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!!

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!