Good Luck Dr. Kandis

Flower Cake - Good Luck!

Chantelle is a nurse in the ER at Genesis Hospital in Davenport, IA.  She ordered a cake to wish Dr. Kandis good luck at her job change.  It was kind of short notice for us, since everyone lost track of when Dr. Kandis' last day was.  As much as it would have been fun to make a 'doctor' cake or horses (another idea Chantelle mentioned she would liked), we went safe and simple, since we did not have time to research, shop, bake, and decorate.  Afterward we researched a little and saw a lot of awesome ideas!!  We would like to someday do a doctor themed cake, and even a horse cake!!

A Quick Chocolate Cake for Ben's Birthday

Ben's birthday was on February 28th.  It was great that the Holiness Conference at Falls Baptist Church started on Ben's birthday!  Chris and Joy were able to hand deliver it themselves!! We made a quick triple chocolate cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting (we went simple since we were SO busy getting everything else ready for their trip.)   This is the only picture we got of the cake, I am glad it turned out so well!

This was the first time we made the chocolate cream cheese frosting, and everyone really loved it!  We didn't have time to add anything else to personalize it...  but the thought was what counted!! 

Happy 40th Wedding Anniversary

 Paul and Debbie L will celebrate their 40th wedding anniversary on Sunday, April 10th.  This is a cake that was ordered from their children and grandchildren.  Paul is known for his postcards, so the postcard on the left, is similar to what he would send someone on their anniversary.  The addressed postcards are addressed to them from their children and grandchildren. The cards are made from fondant and written on with food coloring markers.  Debbie loves Gerbera Daisies, so the yellow daisies are for her. The daisies are also made with fondant. The cake looks kinda blue, but it was a medium purple to really set off the daisies.  The cake is half chocolate and half white funfetti.  The frosting is a mock whipped cream, which is harder to pipe shells around, but has a very fluffy and lightly sweetened taste. Happy 40th Anniversary Paul and Debbie!!

Bible Cake for my Dad

Bible Cake

I always wanted to bake a cake for my parents special days:  birthdays, anniversary, etc.  Up to this point, it has been impossible, since they live in South Carolina (which is over 600 miles away). Unless our visit would coordinate with one of these special times, in which it never has.  This week it worked out for me to bake a cake for my dad and send it down to them.  My mom actually thought of it, and called me to see if I could do it.  I didn't tell her I had been sick, because I thought it was such a great idea and I was so excited.  My mom wanted a Bible cake.  Joy had bought a book pan over a year ago, which we had never used, and were excited for an opportunity to use it also!!  The cake is a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.  It is covered with fondant and painted with food coloring. The fondant is a little bumpier than usual, because I added more frosting than usual. (My dad loves cream cheese frosting with his carrot cake!!) Joy made the red ribbon.  We did not have time to get any writing on it though, since it was a last minute throw-together.  This was a simple cake and a fun one to do!  A book cake could be used for so many different occasions!!

Marjorie's 90th Birthday Party

April 2nd is Marjorie's birthday and this year was her 90th birthday!!  We celebrated with two cakes.  The bigger one was half yellow and half chocolate with a butter cream frosting.  The other is a carrot cake with a cream cheese frosting.  The fondant flowers were made by Joy.  Margie put on the frosting, shell border, and placed the flowers and leaves.  Marjorie really enjoyed the party and all her friends who came!!

Happy Birthday Becca!!

Inverted Gift Box Cake

Becca's birthday cake is an inverted gift box cake.  Her favorite colors are blue and brown, so we used geometric shapes out of blue and brown with a marbling affect.  We would have had more brown, but we ran out of brown food coloring (one thing we forgot to check when shopping).  The top tier cake is a triple dark chocolate wedding cake with chocolate cream cheese frosting.  (We had ganache that was suppose to be in the middle of the cake layers, but decided to eat it on the side with the cake this time.)  The smaller bottom tier cake is an orange cake with orange cream cheese frosting.  We experimented with an orange curd that had a candy orange taste, and did not match the flavor of the cake. So again, we did not put it in between the layers.  Fondant covers both tiers with blue and brown fondant colored shapes to decorate it. 

This is an interesting cake that a bride showed me.  We wanted to experiment and see if we could do it. This is a small scale of the original and also simplified, for the sake of practice and experimenting. And although you can see it here and it doesn't look too bad, there are a lot of problems we ran into.  We need to learn how to do seams in fondant, because each corner has a seam that we could not work out.  It is also not completely even, although we measured and remeasured!!  There are so many angles to work with and think about, that it would be hard to get this cake perfect!!

Overall, this was a fun experiment and we were happy with our final product!  Happy Birthday to my sweet daughter Becca!!

Sponge Bob Cake

Danny M. wanted a Sponge Bob cake for his fifth birthday.  Having never watched Sponge Bob, we had to do a little research to see what he looked like and what other ideas we could come up with.  The simple thing would be to go and buy a $5 toy or cake topper and be done with it.  But, we like to learn new things and experiment with any new techniques we can find.  We saw a LOT of cakes online, but we didn't like any one cake.  So, we made up our own idea combining a few things from different cakes we saw.  Our Sponge Bob is actually a piece of cake that has been completely decorated with colored frosting to give it a 3d look.  The 'sand' is a mixture of brown and white sugar.  Joy did the sugar, green seaweeds, and yellow shell.  I made Sponge Bob.  The cake was a marble cake with buttercreme frosting.  Happy Birthday Danny!!

We have a few cakes we made in the past month... (Ben's birthday cake and a cake for a workmate of Chantelle.) But since I can't find my camera, I cannot post pictures yet.  Hopefully we will get them up in the near future!!

Butterfly Cake

 

Lilly wanted a butterfly cake for her birthday,  but the closer it came to her birthday, she decided she wanted flowers too.  So, with the help of her mom (Sandy), we came up with the cake you see here!!   She wanted the cake flavor to be a strawberry cake, so we also made the frosting a strawberry flavored butter cream.  We baked the cake in a petal pan, to make a scallop edge all the way around.  The pink butterflies are made of fondant and a gum paste mixture.  The fence posts, flowers and other butterflies are made with just our homemade fondant.  The green grass is frosting.  This was one of our favorite cakes to make!!  The small pink flower cake you see on the right was designed and created by Joy from a picture that Lilly saw of a flower cake. Small cakes are very hard to work with, but she did a fantastic job!!  

Envelope Birthday Cake

My friend Twyla wanted a frosted envelope cake for her husband's birthday, since he works for the United States Post Office.  She wanted a marble cake with chocolate and yellow cake flavors, frosted with a butter cream.  She chose what she wanted written on top, and also a heart stamp, and lips.  We did a triple chocolate cake mix and a vanilla yellow cake for added flavor.  Joy made the stamp using food writers and a rubber stamp.  The sun and candles are made with frosting.  We tried to make the lips with a red food writer marker, but it wasn't working, so I painted it on with food coloring and a paint brush.  This was a fun cake to make!! 

Christmas Party Cake (wedding cake practice)

 Joy and I have been asked to do wedding cakes for 3 friends.  We did not know if we were ready, and we didn't know where to even start..  How much time would it take?  How much would it cost to make one?  Are we ready for such a big project?  Where do we even start??   So, we planned for the past three potlucks to make a wedding sized cake.  But, each month something would come up and we would not get to make it.  When the adult Christmas party at church came up, it seemed like the perfect time to pull it together!!

We decided to make specialty flavors for the cake, frosting, and fondant.  The top layer is a lemon flavored cake with lemon frosting.  We have a homemade white colored fondant (to match the decorations) with lemon extract (to match the flavor of cake and frosting.)    This was our first attempt at making our own fondant.   It had a better flavor, but was VERY hard to work with.

Our second (middle) layer is a Candy Cane Cake.  The cake and frosting have added peppermint extract and crushed peppermint candy canes.  Again, we added peppermint extract to the fondant to match the flavor of the cake.

The bottom layer is half red velvet and half carrot cake.  Both of these cakes usually use cream cheese frosting, so that worked out perfectly!!

On the way to church to set up the cake, it was SNOWING.  The problem was, there was a car wreck at the bottom of the hill, and we were stuck in the middle of traffic.  It took us a while to find a good spot to U-turn and go to the church a different way (back tracking some too!!!)  The snow falling on the fondant left little shiny dots - so, we will have to see what to do if it rains or snows on a day when you have to carry a cake outside. 

Even so, we got the cake set up on time and you can see the finished product here!  It was not perfect, but we were excited about the fact that we did it!!  Now to figure out the full cost to make, as well as the time put into making it!!  Thanks for stopping by and looking!