One (or several) reason I haven't been blogging lately

I have a few minutes this afternoon and thought I would try to post some pictures of the reason I haven't been blogging lately. Besides cleaning houses during the day and selling coffee at Starbucks at night, I have had several cake orders in the past two months. Thought I would share a few pictures of them with you. :)

This first one is a topsy-turvy cake I did for a baby shower. It is a White Almond Sour Cream cake with a simple butter-cream icing. I was given an apron and I scanned the design and then used my edible printer to print out several sheets of the design which I cut into ribbons and wrapped around the cake. I used a photo editing program to erase what was written in the hearts and write "baby girl" in each one. (They knew it was going to be a girl). I also cut out one heart and one rose from the pattern and placed them on the cake. It was a big hit at the shower.

The next cake is a birthday cake for a woman who likes the west. Her sister ordered the cake and asked me to do a "western-y" themed cake. This is what I came up with. It is another White Almond Sour Cream cake with the "ground and hills" in Fluffy Dark Chocolate  buttercream and the sky and clouds in an Almond buttercream icing. The horse is a frozen buttercream transfer.



After that I did a groom's cake for a UVA graduate. The bride asked me to make a Red Velvet cake with Cream Cheese icing and to make it in a UVA theme. I decided to color the icing blue and ice the cake with it. Then I did a frozen buttercream transfer of the "V". The sabers are made from gum paste colored orange.  I heard from the bride (as I was setting up her wedding cake) that everyone, including the groom, loved the cake.

Next we have the first of two weddings I had on the same day. This one was two tiers of White Almond Sour Cream (what can I say...it's my most popular flavor) cake with Cinnamon buttercream and one layer of Espresso Sour Cream cake with Caramel filling. The cake was covered in fondant, which was impressed with a diamond pattern and small silver dragees were attached to each point of the diamonds using royal icing. The flowers are gum paste, hand painted and then dusted with a pearl luster dust. When the bride told me what she wanted I thought it would be too busy, but once I finished setting it up, I loved it!

The other cake that day was actually both cupcakes and a small 8" cake. Around the top of the 8" cake were ribbon roses made from chocolate fondant. The bride had a cupcake stand made and I placed 144 cupcakes iced in almond buttercream colored blue and chocolate buttercream. The 8" cake was to be placed on the top of the stand and used for the bride and groom to cut. They didn't have the cake topper when I set up the cupcakes so the cake with the topper was going to be placed on top of the stand later that day. Which is why I don't have a picture of it on the stand with the topper on it. :) The cupcakes were vanilla, chocolate and white almond. :)

This last one is not really a cake but a 12" chocolate chip cookie. The Mom (who last year I did a "Pizza" cake for one of her other sons) contacted me and asked if I could do a Lego cake only use cookie in place of cake. Turns out this son doesn't like cake or icing. I made all the legos using fondant. The squares and rectangles were easy. Each little nub though was a bit more labor intensive. I cut out the nubs using a #10 icing tip. Then, each block got 4 or 6 drops of water and each nub was placed on the drop of water, gluing it in place. Once dried I used royal icing, sparingly, to attach each block to the cookie. When the Mom picked it up she was thrilled with how it turned out and hugged me. I love baking for people. :)

So, that is one of the reasons I haven't been around lately. Or I guess it's 6 reasons. :) Hope to "see" you soon!