Graduation Cake

4th of July Graduation Cake

My friend (Chantelle V) asked Joy and I to make a graduation cake. She sent a few pictures of a few ideas she found, and we decided on the topsy-turvy style cake. We practiced the week before on a smaller version, to see if we could really do it. I must say, we BOTH LOVE working with fondant! It is kinda like playing with edible play dough.

5 cake mixes, 5 pounds of fondant, 3 batches of butter creme frosting, (plus much more), and lots of planning and work went into this one cake! It also has a LOT of calories, sugar, and fat in it!! LOL But, besides that, we got it to the party in one piece and ON TIME!

This was the biggest cake, and for the biggest occasion we have ever baked cake for. It was a very good experience for both of us! I was worried if we would get frazzled, but even with a few problems, we were calm and would start thinking of a plan B. There was one time when we could not find the black fondant we had mixed earlier in the week and had it in a sandwich bag... we could not find it anywhere!! One of the girls suggested praying, so we stopped, prayed, and within 3 minutes it was found! Thank you Lord! We also struggled a little with the tassel, and on about plan H it worked! Whew!

Tomorrow is Father's Day... should I make a Father's Day cake? Nope! My husband wants pie for dessert... Do you reckon he is tired of cake?

Piano Birthday Cake

Someone at church (Paul L) came up to me several months ago and asked if we would make his daughter (Pam J) a surprise Birthday cake. He wanted some type of piano cake, whatever we could come up with. Pam is a special friend of both myself and Joy, so we were very excited and started looking to see what we could come up with. Most self-designed piano cakes online were not very impressive, and we were a little discouraged. We started thinking about designs that would use the components of a piano on the cake (like the keyboard, musical notes, etc). Then Joy happened to find a Wilton vintage cake pan set of a grand piano that was on ebay. We started bidding, and lost it in the last seconds of the auction. We kept looking and found another one, and were able to win that one and actually paid less than the first one we were bidding on!

Next, knowing how much Pam LOVES chocolate, we asked a woodworking friend (Monte W) in our church to take our set and make a similar set of wood - the base with legs, the bench, and the top. Monte did an AWESOME job!! We were SO excited and couldn't wait until the BIG day! It was so hard to talk to Pam at church and not let out the secret, especially since it was a much talked about topic at home as we designed and planned it!!

Although we never had time to actually make an experiment of the piano cake before the BIG day, it actually went together pretty smoothly!! We decided on making a base plate with fondant that morning as we were working on the cake - which put us a little behind in getting done at the time we estimated, but it added SO much to the final product, I am glad we did it!

Pam was pleasantly surprised and we have heard more feedback from this ONE cake than any other cake we have made up to this point! We are also able to make this cake in a light creme color, and will hopefully get around to making one and adding a picture to the blog soon!!

Our Story

My daughter Joy and I began a new journey of cake decorating about a year ago - early fall of 2009.

Although I had always decorated cakes for my children and their birthdays (and other small events), I wanted to learn more. I have some natural born artistic talent that I have never really taken the time to develop in any one area. I love to paint, draw, sew, design, decorate, and create all kinds of things, but I have never mastered any one thing. I have always had a desire to master a skill or two in my life time, but the Lord had other plans. I met the man of my dreams, and together we started a family. I LOVE being a mom, but while our children were young, it left little time for me to truly develop these skills !!

When my daughters were little, I bought them an Easy Bake Oven at a yard sale. I had always wanted one when I was young, so this was kind of a special treat for me too! I would let them bake cakes and decorate them. When they were older, I started teaching them some of the simple techniques of cake decorating with their little easy bake cakes. With this small oven began Joy's love and desire to learn to decorate cakes.

The year after Joy completed high school, she worked for a year to save for college. We talked about taking a cake decorating class then, but it never happened! We were so busy! She was working and I was still homeschooling 3 children. After she finished her two year degree, and came home for a year, we again decided to take a class... but again, it did not happen! Life gets busy, and things that are not as important, get put on the back burner.

Then last year, we saw an advertisement for cake classes - HALF OFF. Those of you who know me, know I can't pass up a good DEAL! So, we went and signed up. The rest is history. The more time we spend designing and decorating cakes, the more we fall in love with cake decorating. We are not professionals, but some day... maybe... I will have mastered one thing in my life!! This blog is to keep a 'diary' of this journey and to share it with our friends!

Many thanks to our friends for your continued encouragement... and for eating our many experiments!