A cake for a Communication Scholar

This is the largest cake I've made to date. Phew! It's finals week and also the last week that one of my favorite professors will be teaching. She's an AMAZING communication scholar and wonderful teacher so I wanted to make this cake in honor of her life. We had a surprise party for her and she was just shocked. It was pretty awesome! The top tier is chocolate cake with coffee buttercream filling (because of her love of chocolate and coffee). The second tier is apple pie cake with cheesecake cream filling, and the third tier is orange creamsicle cake with orange buttercream. The bottom tier was a fake cake and we had just enough cake to feed her students in the class and the extra older students who came to surprise her.

Here are some closer photos of the images I created for the cake. Everything is handmade with homemade marshmallow fondant. It was so much fun to "research" her life and to see some memories recreated in cake. (Yes, those are a pair of panties falling out of a purse. :) haha. I love this woman!)

Dirt Bikes and Butterflies

It's been a while since I've been able to make a cake. School is consuming my life! Ahh! Almost done with the semester so I can focus on sweeter things in life. Anyway, this weekend, I was able to make two cakes. The first was quite a challenge to make. Sarah wanted to surprise her husband with a dirt bike cake since that's one of his hobbies. She supplied the mini-bike replica and I wanted to make her family in fondant form. Here is the finished product. Twas quite the challenge to get the track to read "30" and to have Sarah's husband standing up with the bike. It is a Turtle cake (chocolate cake with caramel and chopped pecans) covered in marshmallow fondant. Everything on the cake is edible and handmade, with the exception of the bike and the toothpicks holding up the signs. I hope you likey!














Here's a top view for you as well.












The second cake I made was for Sydney who is turning 11. Angela, her mom, wanted this cake to be "girlie" so I wanted to make an ode to the "Cakegirls." I was inspired by their design which was on a huge cake and just made it smaller for Sydney. The bottom is a rich chocolate cake with homemade chocolate buttercream and the top is a white chocolate chip cake with homemade buttercream. The butterflies were handmade and I actually piped the design on them, which was a first time for me (how I got this far without piping is still a mystery).