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!

Happy Birthday, Howard!

I was lucky enough today to make a 56th birthday cake for Howard Stern! His wife Beth wanted to surprise him with a cake on the air and suggest doing something with the show's raised fist logo.

The cake was a 12" devil's food with chocolate espresso buttercream, covered in red fondant. I made the gumpaste logos by hand and the letters are lower case Tappits.

I delivered the cake early this morning to the studio and got to hear Howard talk about it on air. He said he "almost wanted to see the cake framed instead of eaten," but he fed it to his staff instead. Beth said the staff thought it was delicious and it was gone in no time. Can't beat feedback like that!

Special thanks to the wonderful Doug Schneider for taking photos of this cake at 1:00am last night when I finished it. Everything looks better through his lens!

I used a pattern for these, but it was too small and I cut them out freehand.

Howard's producer Gary with the cake: