Cascading Flowers on Becca's Birthday Cake

 My daughter Rebecca turned 23 today.  She asked for a brown and blue cake with lots of flowers.  Since she loves chocolate, I made a triple chocolate pound cake.  I cut it in layers like a tort and in between layers put homemade fudge.  There is a soft fudge frosting around all of that and covered in chocolate fondant - which was a somewhat simple way to get brown!!  

Next Becca wanted a blue ribbon around each layer of the cake.  I debated using real ribbon or a fondant ribbon, but is a lot easier to match colors exactly with the flowers if I use fondant.  We talked a lot about the flowers as we were trying to decide on which kinds, colors, and recipes.  Her favorite kind of sugar flowers are the ones made with royal frosting.  They are not as realistic as the fondant and gum paste, but definitely have the best flavor!!  

Wednesday I started making flowers and was surprised how much I had forgotten!! We really love the look of gum paste flowers, and have focused on them so much more in the past year and a half! Reading through the Wilton book, I realized our instructor a few years ago actually taught us to make the daisy wrong. After a few experiments and a lot of time (I was still making flowers late on Thursday night)  I figured them out!! 

Friday morning I had a hard time figuring out how to put them on for some reason.  Whether I was tired, or just not in an artistic mood, who knows.  Becca came through and said she wanted them to cascade...  so I cascaded them on one side, and threw others on at various places. 

She was happy with the cake and was the one who took pictures for me, since I had to finish getting ready to run to church to clean.  It is definitely so rich, I couldn't even eat a whole piece at one time!!

Happy Birthday my sweet Rebecca Cain!!

Clown Birthday Cake

Clown Birthday Cake

 I was asked by someone in our church (that keeps up with everyone's birthdays) to make a birthday cake for the daughter of the evangelist who would be with us this Sunday.  Her birthday would be later in the week, but a thoughtful idea for us to be able to celebrate it with them Sunday.  We had a potluck after the morning service so that anyone that wanted to stay and be able to visit with them more would be able to.  We sang Happy Birthday to her and enjoyed a great meal and many other desserts also together.  

This is a simple beginner cake which was what I needed this weekend.  I was so tired from the busy and crazy weekend of getting my family off for a visit in SC, a cake demo at Hobby Lobby, cleaning house for company, and another cake order.

It also really made me miss Joy after these two cakes and a cake demo this weekend...  cakes are always a lot more fun with her around! 

Thanks for looking!

Team Umizoomi Birthday Cake

I have never heard of Team Umizoomi until I had to make a cake for Danny M this past week.  He wanted a cake for this newer cartoon he likes to watch on TV.  After some research online, I made a simple sketch of the main characters with food writers on the frosted cake.  Then filled them in with colored frosting using mostly a star tip and a few other simple techniques. It definitely took me longer than I thought it would, but I was happy with the results.  The characters from this cartoon are very cute and colorful which makes a nice child's birthday cake!