Baby Einstein Cake

Fressia wanted a colorful cake for Alejandro's first birthday. He loves Baby Einstein and so we put a lot of different characters on the cake for him. For the border, I rolled out the same colors that I used making the characters and cut them into small square. Then, I created a two-layered border of squares. After putting the animals and and border on the cake, I thought it needed more so I added the confetti of fondant dots around the cake. I LOVE making colorful fun cakes like this. It's amazing to think that these one-year old birthday cakes can take much longer to make than a 4-tiered wedding cake! Luckily I love caking!

One tier was Chocolate Hazelnut Cake (Chocolate cake with hazelnut cream filling and buttercream) and the other tier was White Almond Cake (a light almond flavored cake layered with almond slices and cream cheese frosting). Yummy!

Tinkerbell's Cake

Susan wanted a pretty big cake to celebrate a really big occasion. Isabella was turning one and so a big party was in order. She wanted this cake to be colorful and fun for Isabella's birthday. One of the tiers was Coconut Cream Cake (light coconut cake layered with coconut cream filling and coconut flakes), one was Rainbow Bright Cake (vanilla cake with sprinkles baked in and colored to match the cake), and Chocolatey Chocolate Cake (chocolate cake layered with chocolate buttercream). The cake is covered in homemade marshmallow fondant with marshmallow fondant decorations, including the flowers, poem, and Tinkerbell herself. Tinkerbell was quite a challenge to make. She's extremely recognizable so I had to get it just right. I usually cut out figures and then keep layering on different color fondant. For Tinkerbell, however, I thought hand-painting her onto fondant would be better. She was pretty tricky, especially her eyes. In the end, I had to turn to my man-friend who is an amazing artist to finish the job. Her eyes, nose, and mouth are all the work of an artistic genius!

The flowers were also really fun to make. I used multiple cutters for different sized flowers. Then, I layered the different colors of the flowers into a blossom and let them dry in a cupcake holder. In the end, the cake was really colorful and I hope Susan and Isabella loved it.

Shimmering Quilted Wedding Cake

Brittany got married this weekend and wanted a shimmering cake for her special day. She had seen the purse cake I made a while back that was covered in shimmer dust and wanted that technique for sure. This is done by hand painting the edible shimmer onto the cake. Her colors were this beautiful aqua and chocolate brown so we incorporated that into the edible ribbon on the cake. In the corners of the quilted diamonds are light blue edible dragees.

The bottom tier was Rainbow Bright Cake (vanilla cake that is dyed to match the color of the cake, so light brown, light blue, and white), the middle tier was a Brownie Lovers Cake (chocolate cake layered with chocolate ganache and a nice layer of brownies in between the cake), and the top tier was Buttery Yellow Cake layered with chocolate buttercream. I love how simple, yet elegant this cake looks. I rarely get to see the bride and groom's reaction so I can only hope that they loved it. Congratulations, Britt!

Alice in Wonderland Book... in Cake Form

Bill needed a unique cake for his daughter's 18th birthday and thought the new Alice in Wonderland movie would be a good inspiration. He said she loves reading so making a life-size book was his idea as well. I wanted to put as many details on this cake as possible so I had to take several shots to get the angles. All the decorations were handmade from marshmallow fondant. This first picture shows Alice's outfit and the Mad Hatter's hat (ah, Johnny Depp can really make any character look a little extra crazy). I hand-painted the front cover of the book and then placed the mushrooms as though they were coming out of the grass. The Cheshire Cat looks a bit different in this new film so this is as close as I could get it with that really big grin. Kalee was the birthday girl (in Wonderland) and although you can't see it very well in this picture, the White Rabbit's clock says 18 (except that there is so such thing as 18 on this watch so it really says 1:40... I did what I could :) You can see the playing cards with hearts on them too.

In this second picture, you can see Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum's shirts, again very different in the new film. You have the "Drink me" liquid that shrinks her and the matching "Eat me" cake is on the top of the book. A little teapot and cup of tea are also on this side of the cake.

Here's the top shot of the cake. From here you can see the whole book as well as the background of the book cover. I used an edible ink marker to write "Kalee in Wonderland" on the top and side and used food coloring as water color in order to paint on the background.
Phew, alright, last bit of detail is that the cake was a Red Velvet Cake layered with cream cheese frosting. Bill ordered the Dancing Nancy cake for his wife around Valentine's Day and I guess Red Velvet is her favorite so when ordering this cake, she said Red Velvet once again. This cake was really, REALLY fun to make because of all of the details. I hope Kalee loved it as well!

Brown and Blue Circles

This week, the students in my senior class at the University of Utah gave great presentations to faculty, family, and other students at the Senior Materials Science and Engineering Dinner. In order to thank them for all of their hard work this semester, I made a celebratory cake for us to share during our final dress rehearsal last week. I wasn't sure what design to make but this design ended up reminding me a lot of their lab reports turned in over the year. They did several complicated labs that involved really intricate methods and although I didn't understand everything they wrote (because I'm a Communication instructor, not an Engineering instructor), their pictures looked similar to these circles.

The cake was decorated and covered with homemade marshmallow fondant. The beads at the bottom were also marshmallow fondant. The flavor was an experiment and ended up being pretty yummy. It was a Chocolate Cinnamon Cake which is chocolate cake baked with a hint of cinnamon layered with cinnamon cream filling and chocolate ganache. What do you think? :)

Pink, Black, and Silver Masquerade

Kavina went all out with her 30th birthday party by having a masquerade themed bash complete with the guests wearing masks. Because of this, she needed an over the top, extravagant masquerade cake to match. After going back and forth on a few design ideas, we came up with this design complete with beads, feathers, and edible masquerade masks. Kavina said that the cake was a huge hit and tasted delicious... so here's what she ordered.

The top tier was a Brownie Lovers Cake (chocolate cake layered with real brownies and chocolate ganache), the middle tier was a Strawberry Not-So-Short-Cake (Strawberry cake with strawberries baked in layered with vanilla cream filling and buttercream), and the bottom tier was Rainbow Bright Cake (vanilla flavored cake tinted three different colors layered with buttercream and sprinkles).

Now for the details, the edible sugar masks were made by cutting out the shapes of a mask and letting them dry over the top of a real mask to give it some contour. Once it dried, I brushed it with edible silver shimmer and placed a few edible sugar balls (or dragees) onto it to give it more character. They were very delicate but looked pretty realistic. I hope you like it!