Grads and Dads 2012

The past two weeks have been ca-razy! I had a record high number of cake orders in one week. But it's all good-- I was up for the challenge. And this past week, I conquered another challenge-- my first wedding cake!!! More on the wedding cake later. I'm still working on uploading photos from both my camera and my phone (since my phone has actually surpassed my camera in photo quality hmmm).

But anyhoo, I figured I'd share all of the graduation and Father's Day cakes in one post. Even though they have come a bit late, they can still be inspiration for future cakes.

This first cake was for a young lady graduating high school, so I went with a simple floral design in her school's colors.

The flavor was strawberry cake with cream cheese buttercream (I made a double-batch). I love that flavor combo!

The other graduation cake was a half vanilla, half chocolate cake for a young man graduating high school. For this cake, I used the school logo on edible image paper as well as balloons in the school's colors.

Now, for Father's Day! I had the honor of making a cake for a Father's day cookout, and the perfect design was, well, a grill!

All of the "meats" were made of buttercream, and the "cheese" was made of fondant squares.

And last but not least, I made my dad a Father's Day cake. If I didn't already tell you, my dad's life is tennis. He is a professional tennis instructor (and he has been since before my brother and I were born), and every now and then, his gifts and/or cakes default to a tennis theme. So this year, I had ball pans, so I attempted a tennis ball cake. I started with a strawberry cake (yes, my dad's cake was pink inside-- but it's so good!) and iced it in the leftover cream cheese buttercream.

The cakes came out a little overflow-y. Note for next time-- use a little bit less than a whole box of cake mix (make a few cupcakes or something. I trimmed the bottoms and filled the middle with cream cheese icing. I cut off a round end so the cake could have "feet." Unfortunately, by the time, I got to icing the cake in the rest of the cream cheese icing, the bottom half had begun to sag under the weight, and the top half pretty much smushed the bottom flat. So I ended up with a semi-sphere.

It stilled turned out OK, and my dad loved it!

But let me know if any of you have had problems with the sphere pan... Perhaps I should have frozen the halves a bit so they could set. Hmmm...

As a sidenote, I was happy to discover that my dad also loves strawberry cake with cream cheese icing! He usually doesn't go for sweets, and he barely eats cake, but this time he ate his piece-- and had seconds!