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.

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!

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!

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!!

Montana Cowgirl Cake + Mini Tutorial

A few weeks ago I was lying in bed trying to get sleepy while looking through Pinterest when I saw the cutest Cowgirl Cake by Ana Beatriz Carrard.  I repinned it immediately tn my "Cake Inspiration" board, even though I don't do very many birthday cakes these days.  Wouldn't you know, the VERY next day, I got a call from a former client looking for a cowgirl cake.  I sent her a link to Ana's cake.

Of course, she loved it, so we took several elements from it and created our own cake.  The bandana tier went together much easier than I thought.  I covered the tier with fondant like I normally would and just left a little excess fondant for the folds.  The knot I made separate and just tacked it on to the front.  I made the belt buckle out of modeling chocolate and cut the the birthday girls' name using the Cricut. I searched the web over for a how-to on a fondant cowboy hat, but never found a good one.  In the end it as pretty easy.  I rolled out a gumpaste circle and then just gave it another roll with my rolling pin to "oval" it a little.  For the hat, I sorta made a wide taco shaped piece and molded it from there.  The rhinestone "hatband" ad the crystal heart were pieces left from past projects.  Yes, I have a flotsam bin... don't judge!! ;-)

The horse head is what I really dreaded making.  I'm just not someone that can draw a horse, or even horsey features on a horse-shaped cut out.  But Chaddy and I did something pretty awesome to get the look on those horses.  If you want to find out how, click the link below to finish reading and see the full tutorial!

Baseball Hat with Home Plate Grooms Cake

It may be a little chilly to play a game of baseball outside, but the weather's always fine for some baseball cake!

We made this Boston Red Sox cake recently for a couple and delivered it to the ruins at beautiful Barnsley Gardens in Adairsville, GA.  Luckily for us, dimensions for a home plate were pretty easy to Google, although we had to scale it down a little to fit on the board!  For the cap, I used some of the lessons I learned working with Mike McCarey in my "structures" class a few weeks back.  And speaking of that class, I know I still owe all of you guys a recap plus pictures of my Big Bird cake from that class.  I may lock myself in my office over the holiday weekend to get that done... or I may go shopping instead! :)

Any way, for the cap, I carved cake into the shape of the hat and covered in fondant.  The brim was the difficult part.  I wanted it very thin, and I wanted it curved, like a real baseball hat.  I wound up cutting a brim template out of a bakery box.  I bent it to the shape I wanted and wedged it into the proper position on the cake.  I then covered the bill of the cap with fondant to match the hat.  The fondant weighed it down and really flattened the curve I had put into it.  It still has a slight curve, even if the photo above doesn't show it well.

Have a great week and I hope you all have a relaxing Thanksgiving holiday!