Yay For Babies!

Have you ever met one of those people who is happiest when serving God by serving other people? You know who I'm talking about...Sunday school teachers, pastors, school nurses, counselors....unpaid coaches. Oh, you've never thought of it that way? You've obviously never met Britany Schmidt. Britany has coached Elaina's volleyball teams through the Boys and Girls Club, and Southside Youth Center, for three or four seasons now. She has put up with complete and total disrespect, arrogance, arguments and just plain meanness from girls and parents all of this time, and with a smile on her face. She didn't do all of this because she didn't want to let her daughter down or have her end up coached by someone else who may not teach her everything she needed to know....her daughter was only 3 when Elaina played her first season for the Lady Spikers. Britany has a true spirit of servitude and has spent her time away from her own family, and no telling how much of her own money, coaching these girls because she loves them. This past season, her sister Malerie Brady helped coach. These are two of the most amazing women I've ever met - you'd all be lucky to know them.

So now that the introductions are over - here's the story behind the cake: In the middle of the spring 2010 volleyball season, Britany found out that, to her surprise, she was expecting baby #2. At the end of the summer season, I got the priviledge of being part of Britany's announcement to her team that she was having another girl! The zebra striped onesie cake was designed to look like a Lady Spikers jersey, but with 'Baby Spiker' written across the volleyball. When the cake was cut, the restaurant was filled with squeals and giggles from excited volleyball players at the sight of the pink cake - letting them know that baby #2 would be a baby sister for now 5 year old Aniston.

Malerie had gone to work planning the shower almost as soon as Britany new she was pregnant and, once again, I had the great thrill and priviledge of making the cake for this too. Yay! I love a good baby shower - and Britany's was definitely THE BEST! Malerie and their Aunt Gillis worked so hard making this the baby shower of the century that shower hostesses everywhere should really be taking lessons from them. The cake was the biggest I had ever made - and it shouldn't have taken as long as it did, but I was making it during the Yankees/Rangers ALCS playoff series so I spent a lot of time in front of the TV yelling to the Yankees that I had seen Little League teams play better baseball than what they were playing. Despite the MLB upset, the cake came together remarkably easily. So easily that I just knew that something was bound to go wrong. Then shower day met us with cold and rainy weather and I knew that I was right. The minute we got in the truck to deliver the cake the weather took it's toll and the buttercream started cracking and 'weeping.' Luckily, by the time I had it fully assembled and added the ribbons and the floral cake topper, you couldn't really tell that I was having technical difficulties with it. It looked exactly the way I wanted to, and everyone was thrilled with it...it was so great to be a part of the baby shower for someone who means so much to us, and has done so much for Elaina - and countless other girls.

Baby Landrie Kay made her arrival this week - December 20th at 11:23 AM. Elaina and I can't wait to go meet her - and I can't wait to make her first birthday cake! It's been so cool for me to be involved in her life - even before she took her first breath. What an honor!

Back in Business

I'm baaaaack! Did you miss me? Did you even notice I was gone? Come on now, be honest - I can take it! :) So, after my first bad business experience I took a little hiatus from the cake business. There are no pictures of that disaster here because there was no cake. I learned that, while you can do business with most friends, you shouldn't do business with all friends. Long story short, things were said, feelings were hurt, things were misinterpreted and more feelings were hurt and I decided I'd rather have someone made at me over a cake I didn't make than one I did make. With that being said...true friendship CAN get past any obstacle - it just takes a little time.

So, after I had said I was done with cakes and had no passion for it anymore, I was approached to make the xbox 360 cake pictured here. I originally said no. I didn't want to even attempt to do it and I had no desire to try. Then, Christy, the friend who wanted the cake (see... I TOLD you sometimes it's OK to do business with friends!) told me that the other area baker who she had contacted wanted $175 for the cake. REALLY?? You can buy and actual xbox 360 for $199, so why would anyone want to pay nearly that much for a cake replica of one?? So, despite she needed the cake in the middle of MLB play-off season, I sucked it up and told her I'd make her cake...taking a break every time my man, Derek Jeter, came up to bat in the ALCS games against the Texas Rangers. Basically I can't really even guess at how long the cake took me to make because I'm pretty sure I stopped working on it completely for 7 full innings of a game. What can I say, I love my Yankees! Lesson learned here is that you can DVR the game and watch it after the work is done... as long as you stay off of FaceBook until you've had a chance to watch what you want to see!

I won't say that my lost passion came back with this cake, but it did start to wake up some. The look on the birthday boy's face was, once again, all I needed to see in order to be glad that I had made the cake, and thankful for the opportunity. Passion waking up and coming back to life is a good thing, because it turns out that I would need it for the next cake that I made... stay tuned for more updates, but in the mean time, happy baking!

Derek Jeter, Please Forgive Me......

....I'm STILL your biggest fan!

Against every New York Yankee loving bone in my body, I signed on for making two different RedSox cakes within a few weeks of each other. The jersey cake I could forgive myself for....it was for a little league baseball team's party. The Burleson RedSox got to celebrate the end of their awesome season by cutting into a jersey-shaped cake covered with all of the players' names and jersey numbers. My friend, Jennifer, said it was a HUGE hit. Surely Derek Jeter can forgive this one too, since it WAS for the kids, right??

The logo cake, however, was 100%, completely and undeniably made 'in honor' of the Boston RedSox. My friend Viv asked me to make it for a friend's birthday and, since I do love a challenge, I agreed. It was a fun cake to make but my heart just isnt' in the RedSox without Johnny Damon there. Either way, as long as my customers are happy, I'm happy...even if it means making RedSox cakes for them!

So What's Next?

Every once in a while I get to the point where I think to myself, "Is this really what I want to do for the rest of my life? Do I really want to take something that I love doing and make it my livelihood? Is the stress of my next paycheck worth it? Do I really want to depend on people liking my cakes enough to make it my 'job,' and risk losing my passion for baking and decorating?"

That's where I'm at today, for some reason. I love making cakes. I love delivering a spectacular cake to a birthday party and seeing the excitement on the birthday boy or girl's face when they see their one-of-a-kind, made specifically for them cake. Nothing compares to the feeling I get from that. BUT.....is it all worth it?

When I'm working on a big cake order it's tough on my family. Luckily the kids think it's cool that their mom can make unique cakes, and they like to watch me work. And, more luck involved here, Ricky understands that I love what I do, is proud of my skills and abilities (to the point of showing off pictures of my cakes to complete strangers) even though they are still very limited, and is willing to help me out with cake construction and delivery when I need him to.

The problem is that, when I have a really big cake order to fill, it's almost like I'm not even here for my family. The kitchen is closed and the kids have to learn to love eating take-out (usually not a problem with most kids, though) and they can't be free to be themselves because I'm afraid that a major race through the house or an intense game of hide and seek will cause a cake disaster. The house isn't comfortable when I'm working. It's not uncommon to see the stove-top, kitchen counters, dining room table and chairs and, occasionally, the living room furniture covered with ingredients and cake decorating supplies. Is that fair to my family? Or is it selfish of me to expect them to deal with the discomfort and inconvenience, sometimes for a week at a time, so that I can make a very small profit on several hours worth of labor? My alternative to inconveniencing my family - and losing precious time with them - is to wait until after the kids have gone to bed before I start working. I work a full time day job, though, and it's hard on me to work until midnight or later, and then start my day over again at 5:30 the next morning.

So now here it is, July 10th, and I have a busy two weeks ahead of me with unique cake orders to fill, and at least one very large and difficult cake to make at the end of August, and I feel like I've lost my motivation. Is it possible to do what I love and still be the wife and mommy that I need to be? That seems to be the question of the day. Today I'm just not feeling it.....but I know that the next time I deliver a cake and hear 'That is the most amazing cake I have ever seen,' it's just going to rekindle the passion that I have for making cakes and it will take months for me to reign it in again. How many things am I willing to miss because a cake needs to be delivered?

I hate feeling this way. Why can't I just have my cake, and eat it too?

My NEW Favorite Cake 'So Far'

Any of my cake making friends interested in making a Phineas and Ferb birthday cake???!!

That is the FaceBook post that spawned this cake. Having never seen an episode of Phineas and Ferb, I was a little apprehensive about this one, but when Kimmy responded with 'Trace is your girl for this,' I couldn't say no. After all, I do love a challenge. Besides, this cake was for my future son-in-law, the son of our friends David and Dana, and we had decided before his birth that he would marry my Emery when they grow up.

I had to google some images to see what Phineas and Ferb even looked like, and I found the coolest picture of a scene from and episode when they were surfing with that weird little platypus character. I knew when I saw it that I wanted to re-create it in cake. I showed it to Ricky and told him I was going to make a cake that looked like that and his response was, 'I don't think that's possible.' My intention was to show him that it was.

This was a chocolate half-sheet cake with plain buttercream frosting. I colored it a light blue, and made the water by tinting some piping gel. The characters were hand cut and painted gumpaste. Not being an artist, or really having an artistic bone in my body, I was immensely proud of how they turned out. I made the beach balls with a round cookie cutter and, again, hand painted them. The umbrellas and words were cut with my Cricut (this is when I knew that I really would love that I had made that investment) and also hand painted.

I couldn't believe how easily this cake came together. Aside from the hours of cutting and painting gumpaste, it didn't take much time to actually put the concept on the cake. I used brown sugar around the sides of the cake for sand, and purchased some chocolate rocks from a local candy shop. Before I even knew what had happened, this cake was finished and, to brag just a little, I was amazed by it. The real test, though, would be what Ricky thought of it. He wasn't home when I finished it, so I text him a picture of it. His response? 'Wow that's good.' That's all I needed to hear. I thought nothing could make me happier than his saying that but I was wrong. The excitement on Cason's face when he saw his cake made my day, and it made every paint-brush stroke worth it. Dana posted a comment about it on my FaceBook after the party, and a day or two later, order another cake for their t-ball party. Later, his dad told me, 'That cake you made for Cason's birthday was the most amazing cake I've ever seen, and all of the kids and parents loved it too.' This, my friends, is what I live for. Or, more appropriately, what I BAKE for.

(Oh, and for the record, I've STILL never seen an episode of that show.)

Baby Shower Cakes

I actually typed this up last June - and it's been in my drafts since then - I have no ideah how that happened - but here it is, for your reading enjoyment! Better late than never, right?
Who doesn't love a pink and brown baby shower cake?
Personally, I think my favorite of the two is the onesie cake - but that's probably because I managed to carve and decorate it without any technical difficulties. This was for a surprise baby shower for the birth of a co-worker's first grand-baby. The shower was on a Friday and, not wanting to run into a problem Thursday night, I started it on Wednesday. By the time I was ready for bed, I had it baked, cooled, carved, and crumb coated, and had the outlines and the pink and violet stars piped onto it. I was really excited about how it was going and had intended to stay up all night if I had to, just because I couldn't wait to see the finished product. I was pretty glad when the alarm went off on Thursday that I had opted to go to bed at 11:00 instead of staying up later. It was a big hit at work - and the guest of honor didn't even want to cut into it. That always makes my day.

The two-tiered cake, however, was a different story. One of my FaceBook friends, a girl that I grew up with named Misty, messaged me one day asking if I could do a mad hatter baby shower cake that was two different colors of pink with a diva cowgirl theme. If you know me, you know that 'diva' and 'cowgirl' are definitely traits that I DON'T have so I was really at a loss on this one. She also asked if she could come over while I worked on it to 'learn' from me. While I was very excited about that and thrilled that someone thought I could teach them something, I was really nervous about it. I borrowed some Cricut cartridges from my former supervisor at work, and let Misty look through the books for designs that might work while I worked on frosting and stacking the cake. Diva Cowgirl is a harder theme to match than we had thought, because in 8 Cricut cartridge books we couldn't find anything that might work, so we settled for the princess crowns and polka dots. Easy, right? Yeah, in theory.

The problems started early in the day when I, for the life of me, could not manage to get the icing smooth on either tier. I stacked them anyway knowing that there was no wrinkle in the icing that a Viva paper towel wouldn't fix. Roadblock number 1? I was completely out of Viva paper towels - and so was the closest store. So I moved on to cutting the crowns and circles out of the 'chocolate frosting sheets for the Cricut. Roadblock number 2? The frosting sheets tasted terrible, and as soon as I opened them they started drying out - despite my following the directions to prevent that to a tee. You would think, for $15 for 3 sheets they would actually have some flavor other than cornstarch and wouldn't dry up the second they were exposed to air. I'm pretty sure I will never buy them again.

While I was cutting shapes, I noticed roadblock number 3: The buttercream on the top tier of my cake seemed to have come alive. It was actually breathing - yes, you read that right - BREATHING. Giant bubbles were forming on it in various places. As soon as one would go away, another would pop up. I know what you're thinking and you're wrong. The cakes were cooled. Completely cooled. I had baked them the previous two nights so there was no way there was any residual heat hiding in them anywhere that would cause the frosting to bubble and look gross. Once again, I found myself in over my head - and this time with someone watching the train wreck that was happening in my kitchen.

When Misty left for work, the crooked (and not the kind of crooked it was supposed to be,) ugly, wrinkled and breathing cake was sitting in the fridge, and I was on the verge of tears...or tiers? Who knows now. Ricky came home from work, took one look at it and said 'Rebake those. By the time they're done baking Matt and I will be done playing golf and we'll stay up and finish it tonight when I get home. It's going to be ok. We'll just start over.' I love that man for wanting to help me. So I did just that. The kids and I made an emergency trip to Michael's and then to Walmart and came home to clean up the awful mess I had left and re-bake cakes. By the time they got home from golf, my first 12" and 8" cakes were finishing up in the oven. We pulled the original cake out of the fridge and Ricky, the DirecTV installer, and Matt, the railroad engineer, and I spent several minutes just looking at it, trying to figure out why the frosting was still breathing and why the top tier was now falling off. We made the executive decision to pull the top tier off of the cake and only re-do that one. They made steaks to go through both tiers for support and I made more frosting. It was about 3:00 AM before I was ready to put the now perfectly frosted top tier back on. Ricky had stayed awake as long as he could and was dozing on the couch by that time so I woke him up, we popped the top tier on and went to bed. Finally.

The next morning was Father's Day, and instead of making my near-perfect husband breakfast in bed, I was at Walmart, again, buying the last few things I needed. I had to miss church - and the kids and I were all unhappy about that - but I finally got the cake finished about 11:00 AM. Complete with princess crowns, polka dots, Whopper candies around the bottom of the tiers, chocolate frosting swirls, and some pale pink sugar pearls for good measure. Honestly, I'd be lying if I said I'd be sad if no one else wants a topsy turvey cake for a while.

I guess the only real lessons I learned here, though, are not to buy the Cricut frosting sheets, and not to be so over-confident that I think having someone watch me won't throw me off of my game. The lesson I WISH I would have learned is why my buttercream had taken on a life of it's own, but I guess I'll have to do some more research on that one.

Butterflies and Chocolate Buttercream

It seems like every cake I make is my 'favorite cake so far.' When I finished this one, that was definitely the case. This was for my supervisor's daughter's birthday and I was a little apprehensive about making it. Mainly just because I had no clue how to put brightly colored butterflies on a cake. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do with this one, and my original plan was to make butterflies that would lay flat on the cake. The more I thought about that the less I liked the idea.

About two days before the cake was due, I had the idea to make 3D butterflies out of fondant, and I bought a butterfly shaped cookie cutter, 'just in case.' It turned out that the cookie cutter I bought was a great investment - I did end up using it for this cake, to make the wings of the butterflies.

I bought some Wilton brand fondant at the store and was a little worried about it after reading so many discussion threads about how bad it tastes. Maybe I'm crazy. Maybe Wilton re-formulated their recipe - I have no idea. What I do know, though, is that it didn't taste anything at all like I was expecting and I actually thought it was pretty good. And it was so much easier to work with than the Marshmallow Fondant I had played around with before. Oh, and did I mention that it was 1000% easier to work with and didn't leave a gooey and sticky mess in my mixer bowl or on my table? That, in itself, has made me a fan of store-bought fondant. Yes, I'm lazy in the kitchen. This should come as no surprise, people. :)

The order was for a yellow cake with chocolate frosting with brightly colored butterflies on top. Simple enough. I made Chocolate Swiss Buttercream and sculpted the butterflies from fondant. I threw in a couple of flowers that I cut with a daisy cookie cutter and set in a muffin tin to dry so they, too, would be three dimensional. I used royal icing to attache the butterfly cut-outs to the bodies that I had made, and then colored some of it green to use for the grass on the cake and around the border. So far, so good.

While in the baking aisle of the grocery store one day I found the edible neon colored glitter gel and grabbed a box of it thinking it may come in handy, sometime. This was the perfect time to test that theory. I decorated the butterfly wings and bodies with the edible gel and let everything dry overnight. I needed to have the cake delivered at noon on a Saturday, and managed to have everything finished before going to bed on Friday night, aside from placing the standing butterflies on the cake. Saturday morning, before heading out to deliver the cake, I put the butterflies in place, and filled in some more 'grass' around them to give them some extra support. When I delivered the cake, the birthday girl came outside to see it and jumped around squealing, "My cake! My cake!" Yes!! Another satisfied customer....maybe there's a chance I'll be successful at this one of the days, after all.

I really didn't run into any roadblocks making this cake - everything went so smoothly I was actually afraid that I had forgotten some crucial step or ingredient, or something. But no, aside from one of the butterflies just getting a little lazy and leaning into his neighbor on the trip over to the party, everything went great. You cannot imagine how pumped I was about that. I did learn a lesson from this cake though - as I do with every cake I make. The lesson here was that 3D fondant butterfly bodies, before having the wings attached to them, will be the brunt of alot of jokes if there are men around. Apparently they're not exactly worth of a PG rating before the wings are attached. Who knew? At any rate, it was a really fun cake to make, and seeing the expression on the birthday girl's cake totally made my day - and boosted my confidence for the next cake.

New Mistakes, New Lessons

Every little princess needs an amazing cake for her birthday, right? After making a Texas Longhorns cake for Landon's birthday in February, his mom asked if I would make the cake for his sister's birthday in April. She didn't have anything specific in mind and didn't care what I came up with - I love and hate those opportunities. If I have a clear picture in mind of what I want to do, I love the freedom of expression I have in making a cake for someone. But when I'm stumped, I hate it. I always worry that what I come up with won't be what someone had hoped for, or that I'll try to do more than I know how to do and make a mess of it.

It took me several days to decide on this, and I only started to develop that 'clear picture of what I wanted' after Kim did some googling for me and found some cute pictures for me to work from. One of the pics she found was cupcakes with cute little princess crown wrappers, and I was able to build from there. The first step was to find the wrappers. This led to my first mistake and then the first lesson I learned with this experience. I called every store in town to see if anyone had the wrappers - I'd seen Wilton kits before with the wrappers and cute little decorations for the cupcakes so I didn't figure they'd be hard to find. After spending a couple of hours on the phone, however, I found myself, once again, relying on my dear friend Google and trying to find a template to use. And, thankfully, I did. So I bought some cardstock and printed, cut and decorated 23 princess crown cupcake wrappers. The mistake here? Calling around instead of driving around. The day before the party - after all of the wrappers had been made - I found exactly what I had been looking for in a local craft store. I wasn't happy. So the lesson learned is to never ask someone to check on something for you if you want a definite answer.

The round cake was mistake #2, which turned out to be one of the best mistakes I've made to date. My original plan was to make a 2 layer dark chocolate fudge cake filled with fresh strawberries and chocolate ganache. HOWEVER, poor planning on my part led me to realize that I did not have the 8+ hours for the ganache to sit in the fridge and firm up. So plan B was to make some devil's food pudding to put in between the layers. The mistake here? No milk. Again, poor planning on my part. So I had to develop a Plan C. I tried out a recipe for meringue frosting and it tasted great - but it wasn't stiff enough to frost the entire cake with. Not wanting to waste it, I used it to fill the cake, and then added the sliced strawberries. I frosted the cake with American buttercream (aka - Crisco and butter buttercream) and used Swiss buttercream for the rosettes on the top of the cake and for the stars on the bottom. I added some crystal garland that I picked up in the wedding department at the store around the bottom of the cake, and carefully placed pale pink sugar pearls in the center of each star around the bottom and in the ivory rosettes on the top of the cake. I was pretty happy with the finished product and probably could have left it at that, but decided to add the princess wands and the tiara when we got to the party. Turned out to be a good decision because it really gave the cake a more finished look.

I was so excited about how the cake and cupcakes looked, but I was worried about the taste. What good will it do for me to make cakes people like to look at, if no one wants to eat them? Turns out that the mistake I'd made with the meringue frosting causing me to use it as the filling for the cake was a good move. I think, at the end of the party, there were 2 cupcakes left and one slice of cake that Landon's mom had managed to save. Everyone loved it - and raved about the taste. One woman even said to me, 'I usually order my cakes from but I don't think I'm going to go back to them after tasting yours. This is soooo much better.' What a great personal victory for me - I was really excited, and so proud of myself for turning what could have been a disaster into a big success.

So what's the lesson you should take away from this? First I would have to say it's 'Don't put too much pressure on yourself.' Secondly, I think think biggest lesson would be to remember that what you consider a mistake or a colossal disaster probably aren't as bad as you think. You're always going to be more critical of your own work than anyone else will be. So don't make excuses or apologize. Show off your finished product just like you would your child's artwork. Oh - and don't forget that people don't know what picture you have in your head - so they'll never know if you 'screw it up' or not. Don't let your self criticism take away from someone else's praise.

The Mad Hatter Strikes Again!

This is the second 'mad-hatter' cake I was asked to make. This time for the 10th birthday of a coworker's daughter. This is where I started getting really nervous. Up to this point, the cakes I'd been asked to make were for people who didn't really care what I came up with. This cake, however, would be seen by the birthday girl's entire class and sports teams, and the parents of all of those kids - so, basically, potential clients. Yikes!

The original cake order was for a small topsy-turvy cake for about 10 kids. By the time I needed to start working on it, the birthday girl had decided on a much larger guest-list and I now needed to feed close to 40. To keep the cost close to the original budget, we decided on the two-tiered mad-hatter cake and 2 dozen cupcakes to go with it.

I have no idea how many hours went into this cake - all I can remember now is working all day at work, coming home to feed the kids, make sure they had baths and get them in to bed on time, and then staying up LATE working several nights in a row. One night during the process there was an impromptu block party, of sorts, and I ended up accidentally turning the oven off once with the big tier still baking, and then forgetting to turn it back on for the cupcakes. Good grief. You'd think I'd never done this before. The lesson learned here was that you cannot multi-task in the kitchen AND watch your husband and all of his friends play pool. Oh - and it's a good idea to wait until AFTER everything is baked and all of the gumpaste is colored before you crack open a beer and relax.

Wanting to save a little time - and a lot of pain in my right hand - I opted for fondant zebra stripes instead of the hand piped ones. I used chocolate marshmallow fondant and colored it black. It is SO much easier to: A) Get a true black fondant if you start with a dark chocolate base; B) Color/flavor the fondant while it's still in the melted marshmallow stage; and C)Get the stripes to stick to the buttercream when it hasn't been sitting in the fridge.

I hate piping borders. Almost as much as I hate going to the dentist or doing laundry. I just don't like it at all - maybe it's because I'm not very good at it.....or maybe I'm not good at it because I hate it so much. Who knows. So to avoid having to pipe the border on this cake, I made a $16 investment in some gumballs at a local candy store. Sure it added some additional cost that I hadn't budgeted for but it saved me loads of time and resulted in the kids getting a little added bonus with their pieces of cake. Win-win. Another short-cut (or as I like to call them, innovative ideas) on this cake were the decorative buttons that I added to it to go with the 'peace' theme. Another $2 I hadn't budgeted but, come on, what's $2? The added extra investments were worth it to deliver a cake that had people 'ooohing' and 'aahhhing' over it.


The giant number 10, the stars and the piece signs sticking out of the cake were made from colored gumpaste. I hadn't really used it much before this cake but I was curious about it and gave it a shot. I did learn, though, that even the heaviest gauge jewelry wire is not sturdy enough to hold up gumpaste cut-outs. Good to know for next time.

Oh - and one more lesson I learned with this cake? I definitely need a Tahoe - or something similar - to deliver cakes in. Riding across town in the front seat of Ricky's Chevy truck with this cake in my lap threatening to slide around and fall to it's death was not fun. So I'm adding an SUV to my list of cake-decorating supplies that I need.

In the end, the birthday girl and her mom were both thrilled with the cake, and working on it with Ricky's son, Landon, in the house gave us some time to bond and talk fondant, gumpaste, buttercream and more. I had no idea he was such a savvy little cake boss, but I'm pretty sure he's getting a piping bag and a practice board for Christmas this year!

It's a Jungle Out There!

Wow - it's been a while since I've been on here...has anyone missed me? :)
It seems like the half-sheet zebra cake is fast becoming my 'signature' cake. I get a lot of orders for this one - which is great for me because I can usually knock them out in about four hours - baking and cooling time not included, of course. I can't help but wonder though - what is the next 'big' thing going to be? And, most importantly, will I be able to pull it off? I think so - I'm up for the challenge at least.

The cakes here are from my daughter, Elaina's, 12th birthday - which had to be re-made a week later because her party was cancelled because of snow. That's a birthday she'll never forget since we live in northern Texas where it NEVER seems to snow. One was for a 16th birthday party for the daughter of a friend from work. The purple one was to celebrate the end of Elaina's volleyball season. Definitely a reason to celebrate because they made it to the play-offs this spring. Whoop! Whoop! The zebra theme matched the girls' socks that go with their uniforms, so they were all pretty excited to see it at the end of season party.

For some reason, this is all I've got tonight. It's been a busy couple of weeks for me and I guess it's taking it's toll on my creative writing abilities. Tune in later though, I'll be back with pics of more cakes, and the funny back-stories that go with them. Until then, happy baking!

'Throwback Cakes'

Somehow, all in one week, I ended up making three different cakes that looked like they should have come from the 70's and 80's. The Alf cake was for a friend of Ricky's 30th Birthday. His wife planned a surprise 80's themed party and, since Alf was his favorite show back then, asked if I could make an Alf cake. I cheated a little. I found a Wilton Alf pan on ebay for $3.99 and bought it - good thing too because I never could have pulled that off on my own. In one day I successfully managed to break one Alf cake and 5....yes you read that right.....FIVE 1/2 sheet cakes. My plan was to make a tie-dyed sheet cake to go with the Alf cake so I could be sure we had enough cake for everyone. I ended up calling the Walmart bakery to order the sheet cake. I have no idea how I did it, but I ended up with so many broken cakes in my house that weekend that I'm pretty sure I gained 15 pounds while trying to get it all out of here. I was pretty sure I'd retire after that, but with two more cakes to make that week alone I didn't have much time to rest.

The Atari cake was for a girl that I know from work but that Ricky has known forever. Yes, Traci - I'm talking about you. Right out in the open. It's all good though, I promise. :) What she asked for was something simple for her husband Brian. Just a sheet cake with black frosting and the Atari logo on it. I was happy to do it, and pretty excited about the simple design and the little effort it would take. Then I stumbled across a picture of the most amazing console cake while I was researching to see what a classic Atari game console even looked like - I'd never laid eyes on one in my life. So I asked Traci how she'd feel if I did some experimenting and this was what I came up with. This cake covered a lot of firsts for me: The first cake I'd covered in Marshmallow fondant. The first time I used Rice Krispie treats to add to the shape of the cake instead of just adding accents on the cake. The first time I worked with gum paste. The first time I tried the Wilton spray color. The first time I had to go back and paint the entire cake with icing color when the spray just didn't cut it. The first time I managed to drink more than two beers without gagging. Oh - and the first time I discovered I'm a little more creative if I'm drinking an ice cold Bud Light Lime while I work. I was really nervous dropping it off at work the day after I finished it. You always wonder things like, 'Will they like it as much as I do?' 'Will it taste good?' 'Did I deliver what they were wanting?' Turns out it was a big hit. Traci said that Brian loved it and was super excited about it. Whew! What a relief!

The record cake was for my friend, Sabrina's, son's 13th birthday. She had originally asked if I could do another game console cake. For her, I'd do anything so I said 'Heck yeah!' Then she emailed me and said she was giving him a record player for his birthday because he loves everything 'old school' and asked if maybe I could make a record to go with it. Again, whew! What a relief! I could have done another game console, but I was just a little scared to try again. What I came up with was a vanilla pound cake with chocolate milk buttercream and chocolate fondant. Ricky held the exacto knife while I turned the turntable to make the grooves for the record, and then I finished it up with the musical notes. Another big hit. Sabrina said that her son just loved it and was so excited to see it...and again, I was relieved to find out that it also tasted good. Maybe by this point I was getting the hang of this whole baking and decorating thing.

So that's a lot of cake history in just one post, so I think I'll leave it at that. I have a kitchen to clean up from 5 nights of baking cakes last week.

I Love The Smell of Buttercream in the Morning

The next two cakes I was lucky enough to make are two of my favorites. Not because I thought they were overly spectacular or amazing, but because of why I made them. One of my favorite quotes has been attributed to British Prime Minister Tony Blair, but snopes.com says it was the work of an 'unknown forwarder' at some point in email history. Regardless of who said it, it's still true: Throughout history only two defining forces have been willing to die for you. Jesus Christ, and the American GI - one died for your soul, the other for your freedom. Have truer words ever been spoken? I think a lot of times we get wrapped up in the politics of military activity. Everywhere you go someone seems to have an opinion about it vastly different from your own. Which is good - this is a free country, after all. What really bothers me, though, is the blatant disregard for the men and women who continually fight for our freedom to express the opinions we have. So when I was asked by my neighbors, Wes and Kate, to make a cake for a close friend who was deploying, I jumped on the opportunity. I did have a bad case of 'baker's block' when I was planning the cake, but after playing around a little - and spending some time in the toy aisle at Walmart - I came up with the desert theme cake complete with a Rice Krispie camouflage tent and some Army men. Again, I never thought it was spectacular, but I was proud, and honored to make it.

The next deployment cake hit a little closer to home for me. This past Thanksgiving was a great day, but bittersweet due to the fact that we all knew that the next morning my nephew, Buddy, was flying back to El Paso to get ready to deploy to Iraq. How was this even possible? He was just a baby yesterday, and now he's a grown man putting himself in harm's way for the safety and freedom of people he doesn't know. Because this time this soldier was so close to me, I was lost for ideas. When I had asked him for his help with ideas for Wes and Kate's cake he made the comment that a unit patch on a cake would be a cool idea - so that's what I did for him. It was a pretty big cake and a relatively small patch so that's where the US Army logo came in. Every dot of icing I put on that cake broke my heart a little more, know what it represented. And to see my nephew choked up and with tears in his eyes when he saw it nearly brought me to my knees. Gladly, he'll be home for leave in just two more weeks and then home 'for good' eight weeks after that. I'm hoping for 'for good' anyway - he's already planning his next tour in 2012.
So for now, for anyone reading this, please take a moment and pray for the safety of our troops - whether or not you agree with their being where they are - they still need prayers for safety and prayers of gratitude. Another favorite quote of mine is: If you can't stand behind our troops, feel free to stand in front of them. And I think I'll just leave it at that.

My First 'Real' Cake

My friend, Tonya, is one of the most amazing women I've ever met. She's an incredible friend, awesome hairdresser, great mom and all around wonderful person. So when she asked me to make her daughter's Sweet 16 cake last October, and told me what she was looking for, I just didn't have the heart to tell her, 'No, I've never done a cake like that and I can't do it....I'm scared.' So I got together with my friend, Crystal, who is a self-taught fondant Goddess, and we made a trial run cake. Then the week before the party I made another one...the second looked better than the first so I thought 'Hey, maybe I can do this after all??' The picture here is the end result. Sure it's not as great as some of the 'mad hatter' cakes that you can find online, but I thought, for a first try, it wasn't too bad. Obviously I passed on the fondant and hand-piped the zebra stripes. It took a while, but I thought that they turned out pretty good - kind of funky, and less uniform than what I came up with when I tried the fondant. It was exhausting, and I think I spent about 30 hours on the final cake - working late into the night after work two nights in a row and all day that Saturday. But seeing the look on Tonya's face, and hearing how happy her daughter was with it, made it so worth it. This is when I discovered that there are very few cake catastrophies that a trip to Michael's or Hobby Lobby won't fix. And it's also when I discovered that free-handing colored white chocolate for letters and numbers looked much better than trying to use stencils and colorflow icing (for me anyway.) I think each cake has the potential to result in new mistakes - which, in turn, will result in new lessons learned. I would eventually give fondant another chance...months later....but you'll have to keep reading to see how that turned out.

In Over My Head?

My sister, Debra, got married in September to one of the most amazing men I've ever met - Jason. Being new to decorating cakes and with visions of grandeur I said, 'Oh sure - I'll make your wedding cake - it'll be easy.' Famous last words, right? I had a beautiful picture in mind of a 3 tiered square cake with chocolate frosting and a simple, elegant strip of teal fondant around the bottom of each tier. How hard could it be? In a word: EXTREMELY. This picture is what I ended up with - it was a three layer cake with chocolate frosting. The bottom tier had been nixed because my oven isn't big enough to accomodate a 16" pan. The middle tier stayed at home on my table with a chef's knife driven right into it's heart. It was awful. Lessons learned there? 1. Flipping and stacking multiple layers is an exact science. 2. It's not as easy to mend broken layers with frosting as you might think. 3. When you have a crack the size of the Grand Canyon in your top two layers you cannot cover the cake with fondant hoping that it will hold.

In tears I scrambled to find something to make this poor pathetic cake look better than it did. I covered it with teal drop flowers in random spots and took it to the party. Disappointed that it didn't turn out the way I wanted it to I refused to take pictures of the finished product. I regret that move to this day. Why? Good question. The answer is because no one at that party knew what the cake had looked like in my head. They only saw what I ended up with. Every person that walked in the door raved about how beautiful and elegant it was. What I thought was a fiasco and a colossal failure turned out to be a big hit, and now the only thing I have to show for it is a fabulous new brother. I guess, in the end, it was a pretty good exchange. But if you take anything at all away from this post let it be this: Celebrate every failure as if it is a work of art. What might be disappointing to you could be the most beautiful creation anyone else has ever seen. If you don't appreciate it, and photograph it, months later you'll be kicking yourself wishing you hadn't been so stubborn and full of yourself.

Oh, and another lesson you might want to take away from this is to know your limitations and try not to get in over your head. Remember, it's all about the baby steps.

A Few More Cake Adventures

These are the next three cakes I made - several months after the cupcake castle. For Ricky's birthday last year I wanted to make him a yummy cake version of his favorite candy: The Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. The result was a variation of a recipe that Shasta found for me - with peanut butter/cream cheese frosting and a chocolate ganache glaze on top. It's not beautiful - but it was GOOD. It was a great way to top of the night after he managed to win a jackpot playing free birthday bingo. :)

The cake with the roses on top was my 'final exam' for my cake class - we were told to pick our favorite cake from the Wilton Course 1 book - and after a lot of whining and complaining because I couldn't get the roses to come out right, I managed to make enough of them to pass the first course. One of these days I'll make it back for courses 2 and 3....maybe.

The pink and brown cake was something I did on a day when I was home from work with Evyn. While she napped I came across a recipe for rolled buttercream fondant and thought I'd give it a try. It tasted great and was fun to make - but unless you're working in a walk-in refrigerator and have the body temperature of....oh, I don't know....a vampire maybe - it will melt the second you touch it. I had a huge sticky mess in my kitchen, but Elaina and Emery were pretty excited to see it when they got home from school that day.

So that's another three cakes down - which really translates into about 5 pounds around my mid-section. I won't lie, now I'm a little sick of cake and don't eat nearly as much of it as I used to - and my hips have thanked me every day.

Baby Steps

So this was my first baking experiment....the cupcake castle for Evyn's first birthday. There were a few minor problems and a couple of random moments of sheer panic when I thought to myself, 'Why in the world would I want to ruin my last baby's first birthday by trying to make the cake myself?' But - all in all - I think I did ok for never having piped a drop of icing in my life. At this point I wasn't even sure what buttercream icing even was, and (obviously,) had no idea that you couldn't put it directly onto normal wrapping paper to add decorations to the cake board without the grease from the butter oozing into it. So the castle turrets (is that the word?) had a halo. Big deal. It definitely didn't ruin the party. Who knew it would be the first baby step down the road to this hobby, which I LOVE, that it took me 3 decades to find?

So Here We Go.....

Almost a year ago now I, wanting to keep my baby's first birthday party cheep and also terribly un-inspired by most 1st birthday themes, decided 'Hey - I can make her cake - that'll be easy.' So I googled some recipes, bought a piping bag and some icing colors, and tried very hard to remember how my sister, Toma, had decorated the Mickey Mouse cake she had made for her husband's birthday 15 years ago.
With the mixer my husband had bought me for our first Christmas together in hand I set out to mix up some great vanilla cupcakes and butter cream frosting. Everything was going great until the mixer started whining a little....and then a lot....and then in a giant puff of smoke, it died. Just died. I couldn't do anything else with it. Luckily, I was done with everything but coloring the icing so several minutes, and one very tired stirring arm later, I was done - with the prep at least. That's when it hit me: I had no idea what I was doing. With a little less than an hour to spare before party time I managed to turn 23 cupcakes into a decent princess castle.....and so began my journey to, what I hope will be, cake artist stardom.
Several months after the cupcake castle, I took a decorating class with two of my besties, Kimmy and Shasta. I don't think any of us really wanted to be there because we were passionate about decorating cakes - we were just loving the 2 hours of guaranteed girl time every week. We had a great time, but I can't say we really learned a lot. The next class didn't work out because of a scheduling issue (it's very hard to find two hours a week to play Betty Crocker with 4 very busy kids to keep up with.) I'm a big fan of improvising though, and what I can't go to class to learn, I turn to my good friend youtube to learn.
So here we are, 11 months later and I've finally decided what I want to be when I grow up. I'm no Bronwen Weber, and won't ever be, but if this adventure doesn't take me to stardom, we'll all find out together where it will lead. I've made a lot of cakes for a lot of people over the past 8 months or so. Some were good. Some couldn't even play on the same field as bad. But it's been fun. The one thing I regret is not taking a picture of every single cake I've ever made. For some reason I was under the delusion that if it didn't turn out the way I wanted it to, there was no use taking a picture of it. No more of that. We can't all learn from my mistakes if I don't have pictures of my mistakes, so from here on out there will be pics of all of them (the good, the bad, AND the ugly.) Now if I could just figure out how to post the pictures we'd be golden.
So as much as I'd love to spend the next 6 hours here typing up all of my baking adventures, I really have to go.... I have promises to keep, and cakes to make before I sleep.