Princess Tiara Birthday Cake

Jen was having a fun princess themed birthday party for Madeleine's 3rd birthday and wanted a cutesy birthday cake to go along with it. We thought it only fitting that she have a princess tiara made of sugar for the day along with a wand (Do princesses have wands? Hmm, I guess so). Everything was made out of marshmallow fondant including the roses and bow. Jen's husband, Keldon, came to pick up the cake (there's nothing more enjoyable for me than to watch men carry out adorable princess cakes from Salt Cake city :) Keldon was so excited about the cake that he insisted on taking pictures of it even before leaving. I later heard back from Jen that Madeleine and all of her 3 year old friends loved the cake. Yay! 

Here's an up close shot of the roses, wand, and pearls. :)

Snow Mobile Cake

Breanna wanted a snow mobile cake for Winston's 7th birthday since that's the hobby he loves the most right now. I wanted to reflect the mountains here in Utah along with his snow mobile on the top. I made the snow mobile out of fondant, then painted the colors on with edible food coloring. The wooden sign was made out of fondant as well. I marbleized brown and white fondant together, let it dry and then wrote "Happy 7th Birthday Winston" on it. I made a few trees in the background with coconut and crystalized sugar "snow." I had so much fun making this cake because of all of the details of the snow mobile and winter scene, especially since we were in spring :)

Piece of Cake!

Contrary to what this blog might suggest, I don't always make a cake for my classes. I did happen to make this cake for my students at Neumont University last quarter. I wanted it to be fun and festive and I've always wanted to do a slice of cake-cake. This was my opportunity!

To achieve look, I baked a full size cake. Then, before I frosted and filled the cake, I cut out the slice that I wanted to use as the top. I torted and frosted each of these two pieces separately. I did a flavor experiment with my students (free cake should always be an experiment :) It was a Peach Cobbler Cake, peach flavored spice cake layered with peach filling and granola. Wasn't my favorite experiment but from it, I revamped my peach flavor and now have the Just Peachy Cake (cinnamon vanilla cake layered with peach filing, peach slices and cinnamon buttercream). Anyway, back to this cake!

I covered the whole cake in white marshmallow fondant, then, I used a yellow fondant and made the sides of the cake lined with purple filling (I'm not quite sure what purple filling would be but I loved the color combination). I added stripes to the outside of the cake, then covered the top of the cake with teal "frosting." In order to the get that ruffle look, I simple didn't push the sides of the fondant onto the cake itself, I lifted the sides of the fondant to give it some volume. Lastly, I added marshmallow fondant "sprinkles." Yum!

Thank you, ladies & gents for a great class! It's always a fun time at Neumont :)

Peek a boo! I see you!

Erin & Brian wanted a really unique wedding cake for their reception in March. Originally, Erin said she wanted something pretty traditional with swirled piping on a white cake. Then as we talked, I could see she wanted a little something different. Since her colors were white and blue, we decided to incorporate those colors into a cake that had some personality. This was the end result:

The cake was Chocolate Hazelnut cake (chocolate cake layered with hazelnut cream filling and buttercream) and Strawberry Cheesecake cake (strawberry cake layered with cheesecake cream filling and buttercream). They were covered in marshmallow fondant. Here's how this Peek-a-boo look done.

I covered each tier in blue first. Then, I rolled out a much thicker piece of white fondant and gently layered it over the blue. I took my tiny fondant cutter and slowly, softly, tenderly, gently, pushed the pattern into white fondant, being careful to not dig into the blue. I used a toothpick to pull the white fondant out of the cutter before removing the cutter from the fondant. I did that a hundred more times and then I had achieved the pattern she was going for. As the pattern got bigger and bigger, the fondant wanted to move around a bit more. I then took a paintbrush and a dab of water to "glue" the white fondant to the blue fondant. I added a blue border to each tier and then used a separated covered in the same blue fondant to give the top tier a little extra height. Finally, I added a top blue circle on the very top of the cake to give it some more color. Phew! It was quite the journey :)

It's the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse!

It's the Mickey Mouse, Clubhouse! Come inside it's fun inside! (sing along if you know it :) Jennifer wanted a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse themed cake for her three year old son's birthday. Because she didn't need to serve a ton of people, we decided to go with a MMC representation, rather than the full clubhouse (because that's puppy's pretty big!). The green part was cake, Tuxedo flavor, and the red part was rice krispies. Mickey's head, the candles, and the sign with "Chase" on it were all marshmallow fondant. It's amazing how much smaller this cake is in the picture than in person!

I've had a few people ask me how to make Mickey heads in fondant. All you need are two circle cutters (you can use biscuit cutters if you have those). When I'm doing small Mickey heads, I use a round piping tip and use the small end for the ears and the bigger side for the head. The trick it getting the dimensions right so that Mickey doesn't look like he has an oversized head or super tiny ears :)  Enjoy!