Max's iPad cake

My first born turned 8 on Wednesday and for the first time in four years, he didn't request a racetrack cake or some sort of New York Mets themed design. Nope, he's a big boy now and aimed much higher - my all-things-electronic-obsessed sweet boy requested an iPad cake, specifically an iPad2 cake, just like the one I have and rarely let him use.

As usual, photos taken by the world's best cake picture taker (and my husband) Doug Schneider.

Side by side with the real thing (realized after the fact that I should have changed my wall paper so it matched a little better, oh well!)

close up: the Facebook, foursquare, Photo and iPod buttons are my favorite

I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out, even though the NY area was in the middle of a crazy heat wave and his party was at a local swimming pool (at least 95 degrees in the shade!)  We kept the cake in the refrigerator as long as possible, but even after 5 minutes it started to look a little shiny and melty. But it was a lot of fun to make and I'd love to make another one soon!  The cake was vanilla bean with a layer of melted chocolate and chocolate and vanilla swirl buttercream (another request from the birthday boy). Cake covered in fondant and all the app buttons were hand made from gumpaste.

Happy birthday, sweet boy! I can't wait to find out what you've got in mind for next year's cake!

Update on Monday, June 13, 2011 at 1:52PM by Sara

Thanks to Brand 66 for the mention!

Rebecca's birthday cake mashup

Question: What do you get when you take Anna's cake:

add a bit of Pamela's cake:

and throw in the monkey and stars from Allie's cake?

Answer: Rebecca's birthday cake!

Rebecca is a newly minted 10 year old who designed her very own cake after spending time on my website. The names on the sides of the cake are the party attendees. This was a 10" cake with vanilla bean and chocolate layers, filled with chocolate buttercream. Decorations are handmade using gumpaste and royal icing. 

My 4 year old checking out the cake

New website!

After weeks of procrastination, I finally launched my new website. It's definitely still a work in progress, but I love having the Sara Bakes Cakes site and blog under one roof!

Comments, suggestions, edits would be greatly appreciated (but be gentle, my fragile baking ego might not be able to take it!) I look forward to hearing what you think.

In the meantime, here's my latest cake, for 2-year old Nili who's a giant fan of Abby Cadabby and sprinkles! 12" vanilla bean cake with raspberry filling and vanilla buttercream, handmade gumpaste decorations.

 

Mets! Mets! Mets!

Let me start by saying I am NOT a sports fan - not even a little bit. I seem to have lost the gene that makes me care about grown men (and women) hitting/throwing/chasing some sort of ball around a field/rink/court.

That said, my 7 yr old is a big sports fan, thanks to his sports fan father (the 3 yr old isn't that interested yet, but I'm sure his time will come), and after three years of race track cakes, decided his 7th birthday should feature his favorite baseball team, The New York Mets, and their mascot, Mr. Met.

But this wasn't a completely original idea. I made this cake a couple weeks before - totally edible (if not completely palatable) Mr. Met out of gumpaste. Cake was vanilla bean with vanilla buttercream, fondant baseball diamond.

The weather was warm and poor Mr. Met was in danger of toppling over a couple of times, and was very happy that I provided him with an extra stack of bases to keep him upright.

Since the summer was getting hotter and Mr. Met doesn't seem to respond well to hot weather (unless I was going for a "Sloppy Drunk Mr. Met" look) I "encouraged" Max to choose another type of Mr. Met cake - one that wouldn't involve lots of toothpicks and bases made out of gumpaste as props. The result was a 12" vanilla bean/vanilla buttercream Mr. Met head and hat. Fondant stripes in Mets colors on the sides of the cake.

(The NY on the hat was my favorite part of the cake!)

I realized after the fact that a real baseball doesn't have red lines underneath the stitching, but since I'm sure Max is going to request this cake a couple of more years, I'll have a chance to redeem myself:)

Finally, a friend who attended Max's party decided he also wanted a Mets cake for his birthday, but with a twist. Milo might be a bigger Mets fan than Max and his baseball party included "Milo" t-shirts in a Mets-type font for all the kids. I used that lettering and added it to the familiar Mets skyline logo and LOVE the result. Everything was cut out by hand and edible (gumpaste and fondant). Cake was 12" chocolate with chocolate buttercream.

Happy Summer!

Oma's fern cake

I was contacted about making a cake for a 70th birthday party that somehow incorporated greenery and ferns, but not in a very obvious way. I immediately started searching online for some fern shaped cutters or molds, and found what I thought would be an excellent option - a beautiful ferns mold made by CelCakes.

Ha! The mold arrived and I spent the next three nights playing with various formulations of fondant and gumpaste, trying to find the right combination so my ferns would as fabulous as these. On the rare occasion when I did manage to fill the mold, scrape off the excess and get the fern out in one piece, Doug declared that it looked much more like a piece of seaweed than a fern (it's true, it did). Since I wasn't making an underwater mermaid cake, seaweed wasn't an option:) $20 wasted, but lesson learned.

Back to square one, and this time I decided to toss the molds and a much more whimsical approach to ferns, and in particular, fiddleheads. These are all made by hand - rolling out pieces of fondant (not gumpaste, I didn't want them to get too hard and crunchy) and rolling into the fiddlehead shape. I love how it turned out! The cake is vanilla bean, with whipped ganache filling and vanilla buttercream. The letters are funky alphabet tappits (as you can tell, I'm a big fan of these letters!)

Here's a video of the cake in action. Someday I'll learn how to edit. Doug said, "who are you talking to?" The answer? Hopefully you!