Ally and Robyn's Cinco de Mayo birthday cake

My friends Ally and Robyn celebrated their birthdays last weekend with an early Cinco de Mayo party - which means lots of tequila and a cake topped with a pinata, sombrero and maracas, all made out of gumpaste.

Update: I love a cake in action shot, and never remember to take them or post them. This time I remembered!

Rachel's Guitar Cupcakes

Rachel is a singer in a rock 'n roll band (and a great person, to boot) and just celebrated a big birthday. We celebrated with guitar cupcakes. I used gumpaste for everything, except the frets, which were a last minute addition from royal icing.

He takes the best photos, doesn't he?

Paul's Flying V guitar cake

I am a graduate of ICE: Institute of Culinary Education (Pastry '06) and I love connecting with fellow alumni and current students. Way back in October I was contacted by someone from the school who wanted a guitar cake for her boyfriend's 40th birthday.

But not just any guitar cake - his favorite guitar was a Gibson Flying V, specifically one one in the middle of this photo.

Cake was chocolate with chocolate buttercream, covered in fondant. The guitar itself was also made from fondant.

the whammy bar was a last minute addition, but I think it makes the cake

Olivia's Owl Cake and Cupcakes

I probably say/think/write this a lot, but Owls for Olivia is probably my favorite project. My style has always leaned more towards whimsical rather than realistic and this was definitely no exception. Olivia's favorite colors were purple and pink, so realism went right out the window!

I found some great line drawings of owls online and started from there. The decorations are all out of gumpaste or fondant and the letters are Tappits. Cake and cupcakes were vanilla bean cake with vanilla buttercream.

I want to do a whole cake covered in these "feathers"

I say this a lot, but these boxes and holders are the best.

baby owl

as usual, all photos taken by the lovely and talented Doug Schneider.

I realized today, after reading this post on the super cute My Owl Barn (for all owlovers), that I never blogged about these guys. Thanks for the mention and the reminder!

Allie's pink ladybug cake

My good friend Heather's daughter celebrated her 3rd birthday this weekend and I got to make the cake! For kids that age you need to feed/entertain the kids AND their parents, so the cake was big enough for everyone. 12" with a layers of chocolate and vanilla cake, filled with a thin layer of melted bittersweet chocolate and chocolate buttercream, covered in vanilla buttercream.

When asked, Allie said she wanted, "Ladybugs, pink ladybugs..... and black spiders." You can see I listened to half of her request. They're made from gumpaste and the letters are funky lowercase Tappits (I have the uppercase ones too, but they're kind of a pain to use - they're just too big!)

One last thing - my 3 yr old son takes after me and LOVES dessert. He takes his time, and loves to savor every bite. Check out the last man standing in the party room.