Cute Cakes : First Birthday and Baby Shower

Good evening, everyone! As I patiently await the results of the Threadcakes competition, I am here to share a couple of cute cakes I've made in the past week! One of them is a monkey-themed first birthday cake.

It was a huge 12" vanilla cake with a little vanilla cupcake as the "smash cake." The design was based on the serveware for the party.

The cake was a success, and the little guy loved it!

My second cake was for a baby shower for a baby boy. I was to construct a 3-tier cake that matched the invitation.

I added some icing booties and little fondant rubber duckies

Some parts of the invitation had glitter accents, so I thought it would be fun to add some clear disco dust (love that stuff!)

I must say that I am very proud of this one. I think that I am getting much, much better at my stacked cakes, which will come in handy when I make my huge cake masterpieces in the future. :)

And I have one more cake to make this week: my own birthday cake! Yes, my 26th birthday is tomorrow! My good friend Jessica (who turned 25 this past Monday) and I are celebrating Saturday with a joint birthday party! I'm still not quite sure what to do design-wise, but I'll try to think of something awesome! :)

My 2012 Threadcake : "We're Not Savages"

Ahhh, yes. The time has finally come to reveal my Threadcake! I actually made this cake about two weeks ago, but my inner-procrastinator decided to submit my entry for the contest on the very last day of submission! My inner perfectionist is also stretching it out later because I have to find the right words to put in my description and the right photos to put in. Ack! I took a break to blog since I was already on the computer.

Let's see... where to start with this one... Ah! Well, I'll start with the T-shirt design from Threadless.

Courtesy of Threadless.com

The shirt was to be a birthday gift of my good friend Joe, so I wanted to make a matching cake. The problem was I had never read Lord of the Flies, which is what this design is based on. I got into reading the book, which was quite riveting and entertaining. I wanted to make the cake from scratch, so I found a recipe here that was originally adapted from a Betty Crocker recipe. I added a bit more than a tablespoon of almond emulsion to each batch to make it tastier.

The cakes came out a bit denser than I thought, like a pound cake. But this ended up working out because I didn't want to use any inedible supports (part of the rules). I mixed up some caramel icing into my vanilla buttercream (love that flavor combo, as all of you may already know).

I filled and stacked my layers with the caramel buttercream then carved a skull shape out of cake.

I covered the cake in cream-colored fondant on the front for the skull and pink in the back because the mountain was made of pink rock in the novel. This part actually made the cake look like Donkey Kong, so I didn't bother taking a picture of it at this point!

I got to work on the figures, making Piggy, Ralph, and others. I must admit that it was the first time I actually sculpted little faces and bodies, so I was worried about how they would look. But I think they turned out great! The only support I used was uncooked thin spaghetti (glad I had that lingering in my cupboards!)

Next I made the bodies and the little details like the teddy bear and the infamous conch...

Next, I placed the figures on the cake, using more uncooked pasta.

I filled in the spaces with trees and bushes and covered the board with edible sand (brown and white sugar mixed).

Some detail shots...

And the cake was a hit at the birthday dinner! Joe loved it!

Happy birthday, Joe!

The link to my official Threadcake 2012 entry is here! :)

Harlequin Birthday Cake

Hello, all! I've been slacking on the posts as of late, but it's because I've been so busy with cakes! This time of year gets super busy with birthday cakes, especially (my birthday is this month, too!) and I've decided to participate in this year's Threadcakes contest! I'm still working on getting my photos in order before the deadline, so more on that later!

Yesterday was my bestest friend, Ashley's, birthday! Since I was short on time, I couldn't make her a Threadcake. But I did want to make her something awesome. We had visited a local bakery recently, and we both fell in love with an amazing harlequin design cake, so I decided to make a cake inspired by it! Luckily, I had recently acquired a set of diamond cutters...

I started with 6" and 8" yellow cakes that I torted and filled with raspberry and chocolate mousse. I placed the tiers in the fridge with a crumb coat to set overnight (that mousse can get tricky if not properly chilled). I iced the bottom tier in white vanilla buttercream, then rolled out some black fondant.

From what I've learned in the cake biz, the measurement of the outside of a cake is equal to 3 times the diameter of the cake. So for the 8" cake, I had 24" of surface to work with. So to make the pattern even, I used the diamond cutter that was 1" across and placed 24 of them across the edge.

Next, I worked downard two more rows.

Then came the top. I started with the 1" diamonds, and that was not working, so I moved down to the next size cutter, which was 3/4." That fit together and worked! I only had to do one row, since I was going to stack the other tier anyway.

I iced the second tier in light purple then added black scrollwork.

I topped it off with some dark red roses with black leaves as well as pearl borders. To make the harlequin design look more uniform, I added a dot of buttercream to each corner.

Ashley loved the cake and so did all of the partygoers! I must say, I am quite proud of this one, since it was my first time making this design. Yay!

Happy birthday, Ashley!! :)