60 people!?

It's almost the end of the semester! That means I finally have time to bake and finally have time to force you guys to look at the pictures while I fish for compliments. I've only been able to fit in two cakes since the fair, but I've got big plans for the holidays!

This first cake I made was for the thanksgiving lunch at my internship. I decided at 1 pm the afternoon before that I was going to make this, so I didn't have time to go find any of the things I needed, like cutters in the correct shape. I was able to make it to Michaels between my internship and class and had to make do with whatever I could find there. Here's the result:

It's pretty simple because I had little to no time. To make the leaves I bought a rubber stamp that looked like a leaf and cut out around it. I would call it mildly successful. I really wish that I had had a leaf shaped cutter. Or that I had given myself more than 45 seconds to prepare.

(For those of you who don't know, my internship was at a school for children with autism and the puzzle piece is the symbol for autism awareness. I also support jigsaw puzzles as a healthy family activity to help keep kids off drugs. But that's not why it's on the cake.)

The only other cake I've made since early October (call me a slacker, I dare you) was for a sweet 16 birthday party. Remember the wedding dress cake that I made for my friend, Lindsay's, bridal shower? If you don't, just scroll down a little...Anyway, apparently her neighbor caught a peek of the cake and emailed me to ask if I could make a cake for 60 people for her daughter's birthday. I know what you're thinking, who has 60 friends?! Or is that just me...

I said I would be delighted and her daughter, Nicole, sent me a picture of the cake that she wanted. The theme of her party was black, white, light pink, and zebra. Me? Jealous. Here is it:

The bow was surprising easy to make and it will definitely be making another appearance on this site.

This was the first time I've done a square cake and was nervous about the corners. Not as bad as I thought!

Stay tuned because in the coming weeks I'll be (hopefully) making a gingerbread log cabin, a Christmas package cake, my very first bouche de noel and lots and lots of cookies.

P.S. Look how cute!!

Blue Ribbon, Baby!

Yeah, that's right.

Channeling my small town roots

Hello friends! It's been a few months since I've updated around here, but I've been spending most of my days writing papers and trying not to get punched in the face by five year olds. I'm loving my internship this semester, but that plus classes doesn't leave much time for the world of cake art.

So here's what I've been up to. This first cake was made for Kevin's cousin Jaime's birthday. For those of you who don't know her, she loves black, silver, and stars. I felt this was appropriate. All in all it was a success, though that was the evening I tried over a dog and caused over $3,000 worth of damage to the birthday girl's kitten. So yeah...does a nice cake make up for a broken cat? I'm not totally sure.

The flowers are gum paste, which I'm still getting used to working with. I'm not loving it. They were supposed to be much deeper in color, more jewel toned, but as I mixed the colors it kept getting so unbelievably sticky that I was forced to use approximately 7000 pounds of confectioner's sugar just so it wouldn't stick to my hands. So it's a little more muted than I wanted. Ah well, at least I injured the cat.

This next cake was for my friend Katie's friend's bridal shower. I had some problems with this and did have a minor breakdown on the floor in the bedroom in which I said (wept) something to the effect of, "What the hell do I think I'm doing?! Why do people let me make cakes?! Should I go to the grocery store and buy her a new one??" Kevin intervened at this point and came to my rescue. It was an engineering problem.

The thing was that this was the first time I had made a three tiered cake and it never occurred to me to make use of the very intelligent invention of cake separators. Instead, I chose to simply stack the cakes on top of each other which cause all of the frosting on the bottom tier to bulge out and take the fondant with it. Kevin made me a makeshift cake separator a la MacGyver out of cardboard and wooden dowels and I wiped the mascara tracks of my face. I think it's pretty cute in the end.

Last weekend the girls at school threw a bridal shower for our friend Lindsay who is getting married this December. I couldn't be there because Kevin and I had tickets for the Verde Canyon Railroad (see below) but I sent a cake in my absence.

I decided to whip out the classic doll cake and then ripped the head and arms off the torso because I wanted it to look like a dress form, not a doll. Bonus: I saved the head and arms for Halloween decorations. I'm thinking Barbie drowning in the guacamole.

For the dress I piped drop flowers over fondant and attached a blue sash. Lindsay was a little vague about exactly what color blue is in her wedding, so I made an executive decision. I added pearls down the back to look like buttons and piped on the little pearl necklace. It's possible that I unintentionally designed the wedding dress I'd like to have.

I haven't had a chance to talk to Lindsay and see if she liked it, but I hope she did.

Last but not least, I am super excited to show you guys the cake that I am entering in the AZ State Fair! As a kid I entered something in the Chester Fair every year and I got the itch to do it again this year. Just on a much bigger scale. You know, fewer collections and more actual entries. So here is my sushi boat. I watered down brown gel food coloring and painted it to look like wood.

My brother Seth sent me a few tips including using fruit leather as the seaweed wrap and real sticky rice. I found natural grape fruit rollups that worked perfectly, but the sticky rice didn't work that well for me. The liquid in the rice caused the fondant to melt and get all gross and runny, so I started again with white sprinkles.

I used shortening to make the fish look all shiny.

I kind of love the ginger and wasabi...

What do you think, do I stand a chance? I submit it tomorrow and the judging is on Wednesday. We'll see what happens...

PS People have been telling me that they can't comment without a profile and I didn't realize that was a setting I could change, but it is. So I changed it. Comment away!!

Babies and birthdays

Hello everyone! So sorry for the extreme amount of time between posts but well, I didn't bake anything. So yeah...

Have you ever heard of a "daddy shower"? I certainly hadn't until last month. Apparently they are just like baby showers but all the guests are men and the guest of honor is the father-to-be. Adorable, no? I'm not sure how all the men feel about playing guess-the-baby-food type games, but I'm sure I would find it hilarious to witness. I came face to face with one of these daddy showers because my friend's little girl is due in, wow, 2 weeks, and the father's sister and aunt thought it would be fun to throw one. That's where I come in.

The only requirement was that the cake say "Daddy's Princess" on it somewhere. It took every fiber of my being not to make the entire thing pink with hearts and flowers and glitter everywhere. I felt it would not be well received. So I settled on purple and brown, the colors of the nursery.

I felt the tiara was quite genius on my part. I found a pattern for a crown online and shrunk it down to 75%. Then I dyed some gumpaste gray and traced the pattern. Once I had added the hearts (only three, so they don't really count), I laid it over a soup can so that it would dry in the right shape. Once it was dry I sprayed it with pearlescent spray and ta-da!

For the record, apparently the shower was lots of fun and there are more than a few pictures of large men trying to hang baby clothes on a line while clutching a baby doll and talking on the phone. Priceless.

Ok, ok!! I'm so excited for you guys to see this next cake! My friend Lindsey has the cutest little girl named Isabel and this past weekend was her 2nd birthday party. The theme was a farm party so I was delighted to make the cake. I spent wednesday dying fondant and making the animals. On Thursday I finished the last of the animals, plus made the bowl of carrots and the broccoli patch. (These are fun sentences! I'm so cute!) I spent Friday baking the cake (plus the cupcakes that I will address momentarily). On Saturday I finally put it all together. Take a look!!

The pictures aren't fabulous because we took them at the party and the cake was in front of a window.

Do you see the sheep? And the bowl of carrots?

I love this little pig! He's in a mud puddle of frosting!

The ducklings are swimming on a pond of piping gel.

There's even a horse!

I am so in love with this cake I can barely stand it!!

As I mentioned above, I also made cupcakes for the party, since I figured they would be easier for the kiddies to eat than a cake covered in fondant. (That did not, however, stop a 3 year old from eating and enjoying the fondant chicken. Eww.) I made fondant butterflies and mixed vanilla and strawberry frosting to give it kind of a two-toned look. I'm not sure what I wanted them to look like, but I think they look like abstract mums. Or sea anemones. Or cupcakes. Thoughts?

Happy Birthday To Me!

It is a well known fact among those who know me that I take my birthday very seriously. I do not believe that I should have to do anything that I don't want to on that special day and I still, to this day, have trouble sleeping the night before. The occasion of my 27th birthday was this past week and I decided that I was going to make the cake for my party. When I mentioned this plan approximately 9,000 people said the exact same thing: "Laura! You can't make you own birthday cake!" To which I said, "Too bad, I'm doing it. So there." A few times I stuck out my tongue. Did I say 27th birthday? I meant 8th.

My birthday party was on Saturday night and happened to fall on the same weekend as my gorgeous friend Jenn's sister's bridal shower. She had asked me months ago to make a cake for the party and I was delighted (and only mildly annoyed that I didn't get to have a bridal shower too.) What that meant, however, was that I had a lot a baking to do in a short period of time. Jenn needed the cake early on Sunday so I decided that everything needed to be done by Saturday afternoon.

So Friday evening rolled around and Kevin was out so I turned up my IPod to a deafening level, made sure that there were plenty of Britney songs on the playlist and prepared to bake all the cakes that I needed. I used my favorite red velvet cake recipe and quadrupled it, so the whole baking thing took about 3 hours. Now, that's all well and good, but the unfortunate part was that each layer of my own cake crumbled as I tried to take it out of the pan to cool. I have no idea why, but it was late and I was too annoyed to start over so I decided that I needed to try to put it all back together with frosting and create some thing that mildly resembled a cake. I tried to patch all the holes and missing parts and what I ended up with was a very crooked, very lumpy, very bumpy birthday cake. I stayed up til 2am trying to make it look even a little presentable, but all I could see were all the mistakes.

Here is what it looked like at the party:

I was only partially happy with it and disappointed that I didn't love my own cake. There was originally a third tier but I threw it away and didn't let anyone look at the back. And because I am the daughter of Catherine and the granddaughter of Ida, when people complimented it, all I could do was point out everything that was wrong with it. And Kevin's cousin Jaime just looked at me and said, "And THAT is why you can't make your own birthday cake."

Luckily, nothing can take away how much I love it when everyone sings for me. LOVE it.

So my own cake was a learning experience. Jenn's sister's cake, however, was a horse of another color. Which is a phrase I have never used before and don't think I will again. Anyway, I was out of parchment paper, which I will use from now on to avoid more disasters like the previous one, but I did a much better coating and flouring (can flour be used as a verb? It can, right?) the pans, so each layer came out perfectly.

I waited until the next morning to begin decorating, as I felt maybe that night was cursed, and Jenn and our friend Lindsey (and her baby girl Isabel) came to help. They made the flowers that you saw if you scrolled down to look at the pictures before reading what I took the time to write. Way to be patient.

Anyway, her wedding colors are cream and bright blue, so we used those colors to make flowers. We used three sizes of sugar pearls and a sheer cream ribbon. Jenn said her mother bought a cake topper of two intertwined hearts, so we left the center open for that. I haven't really had a chance to chat with her about it, but I got a text that said that the cake was a hit. So I'm pretty happy about that.

When the time eventually comes, I think maybe I'll have someone else make my bridal shower cake. Any volunteers?

Nests and Courts

Some of you out there have never had the pleasure of meeting my boyfriend, Kevin. Here he is with half of our cats. (Did you know we have too many cats?)

For those people I have compiled the following list of 10 important Kevin facts.

1. He hates tomatoes. (Hates them with the fire of a thousand suns.)

2. He alphabetizes all his CDs, DVDs, and books. (The books are also organized by genre.)

3. He will only own cars with manual transmissions. (Which I have no idea how to operate.)

4. He loves the movie "Bring it on." (Seriously.)

5. He's obsessed with reading Bill Simmons' column on EPSN.com. (And also reading it aloud.)

6. He hates Tyra Banks. (I know this based on the amount of cussing at the TV that occurs when I watch America's Next Top Model.)

7. He enjoys music of the hip hop persuasion. (And often raps along with it.)

8. He loves Dr. Pepper. (Or Mr. Pibb in a pinch.)

9. He laughs at all his own jokes. (Laughs a lot.)

And most importantly...

10. He is a diehard, rabid Suns fan. (For those of you who don't know...that's basketball. I didn't know this until I lived here for at least 6 months.)

Kevin turned 30 last month and on this very special occasion, I decided to make him to following cake:

Here's a picture of the court at US Airways Center for reference.

Yes, I know the lines are a little shaky. I have a really hard time keeping my hand steady. I'm working on it. Whatever, I still think it's pretty cool and he loved it.

The next cake that I made was for my dear friend Jenn's housewarming party. She and her husband have spent the past bazillion (approximately) months gutting and rebuilding a house for themselves. It was a very long process, but they are all moved in and the place is GORGEOUS. I'm extremely jealous.

Anyway, they had a housewarming party this weekend to show off the results and I made a cake for the party. It looks like this:

The birds are the only inedible part of the cake. I was not delusional enough to think that I could sculpt birds out of fondant or gumpaste, so I hit the artificial flower aisle of my local Michaels and picked up some birdies. Don't judge. I'd like to see you make a sugar bird. Actually I would, so that I can learn.

Anyway, although I wanted the branches to be thick, I think in the future I'll make them a little more delicate. Kevin pointed out that they looked like poo. He's so sweet, always knows just what to say.

I'm pretty proud of this cake. It was the first one that I've done in which the fondant came out pretty perfectly with no bumps and bulges. I'm getting pretty good at this...

On last comment...I took Kevin to Seattle for his birthday last month and, among other things, we went to the INCREDIBLE cupcake shop "Cupcake Royale." Kevin had red velvet and I had salted caramel. To. Die. For. Here's me in front of the shop.