stone gift card. We decorate the desk of the birthday person with streamers, balloons and other fun things. We also bring munchies and sweets for the celebration. In March I took a cake for a team members birthday and ended up doing one for everyone else through the rest of year. I got photos of a lot but not all.

Winnie the Pooh was actually for a baby shower. We like celebrating new babies too.

Side note on this one, I "convinced" them the chocolate cake crumbs caught in the white frosting was done on purpose, so the ball looked like it had some dirt on it :)

A Labor of Love

This year I was able to go to California for my Mother's birthday and this is what I made for her. I just so happens that the day I did the decorating was one of the hottest days in Ventura ever. Since the weather is usually mild and lovely most of the mission home doesn't have air conditioning (including the kitchen). It made the experience quite an adventure - luckily it didn't all melt! It tasted good and we all enjoyed it.

New Job

I am the newest Wilton Method Instructor at the Logan Hobby Lobby! The first class started this week as is so far going great. It's just very part time so I'm still working on getting something full-time. I am grateful to at least have this do in the mean time. The schedule is fairly flexible so I should easily be able to work something full-time in addition to this.

I've been keeping myself pretty busy around house cleaning, organizing, cooking, and finishing projects like crazy! Most of them are for the holidays so photos won't turn up for a little while . . .

Fondant

My first fondant covered cake. All things considered it went fairly well. It's not perfect but I'm okay with that :)

Gum Paste

I took another Cake Decorating Class is July which focused on using Gum Paste and Fondant. They are different yet similar. Gum Paste can be thinner and dries quicker. Cakes are covered in Fondant and decorations are made from Gum Paste, generally speaking. In a way it was like playing with Play Dough. We mainly did flowers from Gum Paste. Here are some examples. I think it's neat how "real" some of them look. Sorry some of the photos are so blurry try and I might I could not get the camera to cooperate with what I was trying to do.

Calla Lily





A Rose



Carnations, Daisies, Mums & Leaves

Even more cake!

This month I've been taking two cake classes and so far managed to only have to bake cupcakes once. This was the last week of class and I needed a cake for each one. This is the first one I've done where the design is completely my own, no inspiration taken from another original. I'm pretty happy with how it turned it. I learned ways I shouldn't do things, so if I do something similar in the future I know what to change.

More Cake

Here's another one I did for class. Part of the border just fell off - don't know what happened there. The flowers are made from royal icing and gum paste. My favorite are the daffodils, my favorite color is the roses, a deep orangey-red.

Lady Bug

This one is just for fun and practice. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. It took a LONG time to color the icings, both true black and red are challenging to achieve. I started with chocolate for the black so I think that helped, it still took a lot of coloring though. The red took even more - I finished off one container of coloring plus an entire new one! I just partook of a piece of cake and it was DELICIOUS - triple chocolate cake, with chocolate and vanilla flavored buttercream.

Covering a cake with stars takes a while, and definitely works the hand and arm muscles. I beginning to see the appeal of using Fondant.

More Cakes

This is my "final" cake from my first class. The trick I was taught to smooth it out actually made it much much worse - opps! This cake was lemon with strawberry filling, and lemon butter cream frosting - it was delightfully delicious and the lemon made it light and refreshing!

Here's a close up of the roses and sweet peas. They are far from perfect, but I think for my first go they're pretty good :)


This was for Easter. The cake tasted good. It's not suppose to be lopsided, and I think they eyes make it look a bit possessed but oh well, all things considered it turned out fine. A learning experience for sure. Next time I make the ducky I'll avoid having to transport it anywhere - that was a huge contributor to the lopsidedness.

First Go at Cake Decorating

Here's proof of my beginnings as a "cake decorator". I'm taking a class with a friend and this is what we worked on during our last class. It's fun but kinda hard work on the hand.