Frosty the Snowman Cake

Today I had to teach a cake class.  I figured since I had to make a cake, that I would make a Christmas themed cake for my boys.


This cake is chocolate cake, chocolate frosting and peppermint fondant (I added a little bit more than 1/4 tsp of peppermint extract to the fondant mixture as I was making it)...quite yummy!

I made the snowman yesterday so that it could dry.  I added Gumtex to the fondant mixture to give it stability.


I then added trees, snowballs around the bottom and made a tree for the top.

I didn't have the right tool to make the tree, so I came up with my own little tree creation.  I'm quite happy with how it turned out, especially with the snow (powdered sugar) sprinkled on the top.


My boys cannot wait to eat it after dinner...ok, I admit it...me too!!

Gender Reveal Cake

This was a cake for a gender reveal party an expectant mom was having.  The color of the frosting inside was to reveal whether the baby was a boy or a girl.

This cake was a vanilla cake and I made pink frosting based on the results of her ultrasound.  This was my first large bow like this.  I made it a couple days in advance and used bits of paper towel in each bit to allow it to dry in the right shape.  It worked!  

I glued fondant circles on the cake board to give it some added detail.

I was really happy with this cake!  What a great way to find out what you are having!!

This is what the cake looked like before all the decorations.  My first square fondant cake....

Halloween Spider Cake

I must have been on a cake roll because after I finished my friends cake, I decided I needed to surprise my boys with a Halloween cake.  

Let's just say that purple fondant is NOT an easy accomplishment!  It probably took me a good 45 minutes to get this color the way I wanted it (mixing blue and red food gel).  One day, maybe I can afford an airbrush kit so I don't have to spend so much time coloring the fondant.  

After struggling with the purple, I had to attempt the web.  I wasn't having a steady hand day so it was quite hard to get the web to look ok.   

The spider was a lot of fun.  I used lots of gumtex in the head and body to help hold the round shape.  I made that a day in advance to give it time to dry.  The legs I just rolled into ropes and formed them onto the sides.  In order to get more than one thing the same size, it helps to make equal size balls of fondant before shaping them.  I then added the eyes and the fangs to complete the look. 

The pumpkins I made into different sizes and carved lines into them.  Some of them I added just stalks and others both stalks and leaves.  The leaves were a little tricky because they were so small.  They did add such a great touch to them though.  For some of them I added some vine and attached them to the pumpkin plants.  Finally, I added some graham cracker crumbs for dirt to give it the finishing touch.  You can really by looking at the picture on the right how all the small details really make the cake what it is.                                                                                                                                                                                                  

                                                                                              

Karate Gi Cake

My son had recently started to do karate so we decided to choose something to reflect that.  I came across a karate gi cake online that I decided to try out.  This was my first attempt at a non-round fondant cake. 

This cake is a single layer 9x13 cake, which I carved small indents out of the side.  In order to make it a bit easier to lay down the fondant, I made two individual pieces...one for the top half of the cake and the other for the bottom half.  I figured the belt was going to cover the seam anyway, so I might as well make it easier.

The belt is three pieces....one strip going across, a strip for the ties and another for the knot.  For the edges of the gi, I cut three strips and made small indented lines with a knife.  I now have a rolling tool that makes these stripes...much easier! 

I was a little nervous about making the Yin Yang symbol, but it was much easier than I thought it would be.  I just used a cookie cutter to make a circle of each color and then I cut away what wasn't needed.  Then I just made a small indent to insert the opposite color in each half.  To make the bottom of the cake neater, I rolled out a black rope and just fit it around the cake. 

Of course, the cake itself was chocolate with chocolate frosting....what else!?

My first ever birthday cake...

This was my first ever birthday cake. I was standing in a store one day and this cake was on the front of a magazine. I ended up buying the magazine and making this cake for my oldest son's 2nd birthday.

It was a lot of work, but so much fun to make!

This was actually my second attempt at the cake. The ocean is made out of jello and the first time around, I made the ocean to close to0 the edge and the cake broke. I learned that lesson real quick! After that, it wasn't too bad....just lots of work with all the small details. I prepared the mermaids and swimmers ahead of time. Their suits/hair were made from icing and the mermaid tails were made from fruit roll ups. I also learned a lesson with those as well...fruit roll ups are VERY hard to work when they are warm. They end up being very hard to unroll and super sticky. The best thing to do is place them in the fridge. A million times easier!!

The seaweed is also made from fruit roll ups. As you can probably tell, the fish are just different colored Goldfish snack crackers with icing for eyes. The life preservers are mints with red icing. The treasure chests I believe are those treasure chocolate candies with icing for decoration. The boat is a Twinkie covered in frosting with a fruit roll up sail. It is "tied" in place with Twizzler "rope" and attached to some pretzel sticks. The "rocks" are chocolate covered raisins and the sand is Graham Cracker Crumbs.

As you can imagine, it ended up being pretty costly due to the many items needed to put this cake together. It was well worth it though, because I accomplished my goal of making this cake and I was happy with the end result. The only bad thing, is that nobody ate it at the party! They didn't want to damage it. My husband ended up taking some to work the following week! At least it didn't go to waste after all.