Rainbow & Unicorn Cake

Another year has gone by and my little girl is now 5.  From Classic Pooh, Sesame Street, Toopy & Binoo, Superheroes and now Rainbows and Unicorns.

 

She had two parties this year - one with her school friends and one with family.  Boy did those kids love the rainbow cake layers.  They each got to take home a cupcake with a rainbow docorated sugar cookie.

For our family party, I was able to conveniently re-use the sugarpaste toppers that I made and add it to a grainfree banana cake with whipped cream - it was delicious!

Monster High Cakes

I first created a Monster High cake in 2012, but it looks like they are still very popular.  This lucky 7 year old had 2 dolls to keep, Lagoona Blue and Clawdeen Wolf.  Their dresses were made out of cake and sugarpaste.

The cakes were chocolate sour cream with vanilla swiss meringue buttercream.

Cinderella Cake

For this lovely little girl, the past few years' cakes were: My Little Pony, Bubble Guppies and Hot Pink.  This year was Cinderella and I had so much fun making this lovely carriage.

There is something so magical about pink and gold!  This cake was layers of vanilla bean cake with strawberry buttercream.

3rd Birthday Cake: My Little Pony Cake

I always look forward to making this little girls birthday cakes every year!  It all started with her colorful 1st birthday and then her 2nd birthday Bubble Guppies cake. This year was My Little Pony with her 3 favorite characters in sugar, Twilight, Spike and Pinkie Pie.

I loved how the handmade sugarpaste characters turned out.  I was told that Twilight was brought to school for show and tell.

Hello Kitty Castle Cake

As a cake designer, I try never to make a cake design twice.  Some designs are harder than others to change up.  I have done a few castle cakes in the past and decided to change this cake up with these wonderful silicon molds that I got from my cake friend Kara from A Cake to Remember in Richmond, VA.

 This cake was for a baby shower for a special lady who loves Hello Kitty.

Tinkerbell Cake

Many people ask me how long it takes to make a cake.  I never have a good answer as it really depends on the design, the size and the details.  I usually say that it takes a minimum of 5 hours, not including baking.  Sometimes it takes much much longer because of the size, sometimes there are so many time consuming details and sometimes there is just a stubborn element that I just can't get right.

For this cake, there was definitely a very stubborn element: Tinkerbell.  It took forever, I must've made Tinkerbell 3 times until I got her just right.  I just couldn't figure it out in the right proportions.  Then finally, in the wee hours of the morning - I was happy with her.  Do I know how long this cake actually took?  Nope, I'd rather not count :-)   I loved how it turned out, so it was worth every minute!

And a view from the top!

3rd Birthday Cake: Pink Castle Cake

The last princess castle cake I made was gold and blue. This time around, the color theme was pink! 

It was 2-tiers of chocolate sour cream cake with chocolate swiss meringue buttercream.  The turrets were made out of rice krispie squares.

I love how it turned out!  And yes, the cake board did take me a long time - but it was worth it!  :-)

3-tier Monster High Cake

Part of the process for designing cakes is doing research on the topic.  Most of the time, I am familiar with the topic and can just google pictures to put the design together.  For this birthday cake, I definitely knew nothing about Monster High.

They are very popular characters inspired by monsters and horror fiction.  There are webisodes, books and dolls.  There is just so much detail in each dolls character - I just love their bright, bold colors!

Usually I would make everything out of sugar, but the client provided me with the Draculaura doll to use in the cake topper.  Her dress was made out of cake making this cake 3-tiers high - I loved the height! 

 Here is a close-up of some of the details.

8th Birthday: Tiara Cake

Happy Friday everyone!  Just wanted to share this cute tiara cake I made for an 8th birthday.

I hadn't made anything princess-y in a while, but thankfully for Pinterest, I was reminded how to put together a tiara from a post that I re-pinned a while back.  There is a handy tutorial from Crafty Green Mommy.

Are you on Pinterest also?  Have you hopped on this addicting bandwagon yet?  It's an online scrapbook where you can save favorite ideas, inspirations, links, blog posts, recipes and much more.  I admit, at first, it is a true time-suck when you are putting it all together so you can have a true reflection of your scrapbook.  But then, it becomes easy to maintain and add stuff.

If you are on Pinterest, leave me a comment with your profile name and I'll follow you.  If you'd like an invite to join, leave me your email.

Here's another photo of the tiara using Instagram.  Are you on that too?  ;-)

4th Birthday: Princess Castle Cake

This past weekend, I created this wonderful princess castle cake for a 4th birthday.  Last year, the birthday girl was into all things Egypt and I made her a Sphinx Cake.  This year, her parents surprised her with a princess themed cake and a surprise trip to Disney!

The top and middle tier were chocolate sour cream cake with chocolate swiss meringue buttercream.  The bottom tier was vanilla butter cake with vanilla swiss merinuge buttercream.  I covered the castle with edible gold dust, added in some edible glitter on the rice krispie turrets and Cinderella was handmade out of sugarpaste.

7th Birthday Cake: Puppy Cake

Last year, I made a 6th birthday cake for a girl who loves dogs.  For her 7th birthday, it was the same theme and I could do any design I wanted to.

I have to admit, I do have this thing where I refuse/avoid making carved cakes that look like realistic animals, babies and also baby bumps - I know its just cake, but I still can't stand the thought of a knife cutting into it.  However, for animal cakes, as long as I can make them stuffed animal looking and cartoony, then its okay by me.  Here's some other views of the puppy cake.

 

Any other cakers feel the same or is it just me?

Princess Cake

It had been a while since I did a very girly birthday cake.  This is a 2-tier cake based off of the the princess from Disney's Princess and Frog.  The bottom tier and the dress is chocolate velvet cake.  The character is handmade out of sugarpaste.

 And to make it even more special, some cupcakes with the popular sugar cake slice

 A view from the top - you know I love these photos.

 Here's a close-up of the cupcakes with a cute cake slice on it.  A popular design which I've done a few times.

3rd Birthday: Sphinx Cake

A very popular blog post of mine was the King Tut cake.  I was so happy to get another order with an Egyptian theme and also requesting the carved hieroglyphics on the cake board.

This cake was for a 3rd birthday for a girl who loves all things Egypt, especially the Sphinx.

This is where it began with the cake board which is covered with fondant and handcarved with hieroglyphics.  Well, not real hieroglyphics, I made this up.  Then dusted with tan and grey edible dust to look ancient.

This is where it all began.... Soon this would become the Sphinx.

Here's what the cake looked like all carved up and ready to be iced with buttercream.

The cake is covered in fondant and where I started to get some of the textures on the sides of the cake.

The final details were to paint the headdress of the Sphinx, similar to a toy that the little girl had, and a bit more hieroglyphics.  What a fun cake - hope you enjoyed the photos!

6th Birthday Cake: A girl who loves dogs

I receive a lot of requests to create sugarpaste characters of pets.  Whether it is peeking out of a wedding cupcake tower, part of a wedding cake topper or cupcake topper.  And since these are made out of sugar - you can save them for quite a long time as a keepsake.

Here's a 6th birthday cake for a girl who loves dogs.  All the characters are handmade out of sugarpaste.

The doghouse and cake are chocolate velvet cake with chocolate buttercream.

Unrelated to the event above... but I thought it was cute to share...

And here is a set of dogs that I made for a wedding cupcake tower.  Actually its their tails - which I think are so cute.  Have a great week!

7th Birthday Cake: No Doubt... It's Cake!

A 7th birthday cake for a girl who loves Gwen Stefani and her band No Doubt.  I designed this cake with No Doubt's Rock Steady album cover in mind.  Her birthday party was a dance party where they had a dance instructor and were learning all the Gwen Stefani moves.  The birthday girl on top is handmade out of sugarpaste.

Here is a view from the top.  I just love how red, black and red work so well together.

Here's what the cake looked like before it was iced in buttercream and covered in fondant.  This cake was 8 layers of strawberry vanilla cake with strawberry buttercream.

A Princess Castle Cake

I guess princesses are all the rage right now with little girls.  I made this three tier sweet vanilla bean cake.


It was actually quite fun to see it all come together.  The columns of the castle were made of rice krispies and marshmallows.  A bit messy, but I didn't want any non-edible items in the cake since kids will eat everything!