Nothing says Christmas like Penguins and Statistics!

The last two cakes I made this week were for a school/ work party and for an end of the semester class party. I know it's hard to see in this image but if you know anything about quantitative methods or statistics, you'll notice that there's no such thing as a Chi-NOVA-Regression Test.... not to mention "starliciousness." However, for us nerds in this class, we got quite the kick out of it :) This was a dark chocolate chip, peanut butter creme cake (so it tastes like a Reese's peanut butter cup). This was a very simple design for Christmas considering my next cake was a bit more intensive.

This cake was for a program that I work with at the University of Utah, called CLEAR (Communication, Leadership, Ethics, and Research). I wanted to do another wintery-themed cake and so penguins were the way to go. This was a red velvet and peppermint white chocolate chip cake layered with peppermint ganache (rich dark chocolate) and crushed candy canes. The igloo is made out of rice crispy treats and then covered in fondant and the other figures are handmade.

Enjoy your holidays everyone!!!

Batman and Marouf fight Crime!

After a long break from making cakes, I had four to make this week. Here are two of them. First up is a birthday cake, Batman style, for Hyrum. If you don't live in Utah, Hyrum is a very popular name. :)

This second cake is an inside joke. My awesome professor talked all semester about his love for hamburger pizza. He taught a class called "Critical Methods," and if you don't know what that means, don't worry most of us don't either :) hehe. In any case, my man-friend drew up this caricature of Prof. Marouf Hasian and I recreated it out of fondant. The cake was a white chocolate chip cake and all of the "pizza toppings" are fondant.

I also am attaching a picture of Marouf himself in order for you to get a better look at the man in the pizza :)

First Attempt at a Purse Cake

I made this purse (more of a handbag, I guess) cake for my sister-in-law's birthday. Her initials are EP and she's purse-obsessed! It was my first attempt at a purse cake and I only had a few hours to put it all together... I know, excuses, excuses, I just know it's not perfect. In any case, it was red velvet layered with buttercream covered in marshmallow fondant.

Well, Hello there Kitty!

Here are a set of Hello Kitty Cupcakes I made yesterday. My parents are visiting and so I had a little assembly line going because I was on a time crunch. Rosie and my mother colored the frosting and coated the cupcakes, I handmade the characters and decorations from fondant, and my dad placed them in the box (he didn't want to get his hands dirty :)

Here's a closer view for you. Enjoy!

Cake for Cell Phone Addicts

This is a Strawberry Lemonade Cake. Technically it's layered strawberry and lemon cake (no "ade" in it). I made it for a friend who texts like a madwoman! :) I'm also including an inside view of the layers.

A Special Cake for Mom

I made a cake for my mom this week because she was visiting. I tapped into some of her hobbies and things that she loves.






The figures are my mom and dad, my two brothers and lastly me, in fondant form.





The musical notes play out "Happy Birthday to you."

The stained glass cross is made of buttercream.

Insider's Perspective

I recently made two cake experiments. The first is a Pumpkin Pie Cake.

The second is a Strawberry Cheesecake Cake :) Yum! Enjoy the inside view...

Blues Clues Cupcakes

Cupcakes are the thing right now so I'm getting into it. These are Blues Clues cupcakes, hopefully that's evident. I dyed vanilla cupcakes blue and baked in some sprinkles, filled them with blueberry buttercream, covered them in more buttercream, dipped the tops in crystallized sugar, then topped them with handmade marshmallow fondant characters. I told the client to have fun with all the hyper kids after they eat these at the party :) FUN! Here's an inside peek...

It's all in the Details

Here are some minor little details that I'd like to share... First up are the animals from the Jungle Cake. Completely inspired by Cakecentral.com.

Next is the pioneer trek wagon. As I mentioned in a previous post, it's just like the ol' pioneers used to have in their wagons :)

This plane was modeled after the Groom's real plane, tail numbers and all. Also, you can see the "cracked mud" better in this picture.

Next is the fence, grass, and flowers from my cowgirl cake. I just like putting as much depth and layering as possible when I'm not doing 3-D cakes in order to give it a little more to look at.

Lastly, this is fishing Dave.... In his boat, he has a bucket of bait (with worms included), a lifesaver (just in case) and his tackle box. Also, his fishing lures are in his hat, as they should be :)

Didn't quite make the cut

Here are some of my creations that didn't quite make the blog cut :) This first one was one of my first cakes but I didn't have any tools except a wood carving blade and the ring on my finger (that's where the small circles came in). Although not my best work, still fun!


This box was an attempt at getting know fondant a little better. We bonded here...






These flowers were for a very small cake and so I zoomed in to get the details. Tropical-ish? I don't know.

Because I live a few states away from my dad, I made this blackberry for a fake cake on Father's Day. I then took pictures of the fake cake and sent that to my dad. He was probably hoping for a trip to Disneyland... sorry, Dad, maybe next year!

These are gumpaste roses covered in edible shimmer dust. You'd be surprised how long it takes to make these babies.... but totally worth it in the end.

Ironman and Tennis

This is an Ironman cake (I hope that's obvious :) And if you can't tell, Lex turned 6! hee,hee.

This is a tennis-themed cake I made. All of the decorations (including the rackets and net) are made out of fondant. The bottom design was inspired by Cakecentral.com. I hope you likey!

Yoga and Starbucks... Together at Last

This is the only cake I've made twice (due to unforeseen circumstances). It was for a musical called "Yoga." Good times!

Next is a Starbucks cake. I made the logo by hand with fondant. I wanted to show what the inside of the cakes look like too. The Starbucks cake was red velvet on top and on the bottom, I layered vanilla cake with espresso flavored cake.

First Cupcakes and Only Cookies

Here are my first attempts at cupcakes. This is before the days of piping bags and piping tips (at least in my world) so I just filled plastic bags with buttercream. VERY FUN! I would suggest that you all take multiple hours out of your day to just relax with some cupcakes and bags of buttercream :)
I made these cupcakes because I was on a high from the cupcakes made above. So much fun!


These cookies took quite some time. I like the way they turned out though :) Not too bad for my first attempt.

Sesame Street and Hollywood Glam

Now we're up to date. Here is one of my most recent cakes (well, in September). Similar to the design of the Winnie the Pooh Cake, this Sesame Street cake has various characters around the top tier. Oscar was hand-made out of fondant and sat beautifully at the top. As you might guess, Zachary turned 2 :)





Kaya was having a 2nd birthday too. This cake was modeled after an old school Hollywood Glam motif. Lots of black, white, red, and stars... of course (with shimmer dust everywhere).

Both of these cakes were so much fun.... Assembling all of the decorations just brings complete happiness to my day :) Enjoy!

Airplanes and Circles

Now you might be thinking, "well now, what is that?" Let me explain. So Emily was getting married and wanted a unique Groom's cake. She and "Sharky" had a specific memory they were trying to recreate with this cake. This is an airplane strip in the middle of the desert with cracked mud all around. I cut out individual pieces of "cracked mud" (fondant) and pieced them together in order to create the textured look. I sculpted the plane out of styrofoam and then covered it in fondant a number of times in order to get it to look exactly like the Cessna they were looking for. There were two very hard parts of this cake. 1) The cake was over 2 feet wide and over 1 1/2 ft long. It was giganto. Without the cake base, it covered the entire top shelf of my fridge with very little room to close. 2) That plane did not want to stand up. You can imagine trying to hold up the weight of a plane on 3 little legs (planes are weird that way). In the end, it all worked out beautifully.






After making that huge cake, I decided to slow it down and make a simplistic design for my future-mother-in-law's birthday cake. Simple. Ah, you gotta love simple.

UCLA, Massages, and Horsies

At that time, this was the biggest cake I had made. It was HUGE! I made the UCLA sign by hand (luckily, I got me some wonderful edible black-pens so the outlining wasn't too hard). Twas fun!






Holly was a coworker of mine who was moving off to California. She's a massage therapist (magic hands) and so I made her a cake of a massage table. Don't worry, I covered up the unmentionable areas :)
Here's a side view with her nicknames all around the sides. Ah, good times.


This is my beloved cowgirl cake. Totally inspired by

Cakecentral.com. Horsey on top is handmade and the bandana is hand-drawn. Then we have the cow-print and lastly a wooden picket-fence. I was totally excited about it. YEAH CAKE!

Gettin' to the Fun-sies

This was one of my favorite cakes when I first made it. I made all of the decorations by hand and the boat was quite a challenge. I thought I was ready to take on the big boys because I made that cart for the Pioneer Trek cake but this boat was a lot of hard work. It's not easy to get fondant to hold in a "boat-shape" until it hardens. Then I had to find a way to make "Dave" sit in the boat without it collapsing (Dave was heavy... sorry, Dave :) The only thing on the cake that was inedible was the fishing wire connecting his fishing pole to a fish. I wanted the cake to be hopeful! hee,hee.


This cake was for a friend for a friend (yes, I did that on purpose). I never met Andrew but I heard that his reaction was, "WHOA! Is that FONDANT!? NO WAY!" haha. Good times. Obviously it's a pool-themed cake. The pool table on the top didn't turn out as I would've liked but overall, I'm okay with the mistakes I make :)










This is one of my all-time faves. The images on the right side are the images displayed all around the cake. I made them by layering fondant on top of fondant until it looked right to me. Now, this is before I realized that they make edible-ink-markers so all of the black outlines on these images were made using a paintbrush. Ugh... took forever! I'm smarter now! haha. I hope Natey-Bear Loved it :)