Celebrating Graduates

Whew, I’m pooped!

Turns out graduation is a busy time of year for cake decorators. Here are a couple of cakes I did for seniors this year.

This first cake is more masculine in design.  Cause let’s face it, 18-year-old guys aren’t too impressed with neon, topsy-turvy cakes.

This cake was a 10 inch round, two-layer cake, filled and iced with buttercream.  It served approximately 30. 

The cap and book are sculpted from rice cereal treats and covered with fondant.  I crafted the diploma from gum paste.

Now for the ladies…

Once again the cap was made from rice cereal treats and fondant.

This cake was composed of 6, 8, and 10 inch tiers and served approximately 50.  It was filled and iced with buttercream.  All accents were made with fondant.

Next is a cake for a college graduate.

The Tech cake was made of 6 and 8 inch tiers and served approximately 30.  It was filled and iced with buttercream and decorated with fondant details.

Last, I wanted to show y’all a graduation cookie cake.

Love me some cookie cake!!  My standard cookie cakes are 14 inches round and are $30.

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

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

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

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