Ade's First Birthday - A Jungle Cake

I made this sweet first birthday cake for the sweetest little boy.  The jungle theme was really fun and gave me the opportunity to not only make some awesome gumpaste figures but extend the theme by adding animal print to the cake rounds.  Happy Birthday Ade!

 

 

 

 

The Pickle Cake

A friend of mine came to me and explained that her daughter was turning 9 and had requested a pickle birthday  party.  At this pickle party, they were going to eat all kinds of pickles, can their own pickles, and play a bunch of different pickle inspired games.  I love a good themed birthday party probably more than most people, so when she asked if I could come up with a pickle cake I was happy to help her out.

 

My friend gave me complete creative license with the design of this cake. The only requests were that it needed to feed 12 people and that they would like it to be made from chocolate cake.  In the planning process for this cake, I decided that I would try to make the pickle as realistic as possible and then quickly realized that this plan would either turn out great or turn out very, very badly. There was a definite possibility that the cake could turn out as awesome as I imagine it could be in my head or it could turn out to look like a big, green, unappealing blob of a cake. Oh geez!

 

I went to work baking, carving, covering and worrying...and then I decided that maybe the key to a fabulous pickle cake would be in it's color, or rather it's range of color, depth and realism.  So, I got out my rarely used airbrush.  I rarely used it because I am mostly afraid of it.  I have not used it very many time and know that once you airbrush a cake you can't got back, you can't remove it and it is extremely hard to remedy without starting over completely.  But, I went for it anyways and I am now in awe of the airbrush's awesome abilities.  Starting with a very light avocado green colored base I layered shade of green, yellow and warm brown to achieve almost exactly what I had imagined.  I love it! 

 

When I delivered this pickle, the birthday girl was not only surprised by how real it looked but also by it's size. You can't tell from the picture, but i grossly over-estimated the amount of cake I would need and this cake was huge.  I could easily fed 40 people.  

 

So, three cheers for a super huge pickle cake.  I'm sure it tasted better than it looked (because that is a lot of pickle).

 

 

 

 

 

***Another funny pickle cake story:

 

I saw my friend who ordered the pickle cake the week following the party and she had great things to say about the cake.  She then went on to tell me that since she didn't actually get to have a piece of cake at the party (and since there was so much left over) she decided to have a piece after dinner that night,  When she took a bite of the cake, she was surprised to find that the chocolate cake not only have a slight pickle flavor but was a tad crunchy.  Needless to say, she did finish her piece but still wondered if I had intended for the flavor of the cake to include the cake's theme as well.  The next day, after a little super sleuthing, she came to find out that her 4 year old son had come by some of the sprigs of dill that were left over from the party's pickle canning activity and had decided to place the sprigs inside the holes the candles had made in the top of the leftover cake. So, there was at least one piece of cake that actually tasted like a pickle.  Too funny!

Lovely Ladybug Cake

My husband works for the an e-commerce company managing their online experience team.  I know it sounds fancy, but truth be told I'm not exactly sure what it means (Shhh, don't tel the hubby!).  What I do know is that this great group of people write a lot of 'code' which produces a great looking, fast and profitable front end website where you can purchase just about anything you might need.  This team of people are also responsible for fixing any 'bugs' or problems that might occur on this code.  From what I understand. fixing bugs can be pretty tricky and somewhat stressful.I made this cake for the team to celebrate fixing 5,000 bugs.  Great works guys!

 

 

 

 

Austin's Angry Birds Birthday Cake

 So, after the huge Lego Party that was Austin's 6th birthday, he comes to me and says, "but I didn't get a birthday cake". Technically, that is true.  There were cupcakes at his party, along with many other goodies, but there was no 'special cake' made by mommy. So, I felt bad and since we planned his birthday party about a week and a half before his actual birthday I let him choose a cake theme for a cake I would make him on his true birthday.  I had no idea the detail he would provide for me when requesting and angry birds cake.  Not only was the design very specific but the birds had to be EXACT replicas.  I can not tell you how many times he came over to 'check on how I was doing' and offer his critiques.  Towards the end, I just had to grit my teeth and tell him that this was the best I could do.  I guess it's my fault for being a perfectionist that is raising a perfectionist.  I think it turned out pretty great.  Happy Birthday Buddy! I love you!

Austin turns 6...a Lego party!



It's that time of year again! (Well, not really this post is only 8 months overdo...)  Austin's 6th birthday is here and we had to make it a great one.

Austin has been in love with Legos for years now and it seemed about time we had an awesome Lego party.  There are lots of Lego party ideas out there but here is our version.  It was a blast and everyone had a great time!


This is my sweet boy on his big day.  We used the tradition Lego color palette and made everything to match. I even made Austin and his sister these super cute Lego t-shirts.  I used some directions I found online for freezer paper stencils and a little fabric paint from the craft store and voila...cuteness!





I found some Lego font online and had it printed at Kinko's on a large scale printer and glued it to this red foam core board. We had the perfect space to hang it across from the dessert table.  It made a huge impact for just a few dollars.



I found a great set of printable Lego party goods online and used them to add a lot of fun little details to the party.  The water bottle labels, 'happy birthday' flags, mini chocolate bar wrappers, thank you tags and coloring book all came from Anders Ruff at www.shop.andersruff.com





Mini Lego chocolates

White chocolate covered Oreos with polka dot edible images

Lego marshmallow heads

Lego head fondant cupcake toppers

The Lego bricks in the background of this photo were empty Capri-Sun boxes wrapped in colored wrapping paper found at Target.

I also spent many months collecting large peanut butter jars so that I could paint them yellow and make large Lego head decorations like this one.  I think I had about 7 of them.  That's a lot of peanut butter!

The Lego man crayons were made from a ice tray mold I found at our local Lego store and the coloring book was also from  



This is the gift bag each child got at the end of the party! The Lego cars that each child made during the party were tucked inside as well.

Austin and his friends building Lego cars.

My wonderful husband built this ramp for the kids to race the Lego cars they built on.  It was a hit!

More building...

Grandpas love building too.

Happy Birthday to Austin.



I love this little guy and his sweet smile!

Washington State Cake Show 2012 - A Fairy Tea Party Cake

 

This is the Fairy Tea Party Cake I made for the Washington State Cake Show. The theme of the show was 'Decorated to a Tea'.   I entered it in the advanced catagory and won Best of Category!  The cake also won the Best of Theme award! 

 

 

Ballerina Jewelry Box for the Evergreen State Fair 2012

I made this Ballerina Jewelry Box cake for the Evergreen State Fair cake competition this year. I recieved a First Place ribbon and a Special Merit ribbon as well. I am super happy with how things went at the fair and I am looking forward to entering again next year.