See Salt Cake City on KUTV 2 News!

I have come across a wonderful opportunity to be on KUTV 2 News on Tuesday, August 3rd at 6:15am. Now, I realize most of you lovely people don't live in Utah and I realize that the rest of you lovely people aren't awake at 6:15am. In any case, get your Tivo's ready and check out Salt Cake City being spotlighted (or spotlit :) on Connect 2 Utah. Below is the link to the website in case you're out of state and then you can check it out after the show. Thanks so much and I appreciate all of your constant support!

http://connect2utah.com/

SuperGabe to the rescue!

Gabe was having a birthday and this year, he chose Superman as his hero (last year, I did a Batman cake for him so I was excited to top that cake). His mother, Reena, had seen a cool cake with Superman flying out of a burning building and wanted to recreate the cake with a few added details. After Gabe saw the sketch, we were ready to go! The cake was a Brownie Lovers Cake with mint ganache layered in between the chocolate cake and brownie layers. It was covered in marshmallow fondant and decorated with marshmallow fondant as well.

The burning building was rice krispies covered in marshmallow fondant and then I painted on the fire for the windows. I made Superman out of fondant as well and tried to get his muscles bulging :) I also thought it was funny that Superman has a sort of 70's Superman hairdo. The Superman logo and shooting stars were made out of fondant too. Gabe was so cute when he saw the cake. He kept wanted to touch and poke and eat, but they had to wait for the party :) I'm so glad he loved it!

Spongebob's Cake Under the Sea

Kris wanted a Spongebob Squarepants Cake... well, technically, Kennedy wanted it for her birthday. After researching the little guy, I knew that Bob definitely needed to be on the cake along with his house. Then I realized, the lil guy lives under the sea. So the cake creation took quite a bit of planning, which just means that I was in heaven! The cake was Strawberry-Not-so-Short Cake (strawberry cake with strawberries baked in layered with vanilla cream filling and buttercream) covered in homemade marshmallow fondant.

In order to make the cake look "ocean-y," I hand-painted the blue at the bottom and then worked in the lighter blue color at the top using food coloring. I also hand-painted some of the "squigglies" (I don't know what they are called or what they are supposed to be! :) After the colors dried, I placed hand-shaped "squigglies" that I made out of fondant on top to give it some depth and layering.

Now onto the pineapple. This was by far the hardest part of the cake. It's quite challenging to take a 2-D cartoon and turn it into a 3-D figure and make it look like the cartoon. So I shaped the house out of rice krispies and then covered it in homemade marshmallow fondant. The trick here was making the pineapple lines look right because the cartoon pineapple doesn't look exactly like a real pineapple. I ended up having to cover, recover, and then recover the pineapple in order to get the lines just right. Phew! Then, I cut out the leaves at the top and let them dry in shape. I added the door, windows, and pipe out of the side and inserted the leaves into the top. Quite the challenge but so rewarding in the end.

Spongebob was so much fun to make. I shaped his body first, added some pants and inserted arms and legs. He's completely made out of marshmallow fondant, which is a bit tricker to shape and mold because it doesn't hold as easily as gumpaste or store bought fondant. However, I wanted to make him edible and delicious for Kennedy! I hope she loved it!

MIni-Blue Flower Cupcakes

I made a batch of cupcakes to take around to local vendors here in Utah and decided on using mini-blue flowers with tiny green and white accent flowers. The flowers were made out of marshmallow fondant and there are blue and pearl dragees (basically, mini-jawbreaker type of candies, except they're not as tasty but my goodness, they're cute!). Half of the cupcakes were Spices & Cake with buttercream while the other half were Chocolately Chocolate cupcakes. Yummy! My house smelled so delicious after baking these babies! I hope you can enjoy them vicariously :)

Toy Story Extravaganza!

Liz and Daniel told me that they wanted a Toy Story themed cake and set of cupcakes for their daughter's 2nd birthday. I thought it was perfect timing because I just saw Toy Story 3 in theaters (it was awesome!). Because they needed around 30 cupcakes, I thought I'd made a few different characters out of marshmallow fondant as cupcake toppers. This first picture shows the main cupcake toppers and then I laced the edges of the cupcakes with matching colored sprinkles (which, incidentally makes it difficult to see the toppers in some of the cupcakes). The second picture shows all of the cupcakes together and Olivea was the birthday girl. Half of the cupcakes were Red Velvet flavored and the other half were White Chip Cake.
This last picture is Liv's smash cake (which ended up being a normal sized cake... what can I say? I have a special place in my heart for this family :) This cake is actually covered in buttercream with only marshmallow fondant accents so that Liv could just reach on in there and get messy. Ironically, she's a REALLY clean little chic so she didn't even want to her little hands messy. I heard she did a lot of staring and not so much touching. Haha. The "Liv Birthday 2" is supposed to mimic the Toy Story 2 logo and the clouds are from the wallpaper in Andy's room. The cake was Rainbow Bright Cake (vanilla cake dyed different colors and layered with buttercream and sprinkles). Although Liz and Daniel didn't get the messy pictures they wanted, they did love the cake, and that's all that matters :)

Purple Octopus Cake

Melanie emailed and said she wanted an octopus cake for her daughter's birthday party. I saved a picture of a really cute octopus cake made by The Pink Cake Box and so we modified that design to make it unique for Adison's birthday and here's what we came up with. The octopus is made out of rice krispies and then covered in homemade marshmallow fondant. The cakes are also covered in homemade marshmallow fondant and the legs of the octopus are made out of marshmallow fondant as well. It's hard to see here but the octopus is wearing a pearl necklace with a little yellow seashell for her charm.

The flavor was a very summer appropriate flavor, Lemonberry (lemon cake layered with raspberry cream filling and raspberry buttercream). The bottom tier was a little over 5 inches tall and the top tier was about 6 inches tall, I think. During the process of making this cake, I learned a very important fact (well, not really that important...). Did you know that an octopus doesn't have tentacles? Weird, right? I had no idea! Anyway, Melanie said the party guests and especially Adison loved the cake. Music to my ears :)

Purple Stripes and a Tuxedo

Sarah contacted me a while back about her upcoming wedding. She wanted an elegant but simple wedding cake that matched her purple and white themed wedding. Sarah saw a beautiful cake done by Cakegirls (one of my favorites) and fell in love with its design so we modeled this one after their deisng. We decided to have the cakes each be 6 inches tall to give it more character and had the stripes in varying shades of purple painted with luster dust. The cake was covered in homemade marshmallow fondant and there were two tiers of White Almond Cake (almond flavored cake layered with cream cheese frosting and chopped almonds) along with one layer of Emerald City Cake (light-pistachio flavored cake tinted green and layered with buttercream and pistachio cream filling). Once assembled, Sarah provided the beautiful birds on the top of the cake that kissed (so cute!) and I added a few peonies.

Sarah also wanted a Groom's cake for her now-husband that was based on an inside joke they share. This was meant to look as much like a tuxedo as possible. The collar stood up and the bow-tie was also 3-D. The flower matched the peonies on the main wedding cake. This was an 8-inch square Mocha Java Cake (chocolate cake layered with coffee buttercream) covered in homemade marshmallow fondant. The collar and bow-tie were also made out of marshmallow fondant. Here's another shot of the cake for you.