Valentine's Party

Happy (belated) Valentine's Day! We just had our third annual Valentines's party for our trivia team. It's a small group of super great people. It is a good time of the year for me to bake new things and have a good time trying new recipes. We make a dinner, appetizers and lots of desserts. The desserts included white chocolate pots de creme with strawberry compote, tiramisu, cheesecake balls, bourbon caramels, strawberry pavlovas, peanut butter fudge, and on and on.

The cutest idea by far was one I found on Bakerella's site!  I fell in love with these tiny cookies on tiny stands! Sqeeeeeee! By far those cookies, as well as the other cookies, took more time than everything else combined. I used the cookie and icing recipe she recommended and they were pretty good, but I'll keep looking for THE recipe. I hope you guys take some inspiration from these and make them for someone super special. My guests ended up taking the stands home and giving them to others to brighten their day (and hopefully never be eaten).

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!

Ahoy Boy Baby Shower Cake

A few weeks ago I got a call from Rodney.  His sister was having a baby and wanted a really fantastic cake for her baby shower.  The decorations were all based off the Ahoy Baby Boy set of plates and decorations.

We wanted the cake to be a very bright color scheme, but still keep that baby blue motif.  I printed out a few sheets of blue gingham on edible image sheets and used it as a border on each tier.  I took one of the plates and used it to make templates for the whale, the turtle, and the "BOY" lettering.  The bees were just too small to cut from modeling chocolate, so I printed them out on edible image sheets too.

We delivered this cake to the Rome Library and later that afternoon I got a call from Rodney.  He said that everyone, including his sister, really loved the cake.  That's the kind of feedback we like to hear!!

Bright Heart Cake

Well, we have had a lot of white cakes lately so I thought we'd mix it up a little. This is the only heart shaped cake I have done to date. It's even hard to tell that it's a heart after I told you! I like the bright colors, but wow it's a lot going on. I'm more of a simplistic design type of person, but when the customer give you specifics then that's what you do! This cake had a lot of silver dragees on it. Wouldn't it be nice if you could put those on ahead of time? The cooler makes them dissolve, even if it's just overnight. ARGH! I really don't like last minute work because so much can happen and you have no time to fix it, but I guess that's the way the cake crumbles. For the border, I just cut a circle in half and used an food safe marker for the design. The piping is thick, #5 I think, but the white helped to break up the color some. This was a sweet sixteen cake and the event was in a big fancy barn. They had giant posters of the birthday girl hanging from the rafters, a dance floor, lights, DJ, the whole works. They had a giant crane directly over the cake table when we got there and I wouldn't put the cake there because I'm protective of my little babies. I waited patiently until the crane was moved. It's bad enough that they cut them, but I couldn't bear it to be squished by a crane!