Purse Cake

I work with the teenage girls' group in my church. Every Fall, we hold an event called Young Women in Excellence which celebrates the girls' goals and accomplishments that year. This year, our chosen theme was, "The PURSEuit of Excellence". The whole program was purse-themed - we played purse games, decorated with purses on the tables, gave the girls hand-made purses for favors, and ate purse cake!

I've seen so many amazing purse cakes online and have been wanting to make one for a while, so I was pretty excited to make this!

I started with a four-layer rectangular chocolate cake, filled with buttercream, and then carved it to the shape I wanted. After frosting with more buttercream, I covered the cake in pink fondant and added the "leather" details with chocolate fondant and "metal" details with tan fondant brushed with edible gold dust.

I originally made two upright handles, but as they dried, they cracked and completely fell apart. So I had to salvage the broken pieces to make one handle lying down handle instead. If I were to do this cake again, I would make the purse handles from gum paste rather than fondant and given them a few days to dry and harden before placing them on the cake.

Baby Girls are a HOOT!

I was so excited to make this owl cake for my sister's baby shower! I started with a 10" round chocolate cake, filled and frosted with buttercream and covered in white fondant. The cake side features fondant cherry bossom branches and a monogrammed fondant medallion.

The baby owl, inspired by the invitations, was made of Rice Crispies and covered with fondant.

Cherry blossom branch details.

O is for Okey! With matching (and delicious) cupcakes made by my mom.

Congrats, Sis! I can't wait to meet sweet baby Okey!

Ooh La La!

I made this fun birthday cake for super sweet Jordan, who loves all things French.
This was my first attempt at red velvet cake, as it has always been mysterious and a little intimidating to me before. I mean how do they make it so red?! Well, I discovered the secret - a little cocoa and LOTS of red food coloring! :)

The cake was covered in buttercream frosting and white fondant. The bow and heart cut-outs were made from pink fondant, and the Eiffel Tower and poodles were piped color flow royal icing.

Inspiration for this cake here.
Bon Anniversaire, Jordan!

Three, Two, One, Let it RIP!

Pegasus Beyblade cake for Logan's 6th birthday.

Kit Kat and M&Ms Cake

Andrew told me he was too old for a themed birthday cake this year, so I threw together this cake based on his love of M&Ms and Kit Kats. I layered two round 12" chocolate cakes with chocolate frosting, surrounded the cakes with Kit Kats, tied the curly ribbon around to hold them in place, and dumped a huge bag of M&M's on the top! Seriously the easiest cake I have ever made! I think the birthday boy liked it too!

Chocolate Baumkuchen

My Mom shows you how to make this very impressive and delicious cake HERE. Yum!

April Foolin'!

My camera is broken right now, so I thought I would post some pictures from last year's April Fool's Day dinner.

First - dessert for dinner! "Ice Cream Sundaes" made from popcorn chicken, corn, mashed potatoes, gravy, and a cherry tomato on top.
I really got Logan good on this one! He was so excited to have ice cream for dinner! Then he took a bite, got a confused look on his face and said, "This isn't ice cream! It's smashed potatoes!"
Next - veggies for dessert. This awesome cupcake idea is from the coolest cupcake book ever, Hello Cupcake! The "mixed veggies" are really green Runts candies and cut orange Starburst candies.
The "mashed potatoes" are just vanilla frosting with a yellow Starburst candy "butter" swimming in caramel sauce "gravy." For once, the kids didn't mind eating all their veggies!

Happy Birthday, BSA!

I know this is a little late, but the Boy Scouts of America celebrated their 100th birthday last month. Andrew and I made a cake together for his Blue and Gold Banquet. I wanted to make a rectangle cake decorated with fondant to look like a Scout shirt with the patches and neckerchief and everything, BUT Bryan said I needed to "tone it down a bit" this time. So this is what we came up with. Andrew helped me mix the batter and bake the chocolate cake, then I frosted it with butter cream and piped the royal icing design and Andrew helped me flood the design. Then I added the blue shell border. When we were finished, Andrew asked, "Is there going to be a contest for the best cake? Not that OURS would ever win or anything, I was just wondering." Thanks a lot, Buddy!It's so funny that I have a son in Scouts! I remember going to Pack Meetings and Blue and Gold Banquets with my brothers....and now it's MY SON up there in the uniform doing the silly skit with his den! Crazy! Andrew is really loving Scouting and is especially proud of his uniform. He's even asked me on more than one occasion if he can wear his Scout shirt to school! He has already completed his Bobcat and is working on his Wolf. It's fun to see him so excited about it!

Minnie Mouse Birthday Cake

My daughter is a big fan of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, so I decided to make a Minnie Mouse cake for her 2nd birthday. After looking at several cakes on the Internet, I came across this cake by Ban Bakes, and wanted to do something similar.
Notice the sweet little finger pokes on top? They were from the birthday girl, who sneaked up on the table while my back was turned. It was her cake, so I couldn't get too mad at her. ;)
The base is two 10-inch round layers of strawberry cake with butter cream icing, covered in pink fondant with white fondant polka dots. The head is also strawberry cake baked in a little glass mixing bowl on top of a 6-inch round cake and covered in black fondant. The ears and bow were sculpted from gum paste.

Memo to me: Learn how to better color gum paste black! After attempting several methods of dying and painting the ears (unsuccessfully), I ended up spray painting them out of total desperation 30 minutes before the party. I know, it's not edible, how embarrassing! (Don't worry, we didn't serve the top layer of cake!) Gettting the ears to stay in position was also a nightmarish feat of engineering accomplished by my husband, Mom, and Dad. Thanks guys! Next time I'll get longer skewers; little toothpicks didn't do the job very well.


I wanted to pipe, "Happy Birthday, Hannah" in black, but I ran out of time and powdered sugar. I think the birthday girl liked it anyway.Happy Birthday, Little Lady!

Boston Cream Cupcakes

I made these for a birthday lunch for two of my friends. Yummy dense cupcakes filled with pastry cream, dipped in chocolate ganache, and topped with whipped cream and a cherry. This recipe is amazing! Well worth the effort!

Boston Cream Cupcakes From "The Best of America's Test Kitchen, The Year's Best Recipes, Equipment Reviews, and Tastings 2007"

Happy Birthday Linda and Suzan!

Scrubs

Fondant scrub cake for my dear friends who have just completed their residency in anesthesiology. Congrats, Shupes!

Beach Cupcakes

On my way to my son's end-of-year class beach party.These little cupcakes are so fun and easy to decorate with kids. All you need is frosting and graham cracker crumb sand......Fruit By The Foot beach towels......Teddy Grahams sunbathers...
(Icing swimsuits optional. ;-) )

...and a mini umbrella on top. (Thanks, Kimberly!)
Happy summer everybody!

What does a droid taste like? R2D2 Cake

For his birthday party cake, my son asked for his favorite Star Wars character - R2D2! I've been looking at R2D2 cakes online for a couple years now, wondering if I could do it. Here was my chance.

I started with six 8-inch round cakes. I stacked four for the torso and shaped the remaining two for the head. Frosted with buttercream frosting.

I covered both pieces with white rolled fondant and painted R2's head with silver Pearl Dust. (This was the first time I've ever worked with Pearl Dust. I think I over-diluted it with lemon juice and it ran all over the place. To compensate, I added a little cornstarch, but that just made it gummy and gloppy. In the future, I will add less lemon juice or just use it dry. Pretty cool stuff though!)

R2's legs were blocks of rice crispie treats cut to shape...

...and covered with fondant.

Here's R2 stacked and getting some details with fondant tinted blue. (Please don't hate me, Star Wars fans; I know he'd not droidatomically correct! He ended up being shorter than I planned as the heavy fondant squished him down a bit. Oh well.)

Here he is finished: an R2D2 cake! He's not perfect, but my son loved him, so that's what's important!

Mmmm...sprinkle cake!