Custom Cake Pricing

How easy is this cake?  Well of course that depends on your skill level.  I've been at it for about ten years and it takes me about four hours to do a cake like this.  I find getting a cake smooth tends to be the hardest part to learn for most people.  All you need to make the rest of this cake is some small circle cutters and a knife.  Well some colors, fondant and an owl template helps a lot.  We charge $3.75/per serving for a round buttercream cake and the. $30/hour for artwork and extra supplies.  This is a 6" and 9" and feeds 34.  34 x 3.75 = 127.50.  I would add another 1-2 hours for extra time.  You would need to account for all the time it takes you to mix all these colors and it adds up.  If I only add one hour/$30 that would make the total cake cost $157.50.  Would you pay that much?  Do you think it is too much?  Think about it for a minute before you read on.  I know if you make cakes your opinion will be skewed a bit.  

Now, I don't know how much a cake similar from a big box store would cost.  Said store probably has all their cake layers arrive baked and frozen and their icing is shortening based and comes in 5 gallons buckets.  I'm not trying to be a "snob" about it, I'm just pointing out some of the reasons those stores are cheaper.  The cost of  the ingredients are of course vastly different.  When you buy butter in four pound packs instead of 1,000 pounds at a time, prices are worlds apart.  Lastly, let's consider labor costs.  I don't know how much big box store bakery employes make, but I'm going to be generous and say $10/hour.  I know that after my years of experience, training and education entitles me to more than that.   I would say if you made this cake from buying supplies, baking, washing dishes, making icing,washing more dishes, and such you would have at least eight hours of time in the one cake.  If you subtract $20 for the supplies (a general guess) $20 for overhead (electricity, rent, licenses, insurance, gas,water trash removal etc) it leaves $117 (157.50-20-20=117). Now $117 divided by 8 hours = $14.63/hour.  Now do you still think we charge too much?  If you were a cake business person, how would you do it different?

Accompanying Smash Cake

Art Party Birthday

Birthday parties now are fancy! Kids get to have all kinds of parties! Art, laser, pottery, cupcake, bouncy houses, and paint ball just to name a few. We were lucky to have pin the tail on the donkey! We did a little cake to go along with a fun painting party. It was colorful and pretty easy to create. We made a letter template on the computer and just free formed the splatters and drips. The paint tube was a bit more time consuming, but you could skip it to save a little time. I hope we all get a super fun birthday party this year with a matching theme cake!

Muppet Birthday Cake

We just love a cake where we get to "play"!  This sweet mom gave us lots of freedom for Henry's 2nd birthday.  I know it's nothing earth shattering new, but we do such few birthday cakes, that I really enjoy the ones we do make.  My advice for this type of cake is to make the character first because you will have to redo it a couple of times.  Don't get discouraged if you can't make your famous character the first time.  It's very hard to make these guys look right.  Haven't we all seen those great cake where the character is "off" just enough to look really bad.  If you get a toy for reference it will take a lot of guess work out of the project. You can even use a toy to make a mold if you would like. 

For the "candles" we just took a snake (rolled out long) of fondant and wrapped it around a lollipop stick that had a little sugar glue on it.   The flame was three different colors of fondant, dipped in a little edible glitter and secured on top of the candle with a little piece of wire going in the flame and white fondant.  We made the confetti by wrapping strips of fondant around a dowel and slid them off right onto the cake to keep them curly.  The oversized sprinkles are pieces of fondant as are the balloons.  I know that I should have used white wire instead of the sticks since they look so thick.  It was a late night.  The yellow dripping "icing" on the top tier is best done by covering an upside down cake pan with a piece of fondant (preferably Fondarific so it doesn't dry too fast)  and carve the drips.  Then take the piece off and place on your work table.  You can soften the edges with your finger so they don't have such a cut looking edge.  Place the fine tuned piece on top and adhere it down with a little water.  I hope you all try a fun character cake and heed my warning to allow for lots of time! 

Happy Birthday Cole!

Bakers, do you know how to make a cake that has copyrighted material? According to Icing Smiles, give it away! That means don't post it on your website for sale or advertise how much it would cost on Facebook. That's about the only way to get past the strict laws that many companies WILL ENFORCE (and some will still debate that). I'm not going to lie, it's a little scary when you get an overnight letter from FedX, that you have to sign for, that says "cease and desist" from a big company. All you can do at that point is to take the pictures down from your website and social media locations and hope that's the end of it.

Unfortunately once it's out there you can't get it all back. Take that Copenhagen. We received one of those C&D letters once, and when we searched the web for other cakes with the same content, ours was really the best.  I mean if you're going to tell someone to cease and desist, shouldn't they start with the UGLY cakes?  Copyright is one of the most talked about topics in cake chat rooms and many bakers are absolute about their stance and won't take a chance on any questionable material. Others are more practical and do what they have to in order to make a sale.

Libby Swirl Birthday

Every baker is given pictures from their customers and asked to reproduce them and it happen most of the time.  It happens to the most famous cake people!  It's not a knock on your abilities, so don't take it that way.  Customers get on Pintrest and Google to start their wheels turning but get their hearts set on a certain design.  It stinks because if they are willing to give you some freedom they may get a better cake.  All cake designers are sitting on a pile of designs that really want to create.  Sometimes my job is trying to convince someone that I can take their ideas and customize it to fit the event even better.  Some cake designers just say "no, I won't reproduce another bakers work".  I don't get that since almost no design is an "original" and is certainly not copyrighted.  I do try hard to mention the person or company IF I KNOW IT, but often I don't and I don't have hours to research.  

Some customers will not let you change anything from the picture they provide you.  If you were to really push them to change the cake, you may lose the sale.  If you are a baker, my advice is to make sure you advise them, especially on the contract, that anytime two people make the same thing, they will not come out the same.  Even when I am supposed to make a cake that I've already made before it will come out different.  If you are a customer, be sure you understand that we are not "copy machines".  Your baker may not have the same abilities as your picture from a magazine.  It's not wrong to ask your baker to see a picture of a cake similar to the cake you are wanting.  If you want a stadium cake, you should look at other cakes that would require the use of blueprints and need to be to scale.  It's not apples to apples but it's better than blindly trusting.

   As you may have guessed, a customer asked me to make an exact copy of another bakers work.  I did just that but a made a "cleaner" and more finished version of the original.  This design is super simple so if you haven't tried it, Google a tutorial and give it a try!

Safari Animal Birthday Cake

We create so few birthday cakes these days that when we get to make one, we tend to go a little overboard.   The cake is really a basic design to be a backdrop for the real stars, the animals.  I added a small piece of styrofoam to lift the top tier so I could have a place to hang the vines.   It really is best for the sake of stability.

We marbled a little fondant for the waterfall  and disguised the source with fondant rocks.  As a side note, if you want some AWESOME looking candy rocks and boulders that are solid chocolate covered in a candy she'll, check out Nuts.com.  I love these people, their almond flour and their cute packaging.
 

There are a million animal tutorials out there, so I can't add much new in that department.   The most important thing to remember is to add tylose to your fondant and let it sit up a while. This step will make your animals not  be droopy or melty looking.   Another tip is to add a little "makeup" to your animals. A little touch of blush will make your animals "come to life"!  Also, if you get the basic way of making an animal, you can search Etsy for an "elephant" and take some inspiration from a greeting card, stuffed animal or most anything.  If you are selling a cake with animals, you should allow about two hours to make each animal.  I'm just saying, don't start the animals at 8pm the night before the cake is due.  Happy animal making!

Minnie Mouse Cake for Icing Smiles

We are a volunteer with the Icing Smiles organization. We just had the opportunity to make a 6th birthday cake for a sweet birthday girl. The family wasn't picky, they just wanted Minnie Mouse on the cake. We aren't exactly Angels when it comes to following copyright law, but we don't dare to mess with Disney. But since this cake was a donation with no charge to the family, we are allowed to recreate copyrighted characters. We checked with the Icing Smiles folks and their lawyers said it was okay to make these cakes.

 

The Minnie Mouse was the most time consuming part of the cake. I'm not proud to say it took me about eight hours. I don't make figures very well, so I'm slow and sometimes I have to "redo". This Minnie had three sets of ears and two bows. I used Choco-pan modeling chocolate just for the face because it's great for sculpting. I'm sorry, but it's too soft for other things that I use homemade modeling chocolate. I'm happy that she looks like Minnie and not a generic version, but I think I could do better next time. I also forgot to put on her blush.

I found a cool color palette on Pinterest and that was it! NEON AND SNOW LEOPARD. The pink was "sexy pink" from Elite. For both of the greens, I used mostly electric yellow with a touch of electric green for the day glow color and a little more green for the darker shade. Use a lot of yellow!

The 3-D hearts were made from the same concoction that makes cake pops, which in this case is a cooked chocolate cake layer, melted chocolate and a little buttercream. I chilled it, formed the hearts and then popped them in the freezer for about and hour. Once firm, I smeared a little piping gel and covered in fondant. All of the gathering and ugly part of the fondant was in the back.

I really enjoyed making this sweet cake and I hope it helped make the birthday girl's day more special!

Monster Truck Birthday Cake

We were asked to make a cake for a vendor's grandson and we were given free reign on the design.  I love that, but sometimes it stresses me out!

Anything I want!?! Oh. I have to consider how
Much the I have left in the week? Well that happens with lots things doesn't it!

The final cake only had one tier that was all fondant and that was the tire.  The tan tiers are all buttercream and the "dirt" is graham cracker crumbs.  We striped the bag for the flames and used a leaf tip.  We cheated and used a chocolate mold for the truck and card stock for the flags.  We used part of our cake scraps (the hump we cut off to level the layer) to make a hill for the truck.  I like the way it came out and am glad it didn't get too busy like a lot of cakes.  I think Landon loved it too!

I hope that 2015 brings us all much success and plenty of cakes to decorate!

Millennium Falcon Birthday Cake

If you follow our blog, you will know that each year we get to make a fantastic cake for a sweet little birthday boy named Kaben.  His Mom gives us lots of freedom in terms of design and budget, so the cakes are fun for us to make.  This is the first year that we haven't done a tiered cake, but we spent more hours than ever before.

The biggest challenge making sculpted cakes can be figuring out the structure under the cake that will hold everything up.  It is scary and feels like you are more of a handyman that a baker.  Having a cake with pipes and plywood also cut down the amount of servings in the cake.  Our commercial refrigerator has a 22" wide door opening, so that limits our cake size and cake board.  Most sculpted cakes are built on the board with the armature screwed in and everything secured down.  When a customer needs a lot of servings and wants sculpted cake, you have to know your bakery's limitations.  You may need to add sheet cakes or smaller matching cakes to fill the order.  For this cake, I did need a lot of servings, about 100, and started the cake as large as I could while using my 22" cake board.  To get as many servings possible and avoid making an internal structure, I used a sturdy mud cake and sculpted the cake out of one BIG hunk of cake.  There were no supports, boards, wires or anything non-edible in the cake.  All the rectangles of cakes shown are 11x 14" layers.

This pic shows the cake structure underneath... Barely visible, right?

We've made a little movie to show how the progression of the cake sculpting.  Since the "real" Millennium Falcon is fairly flat and pizza like, we decided to sculpt it at an angle to get more cake servings.  We made the ships "stand" a little smaller and covered it in black Fondarific.  The idea is that it kind of disappears and isn't very noticeable.

A video posted by Jenniffer White (@cupadee) on Dec 12, 2014 at 6:14pm PST

I did get distracted and forgot to keep taking pictures once the decorating got started.  I will give you a few words of advice if you decide to tackle a cake like this:

1. Use a firm cake.  Soft boxed mix type texture will not hold up to the process, even if you keep it cold.
2. Find templates, blow them up to the correct size, cover in packing tape to laminate, and use them the very best you can.  Cut smaller than the template because when you add buttercream and then modeling chocolate it will "grow" into the template.
3. Use only modeling chocolate.  These are all panels that are fit together so you can cut sharply and maintain sharp corners.  You also have unlimited working time to go back and add lines and such.
4. Use icing tips, #0, #00, #1 and #2 to add lots of very little details like "rivet" marks.
5. Since the add on pieces are so very small and thin, your hands will melt them really fast.  You can put an ice pack under your cookie sheet with the pieces on them.  We applied these tiny pieces by picking them up and positioning them with a pin.  That way you don't melt or distort them.
6. Print out a piece of edible image paper 1/2 black and 1/2 red.  We used this to add all the little colors.  It looks MUCH sharper than painting the small details.  Those details are not all accurate.  At that point, I was "winging it" just to make it look good.
7. Dry brushing will get into the scored lines and bring out the details.  It also makes it look more authentic and less showroom new.

Lastly, if you want to make this cake, schedule 40 hours of decorating time.  That's not including baking, making templates, and research.  I've seen a similar cake done in all buttercream and it was nice, but I like sharper look and cleaner details.  If you want a simpler version (I don't mean that ugly), that might be the avenue to take.  If you get it done in 20 hours, send me a picture so I can give you a shout out!

Thanks to all of you that stop in and read my little old blog from time to time.  I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and a joyous 2015!!

Girlie Sock Monkey Cake

To be honest, the week has gotten away from me and I need to squeak out a little blog really quick.  We have a customer that we have been able to make most of her kids birthday cakes.  She trusts us by giving us a theme, colors and budget and lets us go for it.  We had a tiny budget so we employed the use of time savers like a stencil and some easy little buttons.  Well, the stencil was supposed to be easy but it was a pain.  All the little lines wanted to get stuck in the stencil.  The cake has to be very cold so the little lines hardened quickly.  We had to work fast!  The sock monkey was inspired by a figure made by "Sugar High".   If I did it all over again, the pinks would match better.  The light pink diamond stencil on top of gray buttercream just got washed out.

My tip for new decorators is use tylose powder when making animals and figures.  If you put a few pinches the day before you make a figure it will absorb the extra liquid and let the fondant hold it's shape.  You can also make a 50-50 mix of gumpaste and fondant to hold it's shape.  Tylose is also used when making fondant bows to get them to dry hard.  Tylose does not work in modeling chocolate or Fondarific.  Happy Caking!

Little Planes First Birthday Cake

It's great when you've created a wedding cake for a great couple and then get the privilege to make a cake for the next most important event. Jude's parents were wonderful enough to give me lots of freedom with the design.  These are always the best cakes I make, no debate.  I make them as big as I need to and spend all the time I want to just for the thrill of being creative. 

This is a buttercream cake that has three different colors of blue.  I used one of Wilton's icing combs for the texture on the top and bottom layers.  I really like the simple texture.  I made homemade marshmallows and piped them into cloud shapes.  I intended to put some clouds on skewers so that they could be coming out the side of the cake but they were too heavy and kept falling off the skewers.  It happens and that is the fun of learning and being self taught.  I like the large border on the middle tier (5 layers), smaller border on the smaller tier, and medium border on the top tier.  Just remember to keep things in scale.  Not everything has to be so "matchy-matchy". 

Lastly, I kinda stole for this cake.  There is a great site for cake decorating product but they are always out of the products I want, so I stole the shape.  I put a piece of parchment over a screen shot on my iPad.  I traced the item, and adjusted the size that I needed (used two different sizes).  I would have bought it, really.

We hope you can "steal" some inspiration from us too!  Happy caking!

The Caped Crusader vs The Evil Cake Genius

Most of us have heard of Robin Martin and the amazing cakes she makes at Gateaux... But have you seen some of the awesome cake toys she offers over at Evil Cake Genius?

They make some of the most awesome stencils I have ever seen!  They are a little expensive, but they are really nice!  Some are standard stencils, but some are printed on a ribbon type material and works a lot like a silk screen.  I haven't tried the silk screen types yet, but I used the Skyscraper Windows stencil to make this birthday cake for a huge fan of the Caped Crusader.

Everything else on this cake is either buttercream or modeling chocolate.  Speaking of modeling chocolate, you guys know that I love the stuff, but lately I have been having some pretty fierce condensation issues with my modeling chocolate.  Anybody else experience this?  If so, let's talk through it in the comments! 

Woodland Owl Birthday Cake

Sweet Kaeley is one of the only kids I still make a birthday cake for these days.  Her mom is a vendor and sends me lots of business, so it is pretty cheap pay for an unofficial outside sales person.  This year's party was at the Chattanooga Nature Center in their "Tree House" and they were having a real owl come to the party.  Birthday parties were not that cool when I was a kid.....jealous ,  I am.

I love it when  I'm given a few parameters and let to go.  A "fairy, owl, woodland, princess theme" is what I was told.  I didn't want to use "traditional" forest colors, so I went with a silver bark bottom tier, purple owls and mushrooms and bright green leaves!  That's the kind of world I want to live it!   I finally got to use a tree bark impression mat that I just love.  I 'm sorry to say, they don't make it anymore :(

My "lesson" on this cake is to tell you about over building or cake insurance.  When you have any type of heavy fondant figure or item, like my owls, put a wooden skewers up the middle with plenty of skewer to go into the cake.  All my mushrooms and letters/circles have thick floral wire in them.  For the cake support there are big straws in the 11" tree trunk to hold up the top tier.  It was only two layers. The 7" tier was four layers with a cardboard cake board under the bottom two layers and one under the top two tiers.  There are also fat straws supports in the bottom two tiers to hold up the top two.  I used four skewers through all those layer to keep the tier straight and stable.  After I stacked them, I ran a sharpened master dowel through the whole cake.  I never let  a cake out the door without a center dowel.  It's a great insurance policy in itself.  When you drive up a mountain to deliver a cake, nothing is going to move if you build yours in this way.

Unfortunately there are times when all your over building can't stop a bigger problem.  As is the norm, I was carrying the cake to the customers car.  I have four steps to go down as you leave my shop.  I was watching Kaeley and her mom and lost count of how many steps I had already taken.  As I took the last step I realized there was still another step.  I went SMACK on the concrete and so did the cake.   As stupid as I felt, I was more worried about poor Kaeley because she was looking at me with a look of horror.  The first thing she said was "Are you OK?" and then "Is my cake ruined?"  Oh, I hurt but I wasn't going to let her know that.  I said "It's OK, I can fix it.  You are just going to have to stay a little while longer".  She was happy because I have a pink kitchen and edible glitter :)  I gave her and her Mom some fondant and said "help me by making a few butterflies".  That was good because it's hard to work when everyone is looking at you and thinking "How is she going to fix that?" 

I'm truly lucky that I caught the top tier so it didn't land on the ground and because the cake was super cold.  Since my buttercream is all real butter, it's get really hard in the cooler.  That is great for traveling with any cakes.  It took me about 20 minutes to fix the cake, but it felt like two hours.  I am also grateful that the customer was a fellow vendor and she has seen a lot go wrong during wedding set ups and is cool as a cucumber.  She was much more worried about me than the cake which I so appreciate.  I was too busy being embarrassed.  At the end I told Kaeley that the fixed cake has lost all it's glitter and I needed help to get it sparkly again.  She was a big help!   I think all the after boo boo glitter really helped!  (The smaller picture is the "after".  Take my word for it, there was a lot of glitter!"

Kaeley and the "After" Photo!

Golden Globes Red Carpet Birthday Cake

 

 I really love award season! The dresses, the hair, the jewels and oh, the awards. It all starts tonight with the Golden Globe awards! I got a last minute birthday cake request from a favorite long time customer. I was so happy she wanted a cake to match her Golden Globes party theme! I was asked to include the "Happy Birthday..." Inscription and use a red and gold color scheme. The cake was supposed to be a simple 9" round, but when I realized it was Mary Margaret's 16th birthday, I had to do more.

I choose an oval cake so that I had a flat front for the carpet to be draped. I made the stars out of a golden/spice mustard color and just painted the front with a gold glaze to make them sticky. I then sprinkled lots of edible gold disco dust. You could also do this by wetting the stars with a little bit of water so they are tacky.

The film was all Fondarific. I made a big round middle and made a ribbon of black with some side detail by using a ticking wheel . I cut a few squares out of ivory and drew some squiggles to add a little details. The Fondarific helped because of the added work time,I was able to manipulate the "film" so that it didn't crack and break.

For the spotlights, we just used black modeling chocolate and used a large diameter dowel to hollow out a space to drop the light inside. We let this firm up a little and cut a hunk off the bottom so they sit at an angle. We added a few strips and various poked holes for a little detail. I thought it was a cute, small way of adding some fun into this red carpet ready cake!

Items I used to create this cake: 
American Gold Disco Dust
Ateco 6-Piece Graduated Star Cookie Cutter Set
Fondarific Buttercream Fondant Black
Fondarific Buttercream Red Fondant
Edible Image Paper
FMM Sugarcraft Ribbon Cutter & Stitcher
Mini Party Lites

FULL DISCLOSURE:  As a member of the Amazon Affiliate program, I receive a small commission if you buy a product from the links on my blog.  I actually own the products I recommend and all thoughts and opinions are my own.

Kaben's Fifth Birthday - Snake Edition

Well, all good things have to come to a close, and so it goes with the trifecta of cakes for Kaben's birthday.  The last reptile on display is of course, the snake.  I saved making the snake for last because I really thought he would be the easiest to make, but there's more detail to a snake than you would think!!

I did "cheat" a little and put my snake on a cake board that I covered with modeling chocolate as the lid to the crate.  It allowed me to make it and keep it separate until I was finished with the cake.  I also cheated a little on that
"second" snake going into the crate at the bottom.  He didn't take nearly as much time as the big daddy on top of the crate.

For the snake, there is a small rice crispy treat "core" to him, that I then covered in modeling chocolate.  I then used my impression mats to give him is scaly appearance and then painted the bands using petal dusts and PGA

Well, this completes the "Reptile Trilogy" (as it will come to be known).  If you haven't enjoyed the creepy crawlies, make sure to stop back in next week - we'll be discussing a very important business topic!!

Mad Hatter Victorian Cake

 Some nights I sit in bed waiting to get sleepy and I wind up trolling Pinterest on my iPad.  It usually just gets me wound up.  I see some new cake or craft idea and my brains explodes trying to think of some way to incorporate it into a new cake design.  When I saw this mini mad hatter tutorial on Seeing Things That Aren't Really There, I knew I would have to make one for a cake.

I made this cake for my friend Amanda's birthday.  I decided on a romantic Victorian design with a hint of steampunk.  For the bottom tier, I did buttercream ruffles.  for the second tier, I used edible image sheets to recreate a layered ruffle design.

For the top, I used some molds I got from Kara Buntin along with some button molds to make a small Victorian collage around the monogram.  I added a lace mold to to give it little more of a feminine touch.

I really wanted to make the hat edible, but time ran tight and I just just used the paper template directly from the Seeing Things... blog.  It went together pretty easily and I have have my sights set on doing it again, but out of gumpaste or modeling chocolate.

I really appreciate each and every one of you that stops by here and visits the blog.  I hope you have an awesome week!

Kaben's Birthday Hoedown

Recently I did Kaben's 4th birthday cake.  I have mentioned Kaben here on the blog a few times before, since I have done all of his birthday cakes.  He is such an amazing little boy, and he always gives us such great ideas for his party cake.  This year's party theme involved a petting zoo, cowboy hats, cactus balloon sculptures - certainly enough for me to create a cake around.  It all worked so well at The Car Barn!

Our cake starts out with the bottom cake tier as a wooden crate covered with modeling chocolate "wooden" panels.  We also made his name using wood planks also made from modeling chocolate.  We used a Wilton #3 tip to make mail holes in the planks.

The next tier was covered in blue fondant and made to look like denim blue jeans complete with little pockets and stitching.  We also made a horseshoe inspired 4 made from gumpaste for rigidity.

The next tier was a bandanna in John Deere yellow and green. I gathered the fondant a little and finished the tier with a little fondant knot.

The next tier was inspired by the petting zoo.  Just a green fondant "hill" with a rickety country fence.  There were a few animals made from modeling chocolate poking their cute little head through.

Cars is still Kaben's favorite cartoon, so we incorporated one of the tractor "cows" into the cake as a topper. I used some pictures from the Internet to sculpt a tractor from modeling chocolate.  Now Kaben also wanted his tractor to "moo" just like on the cartoon.  He was too high on the cake for Kaben to reach, so we used a recordable sound module and incorporated it into a tractor tire on the cake board.  Now my frequent readers here will know that this is totally Chad's area of expertise.  He took the module into the office and about 2 minutes later he came back with with the sounds on it.  I thought he had pulled up some sound database on the Internet to record it from.  It wasn't until the next day that he told me he just mooed into it.  I couldn't believe it, but it sounded great!  I guess if this cake thing doesn't work out, he has a career as a cow impersonator!  LOL!!

Thanks for stopping by and reading my little old blog.  I know this was long, so here's a closeup of that tractor sculpture as a special bonus for sticking around!

60th Birthday Golf Cake

I made this golf cake recently for my high school art teacher's husband.  Even though it's been a LOONNG time since I was in high school, I have always stayed good friends with Jeanne and her husband Ken.  Ken was turning sixty and was preparing for a big party with family and friends.

Ken's an avid golfer, so can you guess what he thought was so great about turning sixty?  Yeah, I had no clue either!  Well, once you turn 60, you get to golf from the golden tee markers, which are closer to the green, and the little hole I guess. 

This little golf scene includes some of the hazards of the game, as well as the green and those golden tee markers.  We also made some golden golf tees from fondant.  Ken was very happy with his cake and we were happy to be a part of the celebration.

Crawfish Boil Birthday Cake

We had such a fun time making this cake.  My friend Amanda, that owns Divine Designs called me up recently and wanted a birthday cake for her husband James' 40th birthday.  When she mentioned that they had planned a crawfish boil, I immediately had a design in mind.

This is a 2-tier cake, with the entire top tier being an edible cooking pot.  The cake was wrapped in modeling chocolate and then painted with silver luster dust.  The lid and handles were also made from modeling chocolate.  The effect was really nice; people at the party thought it was actually a mini pot!

When we got ready to take our pictures, I was looking for a suitable cake stand, when Chaddy came into the kitchen with one of our big Calphalon pots.  I thought it made for the perfect cake stand to take our pictures on!

Magic Jack Birthday Cake

I have a big confession to make here... Pinterest is killing my creativity!  Every minute I'm being fed all these wonderful ideas, and it's just too hard not to swipe some of them.  I saw this magic hat cake pinned on Pinterest and found out it was made by CC user nonilm (and she was inspired by others).  A few days later my friend Tammy called and wanted a magic themed birthday cake for her son Jack.

It's such a cute design!  I showed it to Tammy and she loved it!!  And Tammy even came over to help me make it!  She got to roll out some fondant and cut out stars while I worked on the icing and stacking.  Part of this great design is it's simplicity - it's basically just a 2-tiered cake with an extra cake board on top to  make the brim of the hat.  The bunny and magic scarves just sit on top of that top cake board.

I must admit that I really wanted to make the "JACK" letters from modeling chocolate, but I ran out of time here and had to resort to printing them out on an edible image.  I still think they turned out cute though!

Here's another shot of the cake, a better closeup of that cute little bunny face!  We printed out a few playing cards and since Jack was turning four they all had to be the 4 of hearts!

Thank you all so much for stopping by and looking in on my adventures in the cake world.  See you next time!!