Farm Birthday Cake

After a busy week of making three large cakes, one big cookie, and cupcakes for the fair, we were tired!! BUT, we had a cake to do for a friend's nephew. Patty asked for a cake with cars or tractors, and we were happy to help her out!! So, we started looking at ideas and chose this one. We both felt very 'caked out' when we were working on it. (Which shows we might not do well at this full time!!!) But, we were happy with the results of this cake. He is two years old, so we put two candles on the cake: a tractor candle and a barn candle. The frosting is a buttercreme with brown sugar sprinkled over the 'dirt.' I actually love brown sugar on frosting... it really gives it a good flavor!! Also, Joy made the fence you see with candy melts! We were glad to hear this 2 year old nephew was very happy with his cake!!

The Ugly Cake Contest at the Fair

Here is our entry for the Ugly Cake Contest at the Rock Island County Fair.
Joy and I won the blue ribbon and a best of show ribbon for this entry!




The trash can with trash was Joy's idea and from there we took off experimenting with what we could do. Some of these items we found out how to do them in books. We really didn't find much online, so the rest we made up as we went along. Everything you see is edible! We both felt this was one of the best cake we ever made... it was so much fun!!

We also won the top two places for our cakes. Joy won the blue ribbon and the best of show with her heart fondant cake. I placed second under Joy with my daisy basket cake. Joy also won the blue ribbon with her tea cup cupcakes. I won a blue ribbon with my whale cookie. (You can see pictures of these entries in earlier postings.)

This was a really great experience for us. It really pushed us to a new level of cake decorating!!

Rock Island County Fair

Here are our cakes on display at the Rock Island County Fairgrounds.

Wow... what a crazy weekend! We got home from our trip on Saturday afternoon at 4:00... and started baking. While our cakes were baking, we unpacked and cleaned up. We could not do all that we had planned to enter, because we only had until 4:00 on Sunday to turn in our entries. So we picked the 'decorated cake' category since that has been our focus this year AND since it also gave the most prize money if we place in the top 5.

Joy got her cricut cake machine while we were gone, so she really wanted to experiment with it and use it on her cake. The hearts and the writing are all cut using her new cricut machine with gum paste. She also used fondant on both the cake and the roses. Joy is really good at making roses look so realistic! I was glad she found a way to put some on her cake!!

My cake has the blue basket weave on the sides with the rope around the bottom. I made gum paste daisies (one of my favorites) and royal frosting drop flowers. We both wanted to put in some advanced techniques to show the judges our skills.

When we dropped off our cakes on Sunday (about 10 min. before the deadline) we told them we were not able to get to some of our entries, because of an out-of-town funeral. They gave us until 8:00 Monday morning... so we headed home exhausted, but excited to be able to get at least one more entry in.

We stopped at the store on the way home from the fair, so we could start our next 'project'. Joy only had one more entry due at this time, I had two to choose from. I did not feel I could do both of them in such a short time, unless I stayed up ALL night. So, I chose to do the big cookie.

Joy made her cupcakes look just like a tea cup with 'frothy whipped cream' and steam coming up. The frosting used on this is actually a mocha buttercreme and is REALLY tasty (a great new flavor!!) If you look close, she also has tea saucers that match the cups with the sweetest little flowers and leaves!!

I made my cookie look like the ocean with whales and tasty colorful waves!! Can you guess what I used for the whales? Everything we made had to be edible which made it a real challenge.

These will all be on display at the Rock Island County Fair this week!

Joseph's Birthday and July 4th

My son's (Joseph) birthday is on the fourth of July. He asks for a flag cake every year!! I think he likes the fact that his birthday is on such a celebrated holiday for our nation!

This year Joy and I started working with fondant and Joseph found he really likes fondant. So, for his cake this year he asked for a fondant covered chocolate cake in flag colors. Well, we have had plenty of practice with our last cake, so we made a smaller simpler one for him. Joy has always wanted to make the fondant balls to put around a cake, so that was a new technique we did this time. It looks fine on the bottom, but when we got to the second layer where the stripes are, the balls go up and down, and do not look quite as straight and neat. We are not quite sure how to fix that for the next one yet, but we will be reading up to see what other people do.

Happy 19th Birthday Joseph Matthew Glen Cain!! AND Happy 234th Birthday America!!