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! 

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!