Maroon & Brown Shimmer Cake

I was asked to make a display cake for an awesome venue that I partner with (The Gathering Place at Gardner Village) because they were doing a wedding show. I've been to their main reception hall and it's warm and rustic so I wanted to bring in those tones with this display cake. The whole cake is covered in homemade marshmallow fondant. This top tier is quilted and I placed little impressions in the corners so that it looks more like a cushion or pillow or fabric. Then, I placed little edible dragees in the center of the corners. I added a beaded border made out of MMF to top off this tier. The second tier has an edible brown ribbon with a brooch studded with more dragees. I layered fondant around the tier a few times to give it the look of fabric as well. The third tier is a hexagon and I covered it in white fondant. Then, I used a sponge and food coloring to sponge on a brown tone. I let it dry and then sponged on another layer of brown dye.

Lastly for this tier, I used a damask stencil up against the dried fondant and essentially spray painted edible shimmer onto the cake so that it only showed up in the light. It's such a soft pattern that's barely noticeable but it's one of my favorite touches on the cake. I added a very small pearl border around this tier as well. The fourth tier repeated the design of the second tier with a maroon background and the "fabric" fondant border and a larger edible bow & brooch. The last tier was similar to the top tier. For this one though, I did a little something different.

I have done the quilted pattern on many cakes but I wanted to make it unique for this display. Rather than quilting the whole base, I centered the pattern on each side and only quilted a triangle shape onto the cake. Again, this was such a subtle touch but I love it. This final tier had a pearl border as well. I sprayed the whole cake down with the same edible shimmer that the damask pattern was sprayed with and made the whole cake pop a little more.

The ladies at the Gathering Place said it was a big hit and it looked like it belonged in their wedding set up at the wedding expo. It was home :)

Make Up Cake

Breanna wanted a "girlie" cake for Brylan and thought she would love a make up themed cake. I have to say that I LOVED making this cake. I spent hours and hours making little make up pieces out of fondant and after every piece, I was more and more happy. I made several lipsticks, nail-polish, eye shadow, mascara, tweezers, brushes, and blush. Ah, it really was fun. All of the pieces on this cake were edible and there really is nothing that makes me happier than that... okay, maybe a few things but I was very pleased. The cake was vanilla with strawberry cream filling and covered in homemade marshmallow fondant.

Here's an up close shot of the pieces. I wish I could explain how I made these pieces but really, it's just a lot of circles and squares squished together until it looks right.

JP Display Cupcakes

In January, I was a vendor at a kid's show called "Winter Palooza." While there, I met Rick & Jodie Peters, owners of JP Display. They are the behind the scenes people that set up trade shows, helps business promote products and services, and make everything run smoothly at these shows and events. You can check out their work at http://jpdisplay.com/

They were wonderful to help me with my first booth ever and then they asked me to make a set of 100 cupcakes for one of their clients. I was happy to do it. We thought it would be great to have cupcakes topped with their logo so I made their exact logo out of marshmallow fondant. There were chocolate cupcakes with buttercream, lemon cupcakes with lemon buttercream, vanilla on vanilla, and chocolate cupcakes with peanut butter frosting (YUM!).

Missionary Badge Cake

Easter's brother was coming home from his LDS mission and she wanted to do a unique cake for the party. She thought a cool idea would be to make his missionary badge in cake form. It was also going to be fun because the badge was in Samoan. It was a chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream and it was covered in marshmallow fondant. For the lettering, I had to use a few different techniques and cutters because LDS missionary badges are pretty distinctive and I wanted to get it right (I did a lot of google searches to get the size and fonts as close as I could to the real thing). In the end, it was a simple cake by design but took a lot of work to get it right. :)

Chocolate Truffle Box

Mona wanted a unique birthday cake for her mother-in-law and she thought a chocolate truffle box would be great since she loves chocolates so much. For this cake, I wanted to make cake truffles in the place of chocolate truffles and they are peaking through the lid there. The whole box is edible including the lid and bow. The cake was Chocolate Dipped Cherry Cake (chocolate cake with baked cherries layered with chocolate buttercream) and it was covered and decorated with marshmallow fondant. I love how simple this cake looks while being very elegant and realistic as well. Enjoy!

Rock Star 1-Year Old

Nia wanted a memorable and fun 1st birthday cake for her daughter, Sela Malaysia. She knew off the bat it needed to be rock star but wanted to keep a pink and brown color scheme. We came up with this design with fun stars shooting out of the cake along with an edible guitar and microphone.

Two tiers are Brownie Lovers (chocolate cake layered with chocolate ganache and real brownies) and one tier is Rainbow Bright Cake (vanilla cake dyed to match the color of the cake with sprinkles layered with buttercream and rainbow sprinkles) The whole cake is covered in homemade marshmallow fondant.

For those of you interested in caking, making shooting stars is so easy to make and gives the cake a little extra pop. Roll out your fondant (I use MMF) pretty thick. Use any cookie cutters you have laying around but remember that if your shooting star is too big, it'll make the wire bend and fall over so you want something not too big, not too small. Cut out your shapes with your cookie cutters. Now use flower wire (or really any thin wire you can find) and twist the very top of the wire into a little loop. Shove the loop into the fondant and twist the wire just gently. The idea here is that the loop will catch onto the sides of the fondant and not let the star slide off of the wire. Then set the shape aside for a day or two. It'll dry and harden, then you can just pop into the cake. Yay!