Davin's Jungle Party

My friend Elly ordered a cake for her son Davin's 6th birthday party.  This one was going to be a jungle-themed extravaganza!  Per usual, Elly made her fabulous cookies.  Seriously, check out the attention to detail here:

For his cake, she wanted it to incorporate the jungle theme they were having throughout the party and she sent a picture of the invitation and this poster (which was a "Pin-The-Tail-On-The-Lion" game).  I liked the colors.  I thought the animals were super cute and thought I'd base the cake off of this.  

                                                 

We've got two lions, a zebra, a monkey, a giraffe and a #6 snake.  

The cake is a chocolate cake with vanilla bean buttercream.  All of the decoration is gum paste and fondant.

The best part of this cake was actually getting to visit with my dear friend Elly at pick-up.  It'd been about 12 years since we had a face-to-face conversation and it was long overdue!!  I see the work she puts into her kids' parties and they are amazing.  Davin, Happy Birthday to you!  (You have one heck of a mom!!!)

Calvin's First Communion

Laura requested a First Communion cake and coordinating cookies for her son, Calvin's special day.  She sent me a picture of the cookies she wanted; little crosses with squiggly lines and a flower with a green leaf on it.  I thought it was a beautiful idea.  

I made my Marriage Proposal Cookies and used the most wonderful buttercream to decorate them.  It's a frosting that dries hard, but not too hard.  It also prevents the cookies from drying out, which is what royal icing can sometimes do.  I thought these cookies were super fun to do and I thought they turned out nicely.  

Once packaged, they looked officially cute!

For the cake, Laura requested a chocolate cake with buttercream filling and frosting.  The buttercream I make is wonderfully smooth and creamy and it's not too sweet.  I also add vanilla bean of which you can see the flecks throughout.  It's really something!

My friend Heidi, who also decorates cakes and does so beautifully, made a cake similar to this one.  It was an inspiration and one I was looking forward to completing.  I love how it turned out in blue and Laura requested that I carry the squiggly lines from the cookies to the cake so that they would clearly coordinate and match, which I did on the side of the cake.  I added Calvin's name and date on the front of the cake in gum paste.

Here's what the cake and cookies look like together.  They definitely coordinate!

I'd like to congratulate Calvin on his special day!  May God bless you, Calvin!

Sunny Days for Maren

We started the day out right!  And weather actually provided us a "Sunny Day;" the first in about a week!  Maren woke up to this Sesame Street scene right in our kitchen.  It was the backdrop to some fun pictures and it added such personality and color to the room!

Here's the dessert table.  Maren told me earlier in the week she wanted a strawberry cake.  After I baked it, she informed me that she wanted chocolate cake.  So I whipped up a few cookie monster cupcakes for her.  Did I mention that she's only TWO?

This was a "family party" so my girls got little giftbags and so did my two nephews.  I included bubbles, rubber duckies, goldfish crackers, crayons (Elmo loves his goldfish, his crayon too), and some color sheets, cookies and other little miscellaneous goodies.

I used a lot of Maren's toys to decorate the space.  Sesame Street is ALL OVER the place!

Here's her cake.   I made a gum paste/fondant bow and decorated the sides with Elmo, Cookie Monster, Ernie and Oscar the Grouch.  I made the characters out of gum paste.  

The cookies are my Marriage Proposal Cookies.  The frosting dries hard, but not too hard, and I dipped them in some color coordinated sugar.  These were delicious and gone so quickly.   The party was brought to you by the letter M and by the number 2.

I served a brunch buffet complete with themed fruit and veggie trays.  I found these guys or some like them on Pinterest.  Maren got a kick out of them and pretty much devoured Cookie Monster.

Danny made these scramble egg  and bacon pies with his mini-pie maker.   

We served croissants with my friend Erin's homemade strawberry jam - delish!

Bacon and sausage?  Check!

This was a cinnamon roll cake.  OMG.  It was amazing!!!

We also served some yogurt that our guests could top with fruit or granola.

After brunch we celebrated with the cake and Maren had her cupcake.  She requested chocolate cake with blue frosting, so I continued on with the theme and made them into little Cookie Monsters with mini Chips Ahoy cookies and all.

Here's Maren with a dangerously close view of fire.  She's absolutely mesmerized!!  She blew out her candle with perfect aim and devoured this Cookie Monster too.

Maren had a great time at her birthday party.  I got through it by using this as my mantra:  

Happy Birthday, my sweet little Maren!  You bring so much joy to our lives with your kindness, humor and wit.   We love you so!

Forever a Family

April 29th is such a fantastic day for so many reasons.  Two of them happen to be that it was Aiden's birthday and it was also the day his family "officially" became complete.   Seriously!!  A wonderful day to celebrate!

Erin and Kari (Aiden's mom) have been friends for like...EVER and she wanted to plan something nice for the celebration.  She ordered cupcakes from me and forwarded a picture of cupcakes that were displayed in the shape of a tree.  This was a gift she got for Aiden and I thought the words on top were just lovely, and very, very true!  

Here's the tree cake with that phrase on the trunk.  The cupcakes were vanilla cupcakes, filled with strawberry cream cheese frosting and topped with creamy buttercream, half vanilla, half chocolate.

I just happened to have a little sugar blue bird waiting for his tree.  

Kari also wanted to share a little something with the many people that made April 29th a possibility.  So I whipped up these cake pops in Aiden's favorite color scheme (AKA -Spiderman) so Kari could share a little celebratory treat with these VIPs.

I am absolutely HONORED that I got to be a part of SUCH a special day! You are such a beautiful family!  I wish you a lifetime of love and blessings!

Coming Soon... A Baby Shower Cake

Nancy requested a baby shower cake a few months back.  She wanted something original, envisioned a two-tiered cake, and wanted something for a baby boy.  Here's the sketch she gave me.  

The color scheme came together once she discovered what the mom-to-be wanted and I think this little baby boy shower cake turned out really cute.  

The bottom tier is my chocolate cake with homemade chocolate mousse filling.  The top tier is vanilla cake with raspberry preserve filling.  Everything is frosted with a creamy buttercream frosting and I used either gum paste or fondant (or a combination of both) to make the decorations. 

I hope that the mom-to-be had a beautiful baby shower!  I wish her well!  

Easter Cake Pops

I taught a Wilton Pops! class earlier this month.  It was the first time that I taught said class and I did deter from the program a little bit.  First, my class was an additional hour in length and second, I actually taught how to make CAKE pops.  Overall, I think my students appreciated the extra information.

Because Easter was right around the corner, we themed our decorated Cake Pops accordingly.  My students made little chicks, bunnies and decorated Easter eggs.  It's amazing what you can do with chocolate chips, M & M's and candy corn!!   I think they turned out so cute!!!

I took this one step further, however.  My daughter had to bring in treats for her class Easter party at school.  I made some additional cake pops and turned the pops around so the sticks came out the top.  This way, when I added the Easter grass and candy to the bottom of the bags, the bunnies looked like they were sitting amongst the goodies.  I also rolled my cake pops in sugar.  It adds a little crunch and durability to the Pops.  Kids love 'em!

I hope your Easter was absolutely splendid and filled with super fun treats!!!

Cobra Cake

My friend Jodi requested a cake for her husband's birthday.  He has this FABULOUS car and wanted to incorporate it's design into the theme of his birthday cake.  She wanted a blue cake with white stripes and the Cobra to be on top.  Let's just pause for a second and take a look at this beautiful car.  

So here's the cake.  It's a chocolate cake with creamy buttercream frosting and filling.  The details are made out of gum paste and edible food marker.  

I hope Jodi's husband had a GREAT birthday celebration!