Monday
Jan112010

Allie's pink ladybug cake

Allie's 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!)

Allie's ladybug cake

Allie's ladybug cake

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.
IMG_5410

Monday
Jan112010

Sophia's bowling cupcakes

Sophia's bowling cupcakes

Sophia celebrated her 13th birthday at a bowling alley last weekend, and her mom wanted to surprise her with cupcakes to go along with the theme.

These bowling pins and balls are made from gumpaste. Little bowling pin cutters are hard to come by, so I took an old dreidel cutter, like this one, squeezed it until it resembled a pin and made a couple other tweaks to it as I went along.

The signature colors of the party were lime green, red and yellow.

Sophia's bowling cupcakes

Sophia's bowling cupcakes

Monday
Oct262009

Lots of baking!!

I've been doing lots of baking in the last couple weeks and haven't been doing the best job of cataloging all of it! Here's a quick run down:

Emma and Clara's 2nd birthday cake
Both girls are big fans of Sesame Street (can you tell?)

Clara and Emma's Sesame Street cake
(pre countertop clean up)

Clara and Emma's Sesame Street cake

Clara and Emma's Sesame Street cake

and a movie!

Red velvet cupcakes for my friend Shannon's bridal shower. Gumpaste flowers, cream cheese frosting.

IMG_5107

IMG_5081
Artsy flowers, thanks to Doug.

IMG_5104
my favorite of the bunch

Trigg's elephant cupcakes
Elephant cupcakes for Trigg
Obviously, Doug wasn't around to take these photos - had to do it myself.

Jeana's Sweet 16 cake
Huge, heavy cake for a big birthday bash! Jeana's all about chocolate and peanut butter, so this cake was 6 layers of chocolate cake with peanut butter buttercream filling. I love these new funky letter molds (once I figured out how to use them, of course)

IMG_5065

IMG_5067

IMG_5069

Much more to come!

Tuesday
Jul212009

Soccer Girl's Favorite Things Cake

Do you know what a moving up celebration is? I didn't, but maybe that's because my kids are still too young to leave elementary school and "move up" to middle school, but now I know! "Soccer Girl" loves the color green, and also loves monkeys, music, camping and, you guessed it by her nickname, soccer. This cake fit the bill. The cake was vanilla bean with green vanilla buttercream frosting and all the decorations are made from gumpaste and royal icing.

Soccer Girl's favorite things cake

Soccer Girl's favorite things cake

Her mom (and my online marketing idol) Ellen, wrote about the cake today on her blog, Confessions of an IT Girl. It's a great read, even when she isn't praising my cakes!

Friday
Jul172009

Cupcakes with kids

I bake cupcakes for kids, but am not really good at baking cupcakes with kids, including my own. I get pretty ocd when I'm baking - things have to be done just the right way, in the just right order, etc., etc., and even thinking of adding lots of little hands into the mix makes me nervous!

Self-analysis over. My friend Debbie Koenig, the talented chef, teacher, blogger and food writer, may have shown me the light. She emailed me yesterday looking for inspiration about how to make Flicker cupcakes for her son. Since Flicker is a Disney character and we're a 100% Noggin household, I had no idea who he was. Turns out he's a very cute flashlight guy and is just perfect for piping on a cupcake.

I gave her my favorite vanilla buttercream recipe and some decorating ideas and the rest is baking-with-kids magic. Check out her post about the whole adventure here. Just might have to give it another try sometime:)