Oh, the Places You'll Go! Cake

Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You're off to Great Places!
You're off and away!...

And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)...

KID, YOU"LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!...

Oh, the Places You'll go!

- Dr. Suess

I made this cake for Slugger who graduated from Lesley College this weekend with her Masters in Education. Is was a long road for her and she did great.

You deserve to have your cake and eat it too! We are so proud of you! - said in true Dr.Suess fashion

Banana Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

I am not a fan of of almost anything banana. Banana flavored candy, smoothies with banana, or even bananas themselves make me cringe. However, I do like banana bread. I will always choose it over zucchini or pumpkin. I don't know why, but that's how it is.

This week's Banana Chocolate Chip Cupcakes were a hit! This cupcake was a banana cake filled with mini semi-sweet chocolate chips and topped with a chocolate buttercream and a banana chip. Not only did it look good, but it smelled and tasted delicious.

Some people were a little tentative about the banana flavor to start (as I would be) but even these people did not leave a crumb on the wrapper. And then, others were skeptical of my flavor combination all together...to them I say 'don't knock it till you try it.'

I think these were a total success! (Even the pic turned out great!)

Plants vs. Zombies Cake

I just learned about Plants vs Zombies when my husband downloaded it onto my iPhone a couple of weeks ago. I've never been into video games but caught myself playing this on my phone when I had a few minutes to spare (or laying in bed before going to sleep. Shhh, don't tell!) So, when I got an email from someone looking for a Plants vs Zombies cake and the lady wanted to know if I had ever even heard of this game, we had a good laugh.

At first, I was a little overwhelmed with the number of gumpaste figures I was going to have to sculpt. Sculpting figures is not something that I have spent a lot of time doing and I am always a little nervous that everything will not turn out exactly the way it is supposed to look. However, once I got going, I had the best time. Each figure looked better than the rest and when I finally got to put all of the pieces together I was really happy with it.

The best part was how loud the birthday boy yelled "Whoa!" when I delivered it yesterday. That made the whole thing worth while.

Happy Birthday Nico! I hope you had a super special day!

Pete & Marti's New Grandparents Shower Cake

Pete and Marti are grandparents. They live quite a ways from their new grand-daughter and were so excited about her arrival that Nana decided to throw them a "New Grandparents" shower.

The cake was a chocolate-vanilla swirl pound cake with chocolate buttercream filling. For this cake I learned how to make the gumpaste box top, worked again at trying to cover round cake with fondant, and transported it in the car (with the kids) 2.5 hours to the party. It ended up super cute and without a scratch on it.

Congratulations to Pete & Marti on the new grandbaby, Kera Grace!

Hello Kitty Birthday Cake

This cake I made for little Jacqueline's birthday party this last weekend. The cake was made from chocolate-vanilla swirl pound cake with strawberry buttercream filling.

Dragonfly Wedding Cake

So on 1-1-11, my mom and Charlie got married. We celebrated the following weekend with a small family gathering at their house...and I brought the cake. Are you surprised?

The newlyweds love dragonflies, so I made that the theme of the cake. It is red velvet with cream cheese filling covered in white fondant. I piped on the swirling dots with royal icing and used a real ribbon accent. I molded the dragonfly from gumpaste and hand pained him with blue, green and ivory luster dusts.

Congratulations Mom & Charlie!

Mele's Birthday Cake

So, my best friend. Mele (otherwise known as Munch) turned the big 3-0 and to celebrate I made the cake.
The cake was a red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting, and it was my first attempt at making a fresh flower topper for a cake. Nana taught me how to wire the flowers so that I could make the topper using half of a floral Styrofoam ball. I also made the little jeweled flowers that are in the floral arrangement by gluing the crystal flowers on the ends of skewers I could then stick amongst the real flowers in the arrangement. I also made a bunch of butterflies on curling floral wire which stuck out of the cake, but I added those once we got to the party and the venue was too dark to get a good picture...but it looks pretty good without them too!


Happy Birthday Munch!