Willie's Cakes

Today, meaning yesterday, I had every intention of posting, but now it's 12:31am and I missed posting something on the 1 year anniversary of this blog. But seeing as I'm still awake and it's still Sept. 11 somewhere, I think it counts.

I've been making cakes for everyone in Willie's family for a while (see Lindsay's cake, Lindsay's dad's cake, there was also a Lindsay's grandma's cake, but I was lazy and didn't take a photo). It was about time that Willie had a birthday and wanted a cake. But she ended up with two! How's that for a birthday treat?

She called me to order a mint chocolate cake - chocolate cake with chocolate mint buttercream. Said to decorate it however I wanted. She usually is the cake pickerupper (?) in the family, but said since it was her birthday, she'd get someone else to do it.

Two days later her husband called and ordered another surprise cake, red velvet, for a dinner they were having with friends the same night (choc. cake was for the family celebration at home).

Decided to do similar colors for both cakes and wanted to play around a little with simple gumpaste flowers. The handwriting on the chocolate cake admittedly isn't my best work (actually looks like it was written by a 99 yr old with the shakes) but I love how all the colors work together.

red velvet

chocolate mint

Eliza's ladybug cupcakes

Eliza turned 5 last week and wanted ladybug (lady bug?) cupcakes. The whole time I made them this song was running through my head.

Started with chocolate cupcakes. NOTE TO SELF: Before attempting to make really red buttercream at 9:30pm at night, remember to check if you have enough food coloring so ladybugs are really RED, not pink! It managed to turn out ok, the color definitely intensified overnight, but I still forget how much red food coloring it takes to make buttercream red instead of dark pink!

Hard at work. Made the black by mixing both cocoa and melted chocolate into the buttercream, and then adding black food coloring.

Almost finished, but I thought something was missing.

They needed these - orange antennae (antennas?). Orange because I love orange. Made with melted white chocolate discs (that are absolutely gross, I think, but it doesn't need to be tempered, which makes life so much easier!)

Finished!

As the birthday girl, Eliza got a bigger cupcake, the mommy of the group.

Keri's mini cupcakes

My lovely wonderful brilliant friend Keri had a rad party last weekend and she asked me to bring some mini cupcakes. I made four different buttercreams: vanilla bean, chocolate, green tea and spice with matching cake flavors. I've had a teeny can of matcha powder for a long time and was happy to have a chance to use it. I think the buttercream color is awesome.

Doug took the pictures.

Rehearsal Dinner Cake

I've mentioned before that I work very part-time at Provisions, a fantastic little bakery/cafe in Pelham, NY. (For local Westchester readers, it just won "Best Prepared Foods South" in Westchester Magazine's Best Of 2008 awards). The owner, Nannette Conners, received a request a couple of weeks ago from a soon-to-be bride who wanted a cake that recreated the night she and her now-fiancee got engaged. They were on a futon and both were wearing casual clothes (she was in black and white checked pajama pants - a detail that you'll see later in the photos).

I made the people (I still don't know their names, so I've been calling them Ken and Barbie) out of gumpaste, something I've never done before but thought it would be fun to try. It was fun, but I decided almost at the beginning that they DEFINITELY were going to be cartoony-looking people, rather than trying to replicate them exactly.

In addition to the checked pj pants, she (Barbie) gave us specifics -- he (Ken) was wearing a blue shirt and a backwards baseball cap, she wore a pink t-shirt and had on big silver hoop earrings, AND there was a leopard print pillow on the couch next to her.

My favorite part about Barbie was the hair. I used a garlic press to make it, but gumpaste is incredibly sticky and completely gummed up the press the first couple times I used it. The bangs came together perfectly, and there was actually some resemblance!

The next day I transported Barbie and Ken in a shoe box to the bakery where I worked with Nanette to figure out how to make the cake. Turned out it was easy enough. We stacked two sheet cakes, cut it in half, and cut one of the pieces in half again. It looked a little top heavy, so I took of one layer and we had the dimensions we were looking for. The complete perfectionist side of me wanted to spend the next four hours making the futon look as realistic as possible, but I had to move on!

My first thought with the checked pants was to use black food coloring (liquid food coloring watered down with vodka works best) to paint black dots on the pants but this time the perfectionist side of me won out and I hand painted the checks on the pants. In the future I'd probably just do the dots because that was easily the longest process of the whole projected!

Two minutes before closing time I put Ken and Barbie on the couch of a trial run - they looked pretty good, and I hear the bride was happy. I'm looking forward to doing more of these - anyone need a gumpaste likeness of themselves?

Ken, without a hat or hair

Barbie, including silver hoop earrings

Painting Barbie's pants

Cutting the cake, a little too top heavy

The finished cake!

Gabe's snake cake

I've had this post sitting in my drafts file for a week and I'm finally getting it together to post. Gabe turned 5 at the end of June and requested a snake cake -- specifically, one that "looked like a giraffe." I had no idea how I was going to make a cake big enough to feed the hoards of kids at his party (40+) with just one snake (and a 13" x 17" board), so decided late the night before to add a bottom layer made out of two 9x9 cakes. Cake was chocolate with vanilla bean buttercream (pretty much the only buttercream I'm making these days - it's that good!). To make the snake I made 4 6" layers and split each one. Then assembeled three cakes with three layers each, all spackled together with buttercream. Cut a hole in the middle of them and then sliced in half sideways and pieced it together. I used the remaining 2 layers to cut out the head and the tail (the remainder of the cake is still in my freezer, where it's slowly being chipped away by Doug and I).

The scales are made out of gumpaste which I cut into diamond shapes a couple of days before. Bad move - they were way too hard to bend on the cake, so I placed them on the night before and by morning had melted enough to smoosh them on. Finally, my overly warm kitchen is good for something! Last thing - see the nose? I didn't even think about snake's having noses until my 5yr old told me. Learning new things every day!

Bottom layer

One of three three-layered 6" cakes

Piecing the snake together

Snake on a cake (this one is really blurry for some reason, not sure why)

Adding the head and the tail

Frosted snake

Pointy scales

The finished cake, taken by Doug, in our attic studio