GASP! What happened to May?!

Just noticed that I completely MISSED posting the photos of the biggest one's birthday cake!!  This year's theme was FROZEN, of course, which was FUN to do and fun to make!  We started out her 5th birthday celebration this year with a friend party at a gymnastic place, with cupcakes:

These guys were fun and easy to make!  I found the eyeball candies in the cake section at Safeway, mixed up some black frosting and went to town.  The blue around their bodies are supposed to be reminiscent of the little blue pants that they wear.

For her actual birthday, she let me do a "Frozen" cake, which took some convincing, because not a week before that she wanted me to make her a Hercules cake! After searching high and low for some sort of Elsa cake topper/toy, and having no luck, I tried my hand at sculpting, with also no luck.  Last ditch effort, was to find a graphic online, print it out, stick it to a stick.  Miss 5 year old was thrilled.

I was also pretty happy with the looks of this cake - I'm still working on find the perfect recipe for the INSIDE of the cake, along with a yummy delicious filling.  The snowflake cutters were the funnest in this cake - they were so cute, and fun to stamp out little fondant snowflakes.  The "ice" was a little tricky, as it was a hair humid at my house that week, so when I made the glass a couple of nights before, some pieces were crystallizing by her birthday.  None the less, it was a fun cake to make. 

Minnie Mouse.

Minnie Mouse is a favorite of my baby girl.  Every day she asks to watch "Mouse" on TV, carries around a Minnie Mouse stuffy, and often comes and shows it to us.  She even has a little Minnie Mouse dress up doll thing that she loves.  So, for her birthday this year we decided it was appropriate that she have a Minnie Mouse theme!  We didn't go crazy this year, but did manage to get my folks to come to her birthday party!  I decided to make a Minnie Mouse cake as well, although was intimidated by lots of the cakes that I was seeing online.  I ended up finding one that I thought I could pull off. 

For the cake, I decided to do a bottom up cake using this recipe, which I ended up tripling to get enough for two 8" square pans and a small 1/2 circle cake.  I also used Sweetapolita's whipped vanilla buttercream frosting recipe.  It is delicious!  The end result - (I had baby girl's name on it, but blurred it out):

 

I have to admit, I wasn't that excited about the buttercream bottom when I was trying to get it smooth, but once I started putting stuff on it, I started to mind less.  I was reminded why I am drawn to fondant, it's ultra smooth texture is so nice and clean.  I've struggled in the past covering cakes with just fondant, and didn't want to go that route again, so opted for the buttercream and struggled there too!  In the end, i thought the face ended up adorable, and I love the polka dots and decorations on the side of the cake.  

Another issue I ran into.  Beings that I work at my job during the day, I was working on this cake in stages.  I baked it Monday, and decided to save myself some time Tuesday night and buttercream it - which in total with baking probably took me 3-4 hours.  On Tuesday, I did all the decorating with the fondant, which ended up taking me another 2-3 hours.  But then it sat another day until we had the party Wednesday night.  I wasn't sure what to do - I didn't really want to put it in the fridge in fear that the fridge would completely dry it out, but it ended up being a little dry from sitting on the counter for 2.5 days.  Ideally, I suppose, "real" bakeries bake one day and decorate the next?  I'm curious what everyone else does!

Ladybug.

I just posted about my baby girl being born, and shockingly enough it's already been a year.  My sweetie had her first birthday and to celebrate we threw her a little birthday party with few of our friends who also have little ones around her age.  I decided since we really went big for my older daughters 1st birthday that we needed to do something great for baby girl too.  Enter the lady bug.  I decided a while back that I wanted to make her a lady bug cake that I had seen in my cake book.  After a little internet research to decide whether to make cake pops or cupcakes, I decided to go with a lady bug cake and lady bug cake pops.  In addition to the 'theme' we also got some lady bug birthday hats, with some cute lady bug napkins and plates.  To top it all off we got a pile of red balloons, which all the kids loved!

So here are the cake pops - pardon the picture - I took it at night, and my kitchen is very yellow at night:

They turned out really cute although were a pain to make.  I had never made cakepops before, so this was all an experiment.  I followed the directions on the Wilton website.  I had a few decide to come off of the stick and take a swim in the candy melts, which was frustrating.  And getting the dots on the lady bugs was also a bit tricky.  I decided to pipe the chocolate on the pops since I couldn't quite decide how i was going to get it on there, and so I was having trouble getting nice little dots - instead got nice little points.  I called them dinosaur lady bugs.

Next came the cake.  I first made baked the cake in a bowl and then put it in the freezer, which was mistake #1, because the cake came out a little rounded on top, so when I got it out and decided to cut that round part off, well - it was frozen and was tricky.  Not to mention my recipe was flawed - the cake had good flavor, but was nearly cooked to smithereens by the time I got it done - so it was very dry and hard.  Moving on.  I decided to put a nice heavy layer of butter cream on the cake instead of just a crumb coat, for those who don't like the taste of fondant.  That way they'd have some frosting there and could pick off the fondant.  

After that it was just the red fondant to cover the cake, and rolling out dots, eyes, and head.  I tried to make some curved antenna for it, but they broke when I tried to put them on the head, so I just colored a cakepop stick black and cut it in half, and stuck the black balls on the ends for antenna.  I wanted something like grass to be at the bottom, but I ran out of powdered sugar, and my buttercream was a little loose - so that's what I ended up with.  Overall I love the cake - even though it didn't taste the greatest!

The birthday was a success, all seemed to enjoy the cake, or well...were polite about it!

Elmo.

My baby turned two a couple of weeks ago, and since I used to post my cakes on this blog, I figure I shouldn't miss out on the chance to post her birthday cake.  I baked it the night before and actually froze it for the night, which turned out to be a brilliant idea, since the frozen cake was much easier to work with than a freshly baked one.

I also decided to go for fondant on the nose, eyes and mouth, and I think it turned out great.  I was worried about how hard it would be to cut those shapes, until a light bulb turned on and I just layed the fondant right on the elmo cake pan and basically traced it right there.  And then a little trimming once it was placed, and it looked fantastic!  I did the fur with a grass tip after all the fondant was placed...and it took about a 1/2 hour to pipe once I finally got the red mixed.  I'd say, in total, including bake time, the entire cake probably took about 3 hours.  Not too bad - although I wonder how much I could charge for 3 hours work on a birthday cake?

Wilton Fondant and Gum Paste Class 3 & 4

I have officially completed the Wilton Fondant and Gumpaste course.  I didn't take any pictures at the 3rd Fondant and Gum Paste class, but it was a very fun class.  We learned how to make Carnations and Fantasy flowers...and I believe something else, but I don't remember what.

Last night was the last class of the course.  We were going to make our grand finally cake - and I chose a Fantasy flower cake.  We also learned how to make a fondant box, which was cute, some borders, and learned to do inlays...all very cute and fun.  

Along with this class I decided to make my own fondant - a marshmallow fondant, which in the end was fine, but it was MISERABLE to make...it kept tearing and was super hard to work...my hands were very tired.  I used it to cover my cake this week:

So obviously it isn't perfect.  The problem with the marshmallow fondant is that it stretched a LOT when i went to cover the cake...so got VERY thin.  When we went to cut into it last night it was so thin that it was hard to separate the fondant from the buttercream.  

Anyways, here's my cake decorated:

I LOVE the pearl border and I love how the scarf looks...I think it turned out really well.  And by the time I was ready to decorate at the class, it took me about 20 minutes to finish up.  Granted, I had already rolled all of my pearls for the border, built my flowers...all I really had to do was the scarf, which took me a couple of tries, but I was patting myself on the back...I thought it turned out great.

HOWEVER Lindsay, the teacher, showed us some of her cakes and let me tell you, hers were AMAZING.  SOOOO cute.  She made herself an Elephant cake for her own birthday, which was ADORABLE.  I just wish I could post her pictures on here!

I've decided to take a break, and not take Course 2 - it's buttercream flowers, of which I think I can figure out by myself.  Although I am considering taking the next fondant course in May!

Wilton Fondant and Gum Paste Class 1 & 2

I enrolled in the next cake decorating course, and went to the 1st class last Wednesday.  It was very fun, we covered a cake board (which I think is a silly practice, but whatev), and made a few daisies and leaves.  They were just for practice, and I had forgotten all of my food coloring so I ended up with white and blue leaves and flowers.

The next class was more of the same, we were supposed to make leaves and flowers at home along with a cake to decorate.  During the class we also learned how to make a carnation base, a drape, and a little handkerchief for decorating...all very cute and very fun.  Check out my semi-finished cake below...I didn't have time to finish the bottom ribbon border, and Matt was ready to eat it by the time I got home...so I didn't finish it at home either! 

Wilton Course 1 Class 4

Damn roses.

I didn't get a picture of my cake this week, but I can say that it was nothing special to look at.  AT ALL.  Our task this week was to build roses and put them on your cake.  We also learned how to make a sweet pea, and some leaves.

Well my roses STUNK.  It was so weird.  The book says 'use stiff icing for roses', but those of us who had stiff icing were having the WORST time making roses that looked pretty.  Only the 7th grader who had soupy icing had beautiful roses - and the teacher admitted it!  She said she didn't understand what the problem was, that the consistency of our icing was correct, but our roses were NOT turning out pretty.  She also tried making roses with our icing and couldn't do it either.

Damn roses.

AND to top it off, I managed to make 4 roses that looked below average and sub par, but I put them on my cake anyways.  Then I put the tupperware thingy back on to go home and smooshed all my damn roses.

Next week, Wilton Fondant and Gum Paste Class 1.  Hopefully we won't have to make any roses.

Wilton Course 1 Lesson 3

I mentioned last week that course 3 would be figurines - specifically they were supposed to be clowns.  Well, I decided that I didn't want to fork out the money to buy the clown heads, cause I didn't see myself ever using them again.  So I intended on making headless clowns with my butter-cream frosting, but after I had one on my cake, I thought it looked creepy and dumb, so I scraped them off.

Anyhoo, in this weeks class we learned how to do the shell border, which does take some finesse, of which I don't have much of.  We also learned how to make hearts, and round balls, and some flowers.  Oh, and the clowns...which sucked.  We also worked more on the Rose, which is suprisingly hard.  And to add to the pressure, we have to make a cake next week that will contain 6-7 roses on top!!!!!!  EEK!!! I'm in trouble.  Hopefully someone will take pity on me and give me some of their beautiful roses.

Here is this weeks cake.  Like I said, I didn't like my clowns, so I decided to go with flowers and the shell border instead.

Before:

And After:

Wilton Course 1 Lesson 1

First of all, Happy Birthday Little Brother.  I can't believe you're 25.

The milestones of turning 25; lower car insurance!  Ha!  And you can get rental cars for a little cheaper.   Brother asked me if there was anything else to look forward to now (after 25), I thought about it...and nope, it's pretty much all downhill from there.  heh heh heh

Ok on to my real post.

I signed up for a Wilton cake decorating class at the local Michaels, and went to my 1st class on Wednesday night.  It was kind of a 'watch and learn' class, but suprisingly it went really fast - it's a 2 hour class.  I did learn how to roll a parchment piping container, and a few other tips and tricks that should be helpful in my cake decorating career.  Hehe.  What I think is awesome and amazing is that the teacher said that she took the clas 1.5 years ago, then took the rest of the courses, and now is selling cakes as a side business!  Awesome!  I'm looking forward to next week's class - we have to take a baked cake and decorate it.  I'll try to remember to post some pictures!