Monster Truck Cake

This weekend I completed a 'monster truck' cake for my hubby's grandson, who turned 2 last month.  I had fun with it.. the nice thing about a cake like this is everything doesn't have to be perfect ('cause monster trucks are messy).. although I still attempted perfection every step of the way - I can't help myself!  

Lately I've been longing to do 'cake bunting'.  I'm seeing it everywhere and love how it looks on a cake.. just waiting for the right opportunity.  Cake bunting is basically mini flags/pennants strung across the cake, sometimes with a message or name on it - super cute!  So I decided to try it out with this cake, since it was monster truck themed, I thought the flags/signage would be perfect.  Basically I purchased red and yellow fabric (birthday party color scheme), printed a bunting template offline, then traced the template onto my fabric and cut all the pieces out, making sure I had enough for my cake message.  I had some racing flag ribbon that I edged my cake board with, which I also used on some of the bunting to tie it all together.  Then I attached the fabric pennants to some black embroidery floss, tying the ends to some Wilton lollipop sticks, which I later stuck right into my cake on an angle like in the pic below.

Here are some shots of my first attempt at cake bunting.. I thought it turned out very cute.. which is why you'll probably be seeing more of it on future cakes of mine ;)  ..You may be wondering why Elmo is on a monster truck cake? .. Well the birthday boy's mom asked if Elmo could somehow be incorporated (apparently the birthday boy loves him almost as much as monster trucks! :)  .. I tried to get Elmo on the cake in a subtle way since he didn't really coincide with the overall theme of the cake.. what do you think?

Here is the completed cake.. cookies & cream cake with cookies & cream filling, iced in buttercream, with a top layer of ganache ('mud'), and covered in crushed oreos ('dirt').. it was yum!

Happy 2013!

I've never actually done a New Year Cake.. though it's been on my wish list the last couple of years, I never seem to get to it with the hecticness of the holidays and my other cakes.  This year though, I did get to oversee my hubby's granddaughter make one.  My birthday gift to her in November was a Panny Cakes gift certificate - good for one cake creation of her choosing.  She chose to make a NYE party cake! ..and came to our house for 3 days straight to work on it.  There was some supervision on my part, but she pretty much designed, baked, frosted, and decorated the cake on her own!

The cake was chocolate with peanut butter oreo filling, and buttercream icing.  We had seen the number candles on a New Year cake when looking for designs she liked, so she decided to incorporate that, as well as candy confetti.. because what says NYE better than confetti, right?!  She also wanted a 'silver' icing, which is difficult to achieve, but we dyed the icing a light gray, then sprinkled it with luster dust, which gave it a nice shimmer (though it's hard to see in the pics).  The other decoration she came up with were shiny silver streamers (which she cut off a door curtain sold in the celebration section of walmart).  She tied a few of them onto the Duff curly cake wires I had and stuck them into the cake.. they were super cute!  Here are some pics I took along the way :)

..taste testing of course

..it's all about the details ;)

 

Ahhh.. workin' the most remarkable piece of baking machinery!

 

Yup.. she is txting AND mixing.. which you can only do with a trusty KitchenAid!

 

Frosting is Fun, right K?

And we're smoothing...

Adding the finishing touches with her bff :)

 

Here is the completed cake, which I thought turned out very festivious - perfect for NYE!

~HAPPY NEW YEAR~

 

 

 

The Castle Cake

My latest cake creation, last week, was for my niece/goddaughter's Birthday.  She wanted me to make a 'castle' cake that was in her Dora & Diego children's cookbook.  I looked at the picture and thought "how hard can this be.. it's in a children's cookbook after all."  Well, let me tell you, it wasn't as easy as it looked.. but of course totally worth every challenge because my niece loved it, as did many others!

The cake is chocolate with whipped cream icing.. and assorted candies, as you can see, for the decorations.  The castle points were made by dipping sugar cones in melted frosting, then rolling them in sugar sprinkles.. and they were the yummiest part of the whole cake in my opinion ;)  ..the flags are made with shiny white scrapbook paper I had, and toothpicks (in the cookbook they were 'ribbon flags' which are made out of ribbon, but I didn't have the right size ribbon on hand so I improvised, and no one was any the wiser ;)    

    

More 1D Cupcakes, Coming Up!

Ok so I'm slightly behind in my blog posts, but with the holidays on top of cakes, it's been a little crazy to say the least!  Two weeks ago I had the pleasure of working once again with my wedding couple from back in October.  They wanted a 'One Direction' Cupcake Cake for their daughter's Birthday party.  They liked the fondant toppers I made for the previous 1D cupcakes I did, so we went with them for this creation as well.  They wanted a cake made out of cupcakes, in the 1D shape.  

The cupcakes are chocolate and yellow with whipped cream icing.  In keeping with the 1D color scheme, I wrapped the board in red wrapping paper and used Wilton black & white 'color cups' for the cupcake liners (which work very well, meaning they look just as good after baking the cupcakes as they did going into the oven.. so I'm sure I'll be using them again since they come in a variety of cute designs).  Here are a few pics of the finished product!

  

pre-Toppers

 ..and post Toppers :)

The birthday girl and her favorite 1D member ;)

Here is a shot where you can see the Wilton ColorCups a little better.. they looked great with this color scheme, and they don't get all yucky looking after baking (like most cupcake liners do).. love these!