Evan's Baptism

Chelsie called me last week hoping that I would be able to squeeze in a cake order for her son's baptism.  Luckily, I didn't have any cakes due this weekend and was happy to help her out.   She needed a cake to feed between 20-30 people, so we decided on a 10-inch, 2-layer cake.  It was tough to decide between chocolate and yellow cake, so I did one of both.  I torted the cakes and layered them yellow, chocolate, yellow, chocolate with blue vanilla buttercream in between. 

The cake is decorated with buttercream and gum paste/fondant accents.   I hope baby Evan had a beautiful ceremony.  Congratulations to the family!

Cinderella's Chocolate Mountain

Rebecca asked me to do a Cinderella cake for her daughter's birthday this weekend.  Already having a pretty large sheet cake order for a wedding due, I didn't know if I would be able to squeeze that in, but Rebecca ensured me that she just needed an 8" cake and it could be "simple."  I love simple. 

After brainstorming and looking at a bunch of cakes online, I decided to browse the toy store.  I knew I wouldn't have time to sculpt much and that's not really my thing anyway.  I am way too practical to sculpt a bunch of stuff out of gum paste or fondant because where does that go when the cake is consumed?  In the trash...or the daring might even consume it (it IS edible).  But especially for kids cakes, I really prefer toys as toppers.  

So, I was delighted when I came across a little Cinderella boutique at Amazon.com.  I thought this would be the perfect cake topper and what little girl wouldn't be DELIGHTED with seeing this on a CAKE?!!

I couldn't just leave the cake frosted plainly.  I made the time to do the basketweave to add a little more interest and I added some little pink rosettes.  My daughter loved the cake but told me I needed to add grass and she's right - it looked much better with the grass. 

This cake is a chocolate cake with raspberry buttercream filling and frosted with a chocolate frosting.  The chocolate frosting was a new recipe for me from Martha Stewart.  It had butter, cream cheese and sour cream plus over a pound of melted chocolate in it.  Seriously.  Seriously...

I hope the birthday girl had a FABULOUS birthday and felt like the little princess she was!   

Wedding [Sheet] Cake

Carmelina and I met when I worked as a Cake Decorating Instructor at Michael's.  She is a great cake decorator and was getting married and wanted to do her own wedding cake.  But she had quite a crowd to feed and needed additional cake and asked me to make some sheet cakes as supplemental cake for her guests.  I was happy to oblige.  Many of you know that I "retired" from doing weddings, but cupcakes or sheet cakes or a small two-tiered cake I can handle.  Big ones, not so much.  So this order was just my style. 

Carmelina and her beau, Garth, requested white cakes with raspberry buttercream filling.  So each one of these cakes is two-layers with a delicious raspberry buttercream filling inside.  Simply decorated as no one will see them!  LOVE this!  (Also, I used 60 egg-whites here...SIXTY!!!)

The only challenge I had with all of the cakes was storage, but my 'fridge turned out to be the hero.  It's very versatile and I held out on grocery shopping for a couple of days to ensure the room! 

I hope that Carmelina and Garth had a fantastic wedding (the weather was BEAUTIFUL!!)!  I wish them the very best!  Congrats!

A Pirate Cake Fer Connor

A little over two weeks after my daughter turned five, my nephew turned five as well.  These two cousins have gone through everything together and it's so perfect that we live just down the street from one another.  After Josie's big princess/villains party a few weeks ago, I knew I had to get one more party under my belt before the month of June was over.  Connor was having a PIRATE party and I wanted to make sure that his cake was a cool, piratey kind of cake.  

After looking at what seemed like thousands of cake images online, I really couldn't find one that I loved enough to duplicate.  So I took some ideas from here and there and came up with my very own design.  Connor's only request was that it had the pirate skull on it.  I made sure that there were FIVE on there.  Can you find them all?

At Josie's party, Connor came dressed up as a pirate.  Fortunately we got a great picture of him at the party and I included it/him on his cake.  Awesome, eh?!  Arrrrr!  The treaure here is a candle I ordered from Wilton.com.  I thought it was perfect for the occasion!

I also wanted to incorporate a treasure map or an "X" marks the spot motif which you can see below.  The cake itself is a chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream filling and frosting.  The ship is made out of rice krispie treats and covered in modeling chocolate.  (Special thanks to the hubby for molding it for me.)  I used paper and skewers for the ship's masts, but everything else on the ship is edible.  

And here's the birthday boy...I mean, the birthday PIRATE!   

Happy 5th Birthday to you, Connor!  Auntie Ann loves you very much!

Disney Villains and Princesses oh my!

We celebrated Josie's birthday yesterday.  We had a GREAT day for it!  Sunny, almost 90 degrees and NO CHANCE OF RAIN!  Since our visit to Walt Disney World last October, Josie has been wanting and wanting a Disney Villains-themed party.  Her favorite villain is Malificent and she requested [last October] a Malificent cake.  Okay....?  Needless to say, I had some time to think about design. 

Getting back to the party, I added the "princess" bit for her because I think most her her 5-year old-ish friends would have more to do with princesses than with the villains.  We encouraged all of her friends to dress up as their favorite Disney villain or princess and also come with their swim suits.  Because it was so warm, we made it into a water party!

Josie's Grandma Marcia was able to secure this wonderful Snow White cut-out which we had all of her guests pose with.  What a beautiful addition to the party!  

I still can't believe I was able to find Villain-themed plates and napkins, but was so happy I did.  (These were actually for Halloween parties!!)

We had all of Josie's guests find their goodie bags right away after arriving.  We had them hidden throughout the yard.  The girls got foam tiaras with adhesive jewels to decorate, lots of fun jewelry, princess tattoos and silver wands.  The boys got knight masks and knight shields to decorate, knight tattoos and a foam sword. 

Here are all of Josie's guests.  A few Cinderellas, Snow Whites, a Rapunzel and even a Darth Vader in there!

After the photo-op, we had the kids get their suits on and that's when the fun began!  Sprinkler time for everyone (while also watering the veggie garden)!

We played Cruella's Dalmation [water balloon] toss game.

And Hades Hot Potato.

We finished up the water games with water limbo!





Then it was time for cake.  Like I said, Josie wanted a Malificient cake (the evil fairy from Sleeping Beauty).  It was so hard to make such an evil cake for my 5-year old daughter, but this was really what she wanted.  I kept the color scheme very Malificent and added the dragon (made out of gum paste & fondant) and included some little pink flowers around the cake, per the story. 

The top tier is a yellow cake and the bottom tier is a chocolate cake.  Both are filled with green buttercream frosting.

 I think she liked it!

 If cake didn't provide enough sugar, we had the kids take down this pinata. 

 And here they are enjoying the deliciousness of the candy, after their cake sugar high. 

....and then we quickly sent all of the kids home.  :)

Happy Birthday, Josephine!  I hope you had a wonderful day!  We sure did!

Our Maren, Full of Grace

Saturday we celebrated our daughter, Maren's, baptism.  It was a special day for all of us and one that we were looking forward to for some time.  The gown she wore for this occasion has been in my husband's family for 105 years. Danny, Josie and Maren all wore this gown and it just feels holy!

To celebrate the occasion, we had all of those involved over to our house for an Italian-style meal (lasagnas) and we enjoyed these delicious cupcakes.  I made pink lemonade cupcakes with pink lemonade frosting.  I was really picturing something simple and innocent for decoration and came across these little cross toppers and thought they were perfect.  



I came across the plates and napkins at a later date and thought they went perfectly together.  What luck!

My God Bless our little Maren Grace.  We love her so!



Oh, The Places They'll Go!

My oldest daughter, Josie, graduated from K4 this week.  It was a bittersweet ceremony.  On one hand, she's accomplished SO much this year, and on the other, I can't believe she's moving on to KINDERGARTEN next year!  Oy!  Where has the time gone?!

Her K4 experience has been an exceptional one.  Her teachers are outstanding and have really worked hard to offer neat, fun, unique experiences for all of the kids in the class.  This included "travel around the world".  Her teacher is from England and has a love of travel and throughout the year,  incorporated her journeys into their curriculum.  So, when I was asked to do a cake for their gradutation ceremony, I thought going along with that theme would be a nice tribute to their travels together.  

The little red dots on the world map show where they've gone this year: 

And during their travels, by the way, they all got on an [imaginary] airplane and were served their snack as they traveled.  They'd spend about a week in each location before their [imaginary] trip home.  When in Italy, they actually sampled pizza and gelato for snack time.  When in China, they got to try eating noodles with chopsticks.  What fun!

As for the cake, it's a two-layer sheet cake.  Half of the cake is chocolate, the other half is yellow.  Both sides are filled and frosted with vanilla buttercream.  The decoration is made up of a gum paste/fondant mix. 

I wish the graduates of the 2012 K4 class a heartfelt congratulations and wishes for a great summer.  We'll see you in the Fall!!