Sue's Grim Reaper Birthday

Trent called asking for a birthday cake for his wife. I won't say how old she is but you can probably infer a timeline based on the design that her husband chose :) He took a page of pictures that his wife drew of a cartoon grim reaper and asked that it be the center of the cake. Then, in order to make the cake less "death-focused" and more fun-birthday focused, we decided to add the purple and the daisies around the grim reaper. There are little skulls around the base dispersed with more daisies. Trent liked the cake so I hope Sue did as well.

The cake is a chocolate cake with buttercream and covered in marshmallow fondant. All of the decorations are also marshmallow fondant. This cake was really fun to make because of its creativity and design. It reminded me of a Tim Burton-esque color scheme and idea (although it reminded Rosie of a Charlie Brown themed-halloween).

Wow, Wow, Wubbzy, I made three cakes!

Kieran turned one yesterday and his mom, Susannah, wanted a Wow, Wow, Wubbzy cake for him. After the giant wedding order from yesterday, I was pretty scared about finishing this cake order by 11am today. The cakes were a chunky monkey cake, which is chocolate cake layered with banana cream filling, chocolate ganache, and sliced bananas. Susannah chose this flavor because of her love for ganache, which is a rich and decadent chocolate frosting consisting of cream and chocolate. I sent her home with a little extra ganache on the side to get her through the party :) There was a lot of detail on this cake that I wanted to share so I tried to get a shot of the top of the cake and then I'm adding a picture of the characters made of fondant.

The yellow guy is Wubbzy, Walden is the purple dude, and Widget is the pink builder-woman. I also made the little birdies that Susannah, I mean Kieran, wanted so badly (hehe). After making this cake, I'm definitely going to invest more time into watching the show :) Kieran needed his own cake to smash open and enjoy so this smaller cake was just for him. Additionally, Susannah wanted to honor her brother's birthday and by honor, I mean make fun of him with a Wow, Wow, Old Wubbzy cake. I thought the idea was hilarious so I whipped up a third cake for Dallas. It's a bit hard to see in picture but the third Wubbzy is old, as evidenced by the little bifocals, the cane, the pants pulled up to his belly button and the gray beard/receding hair. Oh and his tail, which is usually up and curved is more lazy now. These three cakes were so much fun to make and I hope Kieran loved it too!

Two Smurfs, a Gazebo, and 600 Mini-Desserts!!

This weekend was a big one! Kara and Chase got married and wanted a unique set of cakes to match their fun and unique personalities. The first cake was a domed gazebo to match the location of their wedding because this was where they got engaged. The dome cake was nearly 18-inches wide and weighed more than I can imagine (again, I needed my side-kick/muscle to carry the cake to the site... Rosie to the rescue again!). The cake was a lemon raspberry cake with raspberry cream filling and raspberry buttercream. They wanted phrases from their favorite songs to be around the edges of the cake. It's amazing how much smaller this cake looks in this picture!

The second cake is the one they wanted to cut. It's also a lemon raspberry cake. Interestingly, this cake is much bigger in the picture than it was at the wedding because it was a mini-cake. The base cake was 6-inches, the middle was 4-inches and the top was 2-inches wide. The two smurfs at the top were an adorable touch by the bride and groom.

The wedding colors were bright yellow, purple and red so when the bride asked for lemon bars and brownie bites, we made some decisions on how to make the order more vibrant and fun. The couple wanted 350 mint brownie bites and 250 lemon bars. I made extra in the process just in case anything messed up so they ended up with around 380 brownie bites and 280 lemon bars (what was I going to do with 30 brownies and lemon bars? :) It was a long two days to get everything prepared but Rosie and I literally finished without a minute to spare. We topped the brownies with mint-flavored buttercream dyed to match the wedding colors. The lemon bars are inside the fun and colorful cupcake holders that Kara chose herself. I made the cupcake stands a few days ago and matched those to the wedding colors as well. As Rosie and I set up the cakes, lemon bars, and brownie bites, the bride and groom started their wedding photos so I got to see the couple's reaction to the cakes. :) They already looked thrilled and happy from the wedding. It felt great to be a part of a couple's special day like this... totally stressful but totally worth it!

Gigantic Fruit Cupcake Tower

I received an almost frantic call from Renee a few weeks back. Renee was having a luau themed wedding reception and wanted a unique "cake" for the party. She had this brilliant idea for a cupcake tower that no one in the area would agree to make (I think she said that she called between 7-10 bakers and cakers). She sent me a picture of a cupcake tower covered with fruit in between buttercream covered cupcakes and I agreed to take on the challenge. After I hung up, I realized I had no idea how to get this done, which is why I created the mini-fruit cupcake tower a bit ago. It was definitely a challenge but totally worth it in the end. It's amazing how fast 8 hours flies when you're on a time crunch!

This cupcake tower holds over 6lbs of strawberries, 2lbs of grapes, 1lb of blueberries and two fresh pineapples. There are 46 large cupcakes and 23 mini-cupcakes. Half of the cupcakes were vanilla cupcakes with buttercream and half are red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting. The tower stood over 28inches tall and so I can only imagine how much this weighs (obviously, I couldn't carry this monstronsity!). My man-friend nearly passed out from the pressure of driving an hour away with me and the cupcake tower in the back along with having to carry it through the house to the set up site. I rewarded him with his choice of restaurant for dinner :) I wish I could've stayed for the reception because Renee and her guests were seriously having a party! It was my idea of a wedding reception! Renee's reaction was totally worth the work because she was more thrilled than me in a free-candy shop (and I love me some candy!). I'm so glad I helped alleviate her stress at her wedding reception and make the cake that she wanted.

After washing all of the fruit by hand, I sprayed the fruit with sugar water so that when biting into the fruit, there's a bit of extra sweetness. Yummy!

Hello Kitty and Disney Cars Cake

Patty was having a birthday party for all three of her children, a pair of twins and an older daughter. We decided to do the two-sided cake for the party rather than three separate cakes. The two girls wanted a Hello Kitty design and the lil' guy wanted Disney's Cars for his side.

The top tier was a rainbow bright cake with a red layer, white layer, and pink layer of vanilla cake, filled with buttercream and sprinkles. The bottom tier was a strawberry cheesecake cake. This time, I tried a new recipe which had the traditional two layers of strawberry cake, cream cheese frosting, and cheesecake cream filling. What made this cake different was that I added a middle layer of rich strawberry cake with strawberries baked into the cake. I hope they loved it :)