Pumpkin Diva

What a fun cake I got to make this weekend!  I like to refer to it as the pumpkin diva cake.  I mean, what else would you call a jack-o-lantern with plump lips, eye makeup, and a hair bow?

I also made a little smash cake for the birthday girl.

Hello, gorgeous!

I carved my little diva out of a 6” round strawberry cake.  After filling and icing the cake with buttercream, I covered and decorated the pumpkin with homemade fondant.

The bottom tier was filled and iced with buttercream and decorated with fondant accents.

This cake was made using 6” and 8” tiers and served approximately 30.  It was filled and iced with buttercream and decorated with fondant.

Lindsey

Aging Gracefully

I sometimes find it a bit of a challenge to design birthday cakes for adults.  Bright, fun kiddie cakes are easy for me to visualize, but it seems like I have to exercise my creativity a little more when I’m planning a cake for an older adult.  I guess I see it as a fine line between tastefully mature and boring.

The cake I’m sharing today was designed for a lady’s 79th birthday.  I tried to keep the color palette on this cake a little more sophisticated.  I mean, I really didn’t think the birthday “girl” would appreciate lime green, hot pink, and turquoise, so I chose cream, brown, and coral.

And instead of polka dots and stripes, I decided to use a couple of different techniques to create a cascading floral design.  I punched out some flowers from gumpaste and applied them to the cake, and I hand-painted a few flowers and vines directly onto the cake.

I love the dimension that I got by using the two different techniques for the flowers.

This cakes was made with 6” and 8” tiers and served approximately 30.  It was filled and iced with buttercream and covered with homemade fondant.  The flowers are made of gum paste, and the tiers are trimmed with satin ribbon.

Lindsey

Ombre Dots

I’m constantly searching Pinterest for inspiration for my cakes.  One trend that is becoming really popular in everything from cakes to hair is ombre.  If you are not familiar with it, ombre refers to a gradation of colors from dark to light.  It’s simple, striking, and I love it!  I’ve incorporated the ombre design into a few of my cakes, including Lucy’s princess cake.  Last week I tried it out again on a simple baby shower/birthday cake.

This little ruffle flower was made from a combination of gum paste and fondant.

This was an 8” round vanilla cake filled and iced with buttercream.  It served approximately 20.

Lindsey

Wedding Sweets for Kelsie and Ben

Today I’m sharing a few pictures of my latest wedding creations.  First up is the bride’s cake, a stunning, 4 tiered cake complete with a “fishbowl” and twinkle lights.

The design of this cake was all the bride’s idea.  She had photos of two different cakes that she wanted combined into her perfect wedding cake.

A very unique detail of this cake was the vase incorporated into it. Inside the vase was a photo of the bride and groom, a small string of white twinkle lights, and a few gum paste roses.

Also adorning the cake were 20 handmade, gum paste roses. I was so pleased with how these roses turned out!

More roses… Sorry about that, but I’m kinda partial to those roses. Each one took about 15 minutes to make. So, if you do the math, that’s a total of five hours spent just making roses!

The wedding cake consisted of four tiers – 6”, 8”, 10”, and 14” and served approximately 115.  The bride and groom chose vanilla cake with strawberry and cream cheese filling.  The cake is iced with cream cheese and covered with homemade fondant, and the details were piped with buttercream icing.

And now for Ben’s cake…

Who Dat?!

The groom’s cake was a 12” round vanilla cake with cream cheese icing and fondant details.  It served approximately 45.

Congratulations, Ben and Kelsie!

Lindsey

The Bold and the Beautiful

Last week I had two wedding cakes to tackle.  One was muted, rustic, and rather traditional in style.  The other one was not.

As you can see, this cake was bold and colorful and not afraid to be the center of attention.  Definitely not your traditional wedding cake!

I spent the better part of the week sculpting 24 brightly colored roses to adorn this cake.  On top of that, I also made a handful of loose petals to sprinkle around the cake topper.

The cake decorator’s proudest moment – when the cake is safely delivered, set up, and ready to be enjoyed!

This bold and beautiful wedding cake was composed of an 8” chocolate tier with strawberry filling, a 12” strawberry tier with chocolate buttercream filling, and a 14” vanilla tier with raspberry filling.  The cake was iced with vanilla buttercream and adorned with handmade gum paste roses. This cake served approximately 150.

Lindsey

Rustic Wedding Cake

This weekend I managed to double my wedding cake experience with two, lovely rose-adorned cakes.  The first one that I’m sharing with y’all is a rustic style cake in which I incorporated a few new techniques.

Let me just say that if I had my very own choice of cakes, I’d choose something very similar to this one.  I love things that are a little bit shabby and a lot a bit pretty!

One new thing that I did on this cake was to make my own candy clay.  Super simple and yummy, it’s what I used to make the “B”, the fleur de lis, and the twigs on this cake.  The clay tasted just like Tootsie Rolls!

Another new technique I used on this cake is the textured icing.  Not only do I love the look it lends to the cake, but, as you probably guessed, it’s a fairly easy look to achieve.  And I can’t quite put my finger on it, but something about the way that icing is swirled on there makes the cake look yummier!

The border that I used around the top and bottom tiers is another newbie for me.  I melted white and dark chocolates, marbled the two together on a cookie sheet, and cut the mixture into tiny tiles.  Then I used icing to “glue” the tiles in place. I thought it turned out beautifully.

Like I mentioned earlier, I love shabby and pretty, so I thought the touches of burlap in the décor were just adorable.

The wedding was held in an older building that was a bank back in the day.  There was a real, working phone booth in the front foyer along with this piece of antiquated machinery.  It makes me think of Little House on the Prairie!

This was a made-from-scratch, golden vanilla cake filled with cream cheese icing, and iced with vanilla buttercream.  It was made with 6”, 8”, and 12” tiers and served approximately 70.

Lindsey

Fun, Funky, Flowers

Here’s a colorful cake any gal would love.

I’ve recently pinned several inspiration cakes that feature this flower-making technique, and I was thrilled to be able to try it for myself on this funky birthday cake!

This cake was made of 6” and 8” tiers and served approximately 30.  It was filled with buttercream and covered with homemade marshmallow fondant.  All details are made of fondant.

Lindsey