Jesse's Curious George Cake

Jesse turned 2 last month and had a Curious George themed party. The cake was vanilla bean with vanilla buttercream frosting. Decorations made from gumpaste and royal icing.

I realized again that noses are really hard to draw! Fortunately the rest of it looked enough like George that the nose didn't matter.

Fire truck cake for Nicholas

The fire truck cupcakes were such a big hit, I thought I'd do a fire truck cake! Actually, was contacted by a friend of a friend to make a fire truck cake for her son Nicholas, who was turning 2. Nicholas has some food allergies - eggs, milk, nuts and even soy are no-nos, but butter, fortunately, was not.

Nicholas' mom gave me recipe she used to make muffins but had never tried as a cake. I modified it a bit (using butter instead of oil, upping the liquids) and it turned out pretty great (at least from the little crumbs that I was able to taste while putting it together).

All the decorations are made from gumpaste. I'm not a big fan of the alphabet cutters from Wilton, and have been using ones from Fox Run instead. These, called Tappits, are going to be my next purchase, I think, but I hear they're a little trickier to use than regular cutters.

The fire truck shape came from a Google search of fire truck coloring pages. I found one I liked the best, shrunk it on my copier and traced it on to a piece of gumpaste. Much better looking than freehand, especially when it's my hand doing the freehanding!

Jesse's cake (or Why We Need Central Air IMMEDIATELY!)

This weekend I made a Cookie Monster cake for Jesse's 1st birthday. No problem - I knew exactly how I was going to make it and how I'd decorate it. What I didn't plan on (though I should have) was 80 degree temperatures in my kitchen Saturday night and Sunday. Made the frosting on Saturday night - (fortunately, the vanilla bean cakes were already made and tucked safely away in the freezer) and it immediately turned to blue soup (was too tired and cranky, or I would have taken step by step photos.)

It spent the night in the fridge, and I managed to get a crumb coat on the layers before the kitchen got too hot (was about 74 at the time). My first thought was to decorate the cake with the grass tip, which ends up looking like fur - similar to the elmo cupcakes and lion's mane. The frosting was WAY too melty at that point and turned into a blue blob on the cake, so I improvised and made peaks by pressing with my small offset. That worked great for the top, but when I tried pipe out frosting on the sides, it totally started sliding down. I moved into the living room and the finished the cake (cursing under and over my breath the whole time), and managed to spackel this together.

Max and Stella's cake

Max turned 5 on June 8 and one of his best friends Stella turns 5 on the 21st, so we decided to have a joint b-day party (I should add they go to school together and have almost all of the same friends.) Maxie's cake ideas ran the gamut from subway car, to race car, to Amtrak train, to (well, I guess his ideas weren't that broad!) Finally he decided on a racetrack cake, which just so happens to be the same cake he wanted last year, for his 4th birthday. Perfect! Again with the cobbler's children thing, I didn't have a ton of time to get things together and make a new completely original cake, so I was very happy.

Same size - two 9-inch layer cakes, chocolate and vanilla bean, with chocolate buttercream filling, outside was colored vanilla bean frosting and chocolate cookies for the dirt. Last years cake had green coconut for grass, which people loved, but I thought it made the whole thing look like a monster so I decided black/white stripes fit in better.

I think someone has photos of the cake in action, with flags, candles, etc, and I'll post them when I get them.

Stella's name was on the other side, also in orange.

The 9-inch layers pieced together

crumb coat - looks a little bit like boobs, I think

Lining up the circles

Claudia's cake

Cake for Claudia's confirmation. Vanilla cake with apricot filling and vanilla frosting. Wanted blue and green decorations so I went with gumpaste dots because I love dots! You can't really tell in the photos, but there are three different colors of green and three different colors of blue. I love the way this turned out - and am very happy that my writing is looking more confident. Two things: congratulations is a MUCH longer word than I thought, and Claudia isn't spelled Claduia (which is how I originally wrote it on the cake - but can't can't tell, can you???).