Equestrian Bat Mitzvah Cake

We've been lucky to make some fun Bat-Mitzvah cakes lately!  They are way more fun than birthday cakes because they are MORE!  They are bigger, sparkly and more sophisticated than most birthday cakes.  Our birthday girl is a fantastic equestrian and took her favorite theme into her party.  I wish we had picture of the fantastic barn they decorated and used for the party.  It made me want to be the birthday girl!
  
It's hard to tell but each tier is an oval shaped tier. We did not taper the tiers inward but we did angle the tops of each.  The cake was buttercream with modeling chocolate cut outs.  We found the silhouettes off a background website and Chad converted them to use in the Cricut.  We printed out a couple of pages of edible images for the pennant flags.  The riding hat on top was hard only because I had to come up with something to go under it so that it wouldn't sit flat.  That was a customer request.  The pink, coral,blue and navy was very pretty in the barn and the cake looked great there.  Looking at it now, I would liked to have had more color on the cake as a whole, but I don't take liberties with the conditions of the contract. I know it's not always ideal, but I would hate to add stress to a family the day before an event.

That's when it's

great to have longtime customers that can trust you enough to change the design when needed. The blue ribbon, hat and riding crap were all made from fondant with a little tylose to firm things up.  I hope you can draw some inspiration from our little cake!

Camera Lens Groom's Cake

We have mentioned in previous posts about finding designs that will meet the needs of you client's vision and budget. This groom wanted a Nikon camera cake but that's a little involved. This camera lens cake was a cool compromise. It's still a cool cake but was six 9" round cakes and required only a tiny bit of carving. To be accurate I should have carved in at the bottom to about an 8" round but I didn't want to lose any structural integrity. This was a soft cake and it doesn't hold up well to a bunch of carving.

We used Fondarific in black for the sides. We rolled out the band and cut the right height. We then embossed a pattern to mimic the real thing and chilled it for a few minutes so the design didn't stretch out when applying it to the sides. Next we just added some bands with other textures on the top and bottom. This also helped give an illusion of a carved cake. Next we added a circle on top to be the "lens". We added some bands around the top lip and side of the lens. That piece was cut to go above the lens and give the appearance of a inset lens. I hope that makes sense, I know it sounds a little crazy. Just make sure all your bands line up the same in the back.

Chad printed the graphics out on edible image paper. My mistake on this cake was a common one. Anytime you apply an edible image, it needs to go onto a white or very light background or the color bleeds through the image. If you can't add a small piece of white fondant behind the graphic, then use a fresh page of edible image as a white background. I didn't and the black color came through. I know better! Bad cake decorator!

Workout Weights Groom's Cake

This workout inspired groom's cake was finally a chance to do a little something different!  The actual working out does not interest me in the least, but a cake about it? Heck yeah!

There are a few things that I still can't do well and spheres is one of them.  I try and try, but they come out "wonky" in shape and the fondant coverings are terrible.  What I have learned is that making the bottom half of the rounds out of pre-made half spheres is the way to go.   Cake does not like being upside down so gravity is not your friend.  Dallas Foam  has all kinds of sizes and I always keep a few on hand for sphere "emergencies". 

I've really noticed this year that black fondant can fade really fast.  In a day it can go from dark black to dark gray.  My first advice is to work extra black color into it before you get going.  Someone mentioned adding baking soda or baking powder and that would help, but I can't find the actual instructions, so please let me know if you have a clue what that tip is all about!  The weights are all covered with modeling chocolate.  I did not have any problem with it fading.   The medicine ball is fondant and I had to paint it with petal dust just to get it back to black. 

 

The other "new" technique that I am trying to use is painting with cocoa butter.  I've had super bad luck using edible markers on modeling chocolate.  It totally runs when it gets condensation on it.  For the weights, I marked the letter with cutters and then painted in the lines with white cocoa butter.  You have to keep it warm as you are working, but that is the only "tricky" thing. 

I used the jump rope as a "border" to hide the yucky bottoms of the top tiers.  Also on the three weights, I wanted a "lip" but when stacking them, I had to cut away the areas that would have been squished from the tier above it.  All my technical cake talk is so complicated :)  Hope you enjoy looking and learned something from my experience.  If you have any tips on spheres or fading fondant, please share with us all in the comment section. 

The Grill Master Cake w/ Coal Mini Tutorial

Happy Labor Day!  We hope everyone had some down time to relax and grill some yummy foods.  Segue into a grill cake! See what I did there? So subtle....

A sweet bride gave us some artistic freedom and the basics that she wanted:  gray, grill master on front, and meats on the grill.  The easy part is the simple gray buttercream round with two fondant ribbons on top and bottom.  If you don't have to use fondant, people will love just buttercream. Remember that with a cake like this, you don't have to put any effort is smoothing the top since you're just covering it up.  We added a gray THICK (1/2" ish) piece all around the top.  It's what the grate is sitting on.  This way, like the cigar box we did a few weeks ago, we didn't have to carve into the cake to get the inset look.  We needed a place for our coals and 1/2" was plenty.

We used these new flat Jet-Puffed Chocolate Brownie Marshmallows for the coals.  We airbrushed the marshmallows black.  It didn't take much color.  If you don't have an airbrush, buy a Preval Sprayer or buy a Wilton can of black spray.  We then mixed about one cup of powdered sugar with about a tablespoon of cocoa powder and teaspoon of black powdered food coloring.  Once mixed, these will give you  good looking "charcoal and ashes"!  We all want that!

We arranged the coals all flat and added heavy ash in the middle fading out to just a little on the outside.  We then added a little yellow, orange and red disco dust/edible glitter.  I wasn't crazy about the glitter, but time was ticking and there was no time for experimentation.  We did not have time/money in the budget for an edible grate, so we used Wooden dowels, hot glued all the pieces and painted them with silver spray paint.  A small saw would be best to get pretty, not squished ends. We used wire cutters and it made them ugly.  Next time we will know better.

Lastly we made no-bake oatmeal/ peanut butter / chocolate cookies for the hamburgers.  We used the most popular recipe on Food Network.com for ours.  We pressed in a skewer and airbrushed the black lines since we already had it out.  The could be painted on with a brush just as easily.  The hot dogs are modeling chocolate with the same technique for the lines.  We used a toothpick to make the details on the sides.   I hope this project seems easy enough for anyone to give it a try.  I promise it's not hard and is lots of fun!

If you want to see a few in-process of the marshmallow coals, hit Read More.

Happy Grilling!

A Groom's Cake Collection

What happens when a bride can't decide on ONE main thing for her Groom's special cake?  This cake happens!  We had two meetings, the second one solely to nail down only what HAD TO BE included on the groom's cake.  The only item we "lost" was changing a Lakers jersey to just using logos on the sides of the stage like cake.  Here is the list of items we had to include:

Accurate pair of Air Jordon tennis shoes in black, red or white

Air Jordon box for the shoes

Beats Audio head phones in black, red or white

Panda Express box with orange chicken

Panda Express box with Lo Mein

Pokémon ball

Lakers team name and the number 24

Guatemalan flag

Blue power ranger helmet

If you are a cake decorator, take a minute and figure out how many hours it would take you to decorate this cake from crumb coated cake to finished project.  I find it's easier to figure each element and then add it all up.  I'll tell you how long it took me at the end of the post.

Due to all of these items,  I was very worried that it was going to look terrible and like a big pile of stuff.  Luckily I was able to coordinate the colors so that helped the cohesion.  I originally planned on a 12 x 18" cake, but a 16" square base cake just looked better.  It was also supposed to be buttercream, but I added the fondant over it since everything else was covered.  We used modeling chocolate on the box because it just makes a sharper looking box.  The take out boxes and head phones were rice krispies treats.  The shoes were white chocolate pound cake.  The shoe box was pumpkin spice and 16" square  was chocolate (I think...it's been a few weeks).  She had a bit of trouble deciding on one flavor too :) 

We have talked about the takeout boxes and shoes in our previous two blog posts.  There isn't much exciting to say about the rest, I guess it's more about how it all plays together and how long it took to complete.  I've said before that I charge by the serving and then charge by the hour for extra artwork and supplies.  We aren't new or particularly slow at our job.  I am better at charging the right amount of artwork for a cake, but not this time.  We spent 44 hours decorating this cake.  I was tired for a week and mad at myself for bad planning for at least as long.  It is the nature of the beast and we have to learn more and do better with our skills in cake decorating and business.

Tennis Shoe Cake

We made a pair of Air Jordon shoes and their box as part of a larger groom's cake.  We have made two other shoe cakes.  A pair of Converse All-Star's and a pair of fancy high heels with a shoe box.  Lucky for us, the bride let us pick the shoe design, it just had to be accurate as the groom was a collector.   The easiest avenue for any 3D cake is to have the item in front of you, or at least a 3D model (like a car).  I find it so helpful for all those little things, like accurate measurements!  We picked these because they looked easy compared to all the rest of the Air Jordon line.  Shoes are notoriously deceiving so keep that in mind when you're planning.  It took us eight hours to make the pair.  Some people may think that is crazy long, but I have not figured out a way to "hurry" on a project like these.

Let me tell you what I learned/did wrong with this project.

1.  Black fondant FADES!  I added extra black food coloring when I started but I truly believe that the fondant faded just in the time it was exposed to lights.  I saw these girls on "Amazing Wedding Cakes" practically working in the dark to avoid their black from fading.  I thought they were crazy!  I'm sorry ladies, you are sane and black fondant is stupid.  MAYBE if I was doing this exact same project again, I would airbrush the shoes before adding the soles and edible images.  MAYBE that would have helped.  They really didn't fade until I had the details on and at the point the air brush ship has sailed.

2. Make paper templates of sections so that all sides are exactly the same.  For example the side squares with the dots and without the dots.  I should have made all the templates and pinned them on one of the shoes before I started scoring the lines.  I wouldn't have gotten "off" had I done it that way.  Every cake has a backside!

3. CK Edible lacquer is super awesome!  The shoe had shiny parts and I sprayed some lacquer in a paint cup and used a small paint brush to apply it precisely when it was supposed to go.  Lesson here, the stuff dulls the longer it sits.  What until a couple of hours before the event to apply this if possible.  It won't go away over a day or two, it's just less shiny.

4.  Edible image paper is my friend!  Chad found a little dot pattern and printed out one page.  I used my templates to cut the pieces a tiny bit larger and then used a clad tool to bend them into the seam. 

5.  The sole is so important!  I used straight fondant for the black parts, but the red and white parts were 100% modeling chocolate.  The white part was put on as one big, thick piece and I took a ball tool and carved the lines and details in.  I should have spent much more time on the sole as the real shoe had more ridges, but I was out of time.....

6.  I have lost my ticking tool.  The one that makes it look like you have a sewn line.  I used some Wilton tool, but it just looked bad so I didn't add anymore detail with it, but once it's done you have to live with it. 

Remember to plan EIGHT hours or more and charge accordingly :)  Now I have to go and order my missing tool!

Easy to Make Chinese Takeout Box Cake

I had to make these Chinese takeout box treats for a larger cake recently (coming soon!) and they were actually pretty easy to make!  Want to make your own?

I started with a couple of clean takeout boxes from my favorite Chinese restaurant.  We went there for dinner one night and I just asked them for a couple of extras.  They didn't even charge for them, so that's a bonus!

OK, we're going to use the boxes for 2 reasons - to mold the cereal treats and to make the patterns for the outside of the box, so treat it carefully!

The boxes are wax-coated, but I still gave it a good spray with pan spray so the RKTs wouldn't stick.  Then just pour in the cereal treats, let them come almost to the top (leave maybe 1/2 an inch) and then close the box so that it keeps it's shape nicely while it dries.

Once the cereal treats have set up, you'll want to coat the sides to smooth things out.  In this case I used royal icing.  While that's drying we can make our patterns.

To make your patterns, start by taking out the wire handle.  It was a little difficult to do without messing up the box, but keep at it and you'll get it.  Once the handle is out, the box unfolds nicely.  I used a piece of card stock to draw out the panels around the box, including the top flaps, but not the very bottom.  I then used those patterns to cut each side piece out of white modeling chocolate.  Once you have all your pieces, you can start assembling your box!

I used a little tylose glue on the royal icing start putting on the panels, just make sure you save the overlapping flaps until last.  Now you can start putting in the food!  Use whatever you want for food, but my extruded fondant noodles really did look the most convincing, and I had a blast making cute little noodle loops coming out of the box!  Add your desired logos using edible images and your almost done!

Almost done, why just almost?  Well, at this point you can be done. but my "food" wasn't looking saucy enough until I hit it with a little edible lacquer.  I was really surprised at how that little bit of shine really brought a lot of realism to the piece!

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.

Cigar Humidor Groom's Cake

The entire time I worked on this cake I called it a cigar box cake, but it is in fact, a humidor cake.  A humidor is more than just a fancy cigar box; they have a hygrometer that helps keep the cigars at the perfect humidity for maximum freshness.

I had this cake on the books for a while and the week before it was due I saw an ad for Sharon Zambito and Wayne Steinkopf's humidor class.  I was very interested in how they did did the lid mechanism for the cake.  I have made cakes with "lids" before and each time I have used a different technique with varying complexity. Here I used a simple piece of foamcore as the back lid of the humidor.  It was much easier than making the lid hinge forward or back  I'll definitely be using this in the future.

I did use a little different technique for the cigars though.  I had some chocolate cigar molds and while they were tasty, they didn't look anything like cigars.  I made some tobacco colored fondant very very thin, and rolled each of the chocolate cigars.  Some scans of the groom's favorite cigar bands on edible images completed the look.  When they were done they looked very similar to the cigars I purchased as models.

This was a fun cake to do, but making it sure brought back a lot of memories of my dear father, Ray Sills.  Daddy loved to take a few puffs off his cigar or pipe every night after dinner.  A cigar would last him a month or two.  Like most dads, he was almost impossible to buy presents for, but I always knew I could get him a good cigar and he would be happy.  I can't stand the smell of cigarettes, but any time I smell a cigar or pipe I always smile and think of my Dad; he would have loved this cake!

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.

Art Deco / Gatsby Wedding Cake

This the other cake I made for the wedding photo shoot I was involved with a few weeks ago.  You see, when you have all these people together with their time invested, it really doesn't take that much more to get a second (or third) look and feel using mostly the same props.  The bride changes dresses and makeup, switch out the flowers, and voilà!  Different (looking) photo shoot!

One of the "looks" we were going for was a Great Gatsby / Art Deco wedding look.  I could have used the bird cage cake I made, but I had some extra time and I wanted to some great pictures of another cake for my portfolio as well.

I didn't really get to finish this cake like I wanted to, but I wasn't ashamed to bring it either.

I really liked the way the white stenciling over the gold tier turned out.  The tier being entirely gold was just too much!  Stenciling white over still left a very impactful statement. And I thought it went very well with Amanda's bridal bouquet, don't you?

My favorite part of this cake were the edible feathers we made!  What's that you say?  Edible Feathers??  Yep!  And they're actually easier than you would think to make them.

Drop back in next week and I'll have a tutorial ready for you on how you can make your own edible feathers.

My First Shoe Box Cake

A very sweet friend of ours gave us a glorious recommendation to his good friend.  Unfortunately he didn't realize that we really only make wedding cakes.  But still I just felt like I had to make this shoe box cake.   We were given a picture to follow very closely.  I wish I knew the original cake artist.  If you do, please let me know so that I can credit her.

I know that prices can vary greatly by zip code and baker so I don't talk about it much.  For this cake, I charged $250, which is my minimum order price.  After I told him the price, the customer said he called the original cake artist and she wanted $850 for the cake and that a local bakery had quoted $150.  He said the $850 lady was "crazy" for wanting that much.  His words, not mine.  Even later he told me that he didn't think the $150 baker would be able to replicate it with great detail.  After looking at her previous work he didn't have confidence in her abilities.  So the extra $100 I was charging was for an "insurance policy" that he would not be disappointed.  As we all know, you get what you pay for!

I baked  three layers of 9 x 13" and cut a couple of inches off to make it more shoe boxy.  It was white/chocolate/white cake with raspberry buttercream.  Yum!  The whole cake was paneled with modeling chocolate.

For the signature on the side of the box, my client wanted the birthday girl's name in a very similar style of the original shoes.  I couldn't find a suitable Louboutin font online, but Chaddy did use an app to recreate it to the best of our abilities.  The app is called Adobe Ideas, and is a free app.

The font with the signature was so small there was no way I could pipe it and I didn't want to mix mediums, so we wound up printing out an edible image to cover the entire side of the box.  We did a lot of test swatches on paper to find a color that was an exact match to the box color.  BUT!  It darkened over night!  So let that be a lesson to us all!  Luckily, since I covered the entire side of the box with the image, you could hardly even tell!

Stop back in next week and I'm going to talk a little more about that sexy shoe and what went into the making of it!!

Lions Football Grooms Cake

Football field cakes can be a great way to showcase a groom's interests and it's much more economical than a sculpted football helmet or stadium cake.  For this cake we used a combination of edible images and Cricut cut-outs as the main decorations.  The cake stand was awesome, and was made by the grooom's mother if I remember correctly.  We delivered this groom's cake to Trevitt Hall in Dalton, GA.

But I just fell in love with these chocolate covered strawberry "footballs".  I have seen them before, but this was my first time making them.

They are your basic chocolate-dipped strawberries, but with a twist (or a spiral!).  Once the chocolate firmed up, I used royal icing to pipe the lines and the laces on the "footballs".  I think you will agree that it is a pretty convincing effect!  And the word from the wedding party was that they were very delicious!

Any of you have any other ingenious disguises for chocolate covered strawberries?

Wrigley Field Marquee Cake

I made this cake recently for our good friend John.  He is the host of our weekly trivia tournament, and an all-around super great guy. When we found out his birthday was coming up, one of the guys on another trivia team told us what a big fan John was of the Chicago Cubs.  Paul was the one that suggested the Wrigley Field marquee.  Chaddy and I aren't sports people at all, but once I saw the marquee, I knew we could knock it out of the park!  That's a sports saying, right?!? :-)

Chaddy went to work on the graphics, and determined really quickly that it would fit just right on a 12x18 cake.  He then cut the letters out with the Cricut, found a font and printed out the "LCD panel", and printed out a life-sized template.  I used the template to carve the top of the marquee, and to place the letters on the cake.  I extruded a small square rope for the edges of the marquee.  I made small pin holes in my template to help me place the letters and the lines.

After that, I thought the cake still needed a little something, so I put a small Cubs ribbon as a cake border (also an edible image).

And for the record, John was really stoked about his cake!

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!

Super Bowl Cake Strategies

So most of my regular readers know I'm not here to talk about the Super Bowl, but since football has been all over the news lately so I thought it was worth discussing.  Lots of grooms are into football, and as much as I like making sculpted helmets, a lot of times our clients are looking for something more economical.  A football field cake can show the groom's love of his team while not breaking the bank.  Here are some tips I have learned through trial and error that I thought I would pass along.

It's pretty easy to figure out that you can print team logos using edible images or even using cricut cut outs, but getting the field just right can be a difficult task.  I have struggled with the field lines and in the end I have found that using small strips of edible paper.  They lay very flat and stick well to the fondant underneath.  The yard markers can be hard to get just right.  In this case, the cake was large enough that I was able to use my small number cutters and they looked good.  If this cake was any smaller though, the letters would have been too large.  What to do then?

Well, it was a problem SO many times that I finally found myself a high quality image of a field with all the lines and numbers.  That's what I used to make the cake above.  If I'm not mistaken, I had to use 2 pages and piece them together, but it makes for a good look.  With minimal skills on the computer, you should be able to print this to match whatever size cake your making.

And since this isn't the Super Bowl and we can all be winners here I wanted to provide all my friends here with my football field image to use however you see fit.  You can download the image here.

Hope you guys have a great week!

Smokeless Tobacco Groom's Cake

THIS CAKE AND POST HAVE BEEN REMOVED BY REQUEST

Art Deco Wedding Cake

We delivered this wedding cake to the Hunter Museum in Chattanooga Tennessee this weekend.  I had such a great time making this cake.  This is certainly not your typical wedding cake, but the couple really wanted a colorful art deco cake.

I had not done an art deco cake before, and I really wasn't super familiar with the style, so I hit up Pinterest and starting doing some research. When I met with the bride, she immediately fell in love with a cake I found on CakeWrecks that was similar to this one.  (Baker Unknown).  We did change things up quite a bit though, and the bride had these koi fish that she wanted to incorporate into the cake.

The cake was covered in butter cream, and all decorations were made from modeling chocolate.  Well, except for the koi fish; they were printed on edible image paper.

Is this art deco style a trend now?  Have any of you bakers done any art deco cakes lately?

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you have a great week!

Laptop Groom's Cake

This cake is a great example of how you can give your client's a 3D "looking" cake, but not blow their entire bridal budget on the groom's cake.  Our groom here was a big PC gamer, and his favorite game was Starcraft.  He also wanted his gaming laptop represented on the cake.  Here's a couple of ideas we incorporated to minimize the complexity, and thus the price.

Keep the 3D elements on a smaller scale.  On this cake, the majority of the cake is actually just a sheet cake, the laptop has just enough cake for the couple to cut into.  And the back of the laptop is just corrugated plastic coated in black gumpaste.  Since it was so light, we were able to use a small bent metal angle bracket to hold the laptop lid open.

Simplify decorations where possible.  We have no problems making individual keyboard keys for a laptop cake, but that gets pricey fast.  Printing out a keyboard on edible image paper not only looks great, but saves you decorating time, and your client money. On this cake, we used edible images for the keyboard, the laptop screen (logo), and the side decorations.

All of these concessions gave the couple the cake they wanted, while still keeping the price at an affordable level.  We delivered this to the Hunter Museum of Art in Chattanooga and it looked great.
 

Clue Game Board Grooms Cake

I'll start off by saying this was a really fun cake to make!  Chaddy and I both had a blast working on this.  I can always tell when he's really interested in a cake design; his eyes light up and he's constantly jotting down notes and coming up with ideas. 

The couple opted to go the edible image route, but it came out looking great.  We had a hard time finding graphics on the web to use, especially since they needed to be so large (14").  Luckily, the couple brought us their own personal game board.  Now scanning in a huge game board (approx 19") is no easy task.  Chaddy actually had to remove the top off the scanner just to get the middle pieces scanned.  And then he had to take all the pieces of the scans and piece them back together in the computer.  Once printed out, the edible image sheets were arranged on a piece of modeling chocolate.

We also scanned in cards, envelopes, and score sheets and printed those out as well.  We were also able to scan all of the weapons (except the candlestick).  We printed those out on regular paper and made templates so that we could cut them from thin pieces of modeling chocolate.  The rope and the lead pipe was made with an extruder.

Here's another picture with some of the detail:

Hockey Rink Grooms Cake

About 30 minutes before I started writing this, I was looking through my iPad at the last few weeks cakes to find the perfect one to write about.  And as I sat here in the sweltering Georgia heat, with record-breaking 100+ degree temperatures, this hockey rink cake called my name, as seeing it immediately made the room feel 10 degrees cooler!

This is a simple cake, but it holds TONS of sentiment.  You see, when Nick decided he wanted to propose to Meredith, he did so by writing his proposal on the ice rink.  Now I don't know how one goes about getting something written on an ice rink, but I bet it's not an easy feat to accomplish.  This groom's cake really shows the commitment this couple has made to each other; it really touched my heart!

Tomorrow we celebrate Independence Day here in America, and while it's not super patriotic, here's a quote I read recently that made me smile by Erma Bombeck:  "You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness.  You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism."