Evan's Alphabet Block Cake & Cupcakes

Last July, Chelsie asked me to do a Baptism cake for her son Evan.  A few weeks ago, I was absolutely thrilled to get the call to do his first birthday cake as well!  And, I might add, it's AMAZING to think that he's already a year old!  My word!  Time flies!

Chelsie wanted to do an alphabet block cake for Evan's 1st birthday.  Lots of letters, numbers and colors.  Every month for his first year, Chelsie had taken a picture of Evan with alphabet blocks that spelled out how old he was.  Cute, eh?!!!  So, the theme will carry on for his first birthday celebration!

Here's Evan's cake.  I did four layers of chocolate cake and filled it with buttercream, Oreos and fudge.  Again, one of my all time favorite combinations.  And the chocolate cake --- it doesn't get better than this one!

The cake is covered with buttercream and topped with gum paste/fondant strips, the number 1 and letter "E's" on the sides.  

  

Chelsie also ordered some gluten-free yellow cupcakes.  I topped those with fondant, gum paste squares that looked like more alphabet blocks.  

Best of all, Chelsie forwarded some pictures for me!  Here she is with the birthday boy!

And here's Evan enjoying his cupcake!  CUTIE!!!!!!!!!

And the inside of the cake.  Mmmmm!  Mmmmm!!!!

It most certainly looks like Evan had a great birthday bash!  Many blessings to you, Evan, on these wonderful years to come!

Baby Block Shower Cake

Trudy asked me to do a cake for her daughter's baby shower and she forwarded this link to me from Martha Stewart:

http://www.marthastewart.com/portal/site/mslo/menuitem.3a0656639de62ad593598e10d373a0a0/?vgnextoid=6799d0f19132f010VgnVCM1000003d370a0aRCRD&vgnextfmt=default

I thought the idea was absolutely adorable and was looking forward to getting started. I had some challenges, though, with this one. Martha wanted me to start out with a 12X18 sheet cake. After it bakes, I was to cut the cake in half and place one half over the other in order to make a two-layer cake. Then, I was to cut the cake into twelve, 3X3 inch pieces. None of this was challenging, but when I started working with these mini-cakes, the difficulty level raised dramatically. Frosting each with buttercream was sloppy and covering them in fondant was a whole different world to me. I'm used to working with cakes at least twice that size.

After a few hours (yes, it took more than one) I had each of the cakes covered in fondant and was working on decorating them. If you see from the picture from the website, Martha only shows 9 mini-cakes. The sides of the inside cakes weren't decorated, but everything on the outside was. I had to come up with at least 24 different designs on the sides and top and THAT was actually hard. I kept asking my husband, "What else can I put on a block?" He'd say, "A duck." Got it. "A boat." Got it. "A boot." Ooh! A BOOT!! Didn't have that one. But finally, I got them all decorated and the overall effect was really quite cute.

Trudy requested a white cake with strawberry buttercream. Her daughter is having a girl, and the pink filling was in honor of her soon-to-arrive granddaughter. The plan was to cut each of the mini-cakes in half, providing 24 servings. Nice.

I hope the shower was lovely! And congrats to Trudy and her daughter on the new addition to their family. How exciting!