Ruffle Cake

I don’t know if I’ve told y’all before, but Pinterest is rapidly becoming my new favorite pastime.  It’s sooo full of inspiration.  Crafts, decorating, cooking…

Even cake!

My latest cake creation is actually a combination of ideas that I’ve seen on Pinterest.  Ruffles and bunting.

Two reasons why I love this cake:

1.  The Ruffles.

They are the “wow” factor of the cake.  Although the ruffles look complicated, they are relatively simple to create if you have basic piping skills.  I have to admit I wondered whether or not I could recreate the look, but I think my ruffles turned out pretty good!

2.  The Bunting.  An adorable idea.

To create the bunting, I used some of my scrapbooking supplies to whip up a few flags, then strung the flags on some ribbon.  The bunting is suspended from two wooden skewers.  The best thing about this bunting is that it takes absolutely no cake decorating skills to create it.  If you can use a pair of scissors, you can make your own.

Now if you’re a cake decorator, you know there’s nothing better than seeing party guests enjoying your cake.

At the same time, however, there’s also nothing worse than seen party guests enjoying your cake, because this is what happens when they do.

But you get used to it…

At least with this cake I got to enjoy a piece myself.

Lindsey

Linking to:

Strut Your Stuff Thursday @ Somewhat Simple

Saturday Night Special @ Funky Junk Interiors

Diaper Bag Cake

My sweet friend Ellen is expecting a baby girl soon, and I was asked to make a cake for her baby shower.  Well, Ellen just so happens to be one of my biggest cake fans, so I knew that I wanted to make an extra special cake for her.  While browsing the internet for ideas, I ran across several diaper bag cakes.  I wasn’t sure if I could pull one off, but the Tool Man encouraged me to give it a try.  For sanity’s sake, I opted to make a bag that was lying on its side rather than standing straight up.  I think that was the right decision.  The Tool Man and I were able to whip this puppy out one evening with little or no headache!  We were both pleased with (and a tiny bit proud of) our work.

I actually had someone ask me if this was a real pacifier.  I think that was a pretty good compliment!  It’s really made out of gum paste.

The bottle was the only part of this cake that was not completely edible.  I We (it was a collaborative effort) made the body of the bottle out of aluminum foil and covered it with fondant. 

On a last minute whim I decided to score the bag to give it a quilted look.  I really like how that turned out. It seemed to make the cake look a lot more finished.

The keys were also a joint effort. 

See the pink piping going all the way around the edges of the bag?  Well, that’s the handiwork of the Tool Man!  He also cut out all the flowers and dots.  He’s the Bomb.com!

Ellen’s cake was a two-layer, 9X13 cake, filled and iced with buttercream, and covered with fondant.  All decorations were made with fondant and/or gum paste.

Lindsey

Spots and Stripes

For the most part, I’ve been lucky.  My cakes usually go down without a hitch.

Usually.

This cake was a different story.

This week I drew the short straw and had to work at the restaurant Friday night.  Not something I like to do when I have a cake due on Saturday morning.  Before heading to work, I finished decorating the bottom tier of this cake, a task in and of itself, given that the humidity was about 110%.  I felt good about the work, though, knowing that I only had a bit more to do in order to finish the cake before Saturday morning.

Ha ha ha.

When I got home Friday night about 10:30, I discovered that the bottom tier of the cake had settled about 1/4 inch and the fondant looked like a blanket, draped and wrinkled, on top of it.  Ugh!

So…

Plan A was to take off the fondant and and try to re-cover the cake, but when I started pulling off the fondant, the cake came off with it.  Ugh!

On to Plan B.

Start from scratch!  Yep, I baked a whole other cake, made more icing, and decorated all over again, before finally crawling into bed at 1 AM.  Thankfully, my wonderful, multi-talented husband lent a much appreciated helping hand and moral support. 

One part of this cake that I was really proud of is the bow.  It’s constructed of gum paste loops that I made a couple days in advance and assembled with royal icing “glue.”  I think it turned out really cute!

Once again the Tool Man helped out by rolling all the fondant beads for the border.  He’s getting pretty good at that, don’t ya think?

This cake was made of 6” and 8” tiers, filled and iced with buttercream, and covered and decorated with fondant… Twice!  It served about 30.

All’s well that ends well, right?

Linking to:

Sunday Scoop @ I Heart Naptime

Lindsey

Seeing Stars

Here is a sweet little birthday cake for 6 year old Gray.  This cake was designed to coordinate with the party invitation.

Gray wasn’t having a big party, so a tiered cake was out of the question.  To give his cake a little height, though, I added some colorful, gum paste ribbons and a big number 6 on top.

Around the sides of the cake I added various sized stars that I punched out of colored fondant.  My favorites are the big stars with the smaller stars punched out of the center.

I love the way this cake turned out!  Clean, simple lines, but far from boring because of the bright colors and fun stars.

This cake was a two-layer, 8” round, filled with buttercream, and covered with fondant.  It served approximately 20.

Lindsey

Wild Thing

Warning!

The cake I’m about to share with y’all is a little “out there.”

Don’t get me wrong.  I love, love, love this cake,  but it is very unique, and it does make quite an impact.

When Abby found a picture of this cake design online, it was love at first sight.  I was thrilled to be able to recreate the look for her 18th birthday.  I hope that she and her friends enjoyed the final product as much as I enjoyed making it for her.  What a fun cake!

One new thing I tried on this cake was making my own fondant.  Store-bought fondant it just so expensive, and quite frankly I don’t like the way it tastes.  So…. I did a little research online and found a recipe for homemade, marshmallow fondant.

It worked!  Not only is it super easy to make, but I think it tastes a lot better than the store-bought fondant.  Who knew that marshmallows, powdered sugar, water, and shortening is all you need to turn out beautifully smooth cakes?

Once I got the tiers covered in fondant, I added fondant “ribbons” and painted on the spots and stripes.

Then came the feathers.  Oh, the glorious feathers!

Ty was shocked to say the least.  He posed for this picture, but this is just about the exact face he made when he saw the completed cake for the first time.

The feathers may dwarf the cake a little bit.  This cake has 6, 8, and 10 inch tiers and serves approximately 90.

Lindsey

Wood Duck Cake

Last weekend I had the opportunity to decorate another hand-painted cake.  This year for his birthday, Spencer requested a wood duck drake similar in style to this bass cake I did for him a few years ago.

To make this cake I carved the silhouette of the duck into the top layer of the cake to give it a little dimension.  Then I covered the duck with fondant, and using icing color thinned with vanilla, I painted the details onto the duck.  Not too difficult a task for me considering my background in oil painting, but still this was a very time consuming cake.

Other details I added to the cake include these cattails made from fondant and royal icing…

The grass and borders piped with buttercream frosting…

And these adorable fondant shotgun shells.

I think the shells just make the cake.  So simple to create.  If you can roll a play-do snake, you can make these.

This cake was 9X13 and served approximately 40.

Lindsey

Electric Topsy Turvy Cake

 

Last week I was given the challenge of making my biggest cake to date.  Also, this was my first attempt at constructing a topsy-turvy cake.  The cake was for a couple of friends turning 14 years old.  These girls were having a huge dance party, and they wanted an equally awesome cake.  Since the girls were using black lights in their party decorations, they asked me about making a cake that would glow.  I did some research and discovered that tonic water is black light responsive, and that it can be incorporated into the frosting.  It wasn’t extremely bright, but it did glow a little. Very cool!

Now this cake is a little deceiving.  Although it looks like it may tumble any second, it’s really more stable that it appears.  The trick is in how it is assembled.  Each tier is recessed into the tier below it so that it sits level.  And when I say level I mean level!  The Tool Man and I spent a lot of time meticulously leveling this cake. 

Any one who has ever constructed a tiered cake knows just how important the internal support is.  We used a lot of dowels to support each tier of the cake.  Plus there’s one long rod going all the way through the entire cake to keep it from leaning.  Even though this cake was supposed to look “topsy-turvy” it wouldn’t have been good for the whole thing to be leaning.

I have to say that I got a little anxious hammering these dowels into the cake.  One slip and whammo!  Smashed cake.  Thankfully, all went well.

Once all tiers were stacked and iced, the fun part could begin…

Adding the decorations!

I made all of the decorations for this cake in advance.  So basically, once the cake was assembled, all I had to do was stick the decorations on with a dab of royal icing.

I guess the most difficult decoration on this cake was the bow, although it wasn’t really that much trouble to make.  It’s just a matter of making it early enough so that it has ample time to harden.  This bow was sculpted out of gumpaste, and when it dried it was rock hard!

Other details on this cake included multi-colored polka dots, paisleys, stripes, and flowers.  All of these I made ahead of time out of fondant and/or gumpaste.  You may have also noticed all of the beads.  The Tool Man deserves tons of thanks for helping me out with all these beads!  A tedious task, indeed.

Let’s see how this cake measures up…

Twenty-three inches when it was all said and done!

Time to deliver!  I’m happy to say that the cake made it safe and sound to the party locale.  That’s a cake decorator’s worst nightmare, by the way, a major cake catastrophe during delivery.  It would not be pretty.

Whew!  Glad I’ve got that one behind me.

But the fun’s not over yet.  I’ve got my hands full with three more cakes this week… a cowboy cake, an over-the-hill cake, and a Saintsations cake.

I better get baking!

Lindsey