Owl Baby Shower Cake

I made this cake over 4 days for our pastor and his wife, who are almost ready to welcome their second child, Isabela Grace, into their lives.  Combined total of 12 hours, tons of eggs, sugar, flour, marshmallows, and love later, I presented the cake as my gift to them at the shower.

My Little Pony Friendship is Magic Cookies

Made for a little gal I've never met, but who needed an extra hug this Christmas.

These are the cutie marks of the main 6 characters in the show.  

Three of the "Mane" 6.

Baby Shower Cookies

These were made for a baby shower at our church.  

My Little Pony Friendship is Magic Cake

Happy 9th Birthday to my Angel-Muffinlumps.

Gumpaste Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie

Monkey Cake

The final Monkey Cake for a friend's 19th birthday.  Practice cake can be seen here.

Spider Cake

This cake was made for a company gathering in Orlando of people from NY, MA, MD, PA, NC, GA and FL as a surprise for some people winning awards.

Tee Hee!  He's wearing a Harness

Kinda looks like an ant, I know.  Everyone loved it.  AND as an added bonus, I was given a $100 Massage Envy gift card as a thanks.  SO psyched!

Monkeying Around

Happy 2013!

The holidays were low-key, baking wise. I did make cookies for co-workers and teachers, and I can't find a single picture. Nothing too exciting.

My son's friend Lauren has been asking me to make her a cake for 2 years now for her birthday.  Every time in February, we have had something come up where I cannot make it for her.  This year, I committed to making her 19th birthday cake for her February birthday.

She loves monkeys so she & I searched for images and she chose this one from the now-closed Cake Girls in Chicago (fire in 2010 destroyed their storefront. They now just sell supplies on the web.)

Another baker on Flickr, Sweet Xpressions Cakes, made this cake with a few tweaks.

Shiny!  That's usually done with steam on fondant.

I decided to have a trial run because  I always do trial runs!  I don't want to start on a cake that I have never attempted before.

For the trial, I use box cakes (which I do not like at all for making the final cakes.  Too moist, not nearly as tasty as my homemade cakes either) just to save time and money.  I made homemade marshmallow fondant (mmf) too.

I decided to make rice krispie treats (rkt) for the monkeys' heads too, and see if I preferred that over solid fondant/gumpaste heads.

Notes I made:  The rkt is lumpy obviously.  I would need to put two coats of thick  mmf over them to cover the lumps or coat them thickly in royal icing before putting the mmf over it.  I only put one layer with no icing this time, so they looked lumpy.

I might just make them out of fondant or gumpaste after all.

Also obvious, box cake is way too moist, so I was not about to carve the top of the crate flat, but I knew this going in.  So ignore the rounded tops and sides.  Also box cake won't hold the weight of the monkey heads, so there was drooping.  That won't happen in the real trial.

I was mostly trying to see if I could make the monkey heads look good and how I would work the wood grain.

Considering the materials for this cake cost me a whopping $9 to make, I'm happy with what I made. I know what to do and what not to do, and when I make the real cake, those corners should be nice and sharp and the top nice and flat.

I sent pictures to Lauren on her cell as I was making it.  She was very excited to see the progress.

Messy, I know.  

Golf and Deer Cookies

Hello!

I've been a little low-key on the baking lately.  I did start working on a cake for a relative turning 90, but things took a sideways turn, grandma went in the hospital and the party was postponed, so those cake plans were put to a halt.  Grandma is fine, by the way.

This past week, one of my best friends who works at our Baltimore company branch had a male co-worker in the hospital with a scare.  My friend/co-worker B is such a good person.  She went to the hospital several times to check up on our male co-worker K, as he has no family near and was alone until his family could drive in from out of state later that day.

While speaking over emails about him, we 4 gals who talk over email daily decided to do something for him to let him know we're thinking of him.  I offered cookies, they agreed and offered money to help pay for supplies and shipping.

K likes to hunt and golf, so I went on Google Images, found some cute designs and made these cookies below.

Part of company logo on shirt.

Isabel piped the grass on the golf balls.

I'll be mailing these off to him on Monday.  He's off recovering for a couple of weeks.

Get Well Soon, K!

Happy Easter 2012

Hope you all had a great Easter!

He is Risen!

Congratulations Eagle Scouts

Congratulations Danny, Kyle, Zach & Josh on attaining the highest scouting achievement.

Eagle Cake Level 3

Two 11x15 butter cakes.

The cakes are iced and I'm starting to put in the dowels.

 I made the mistake of leaving wax paper underneath the cake. I never do this.  It took David and me several minutes to get this paper off the bottom of the cake.

Here come the red fondant stripes.

The cakes are stacked and the blue butter cream border is added. 

TA-DA!!

I am SO proud of this cake!  Delivering it is going to be FUN (she says sarcastically.)  There are about 48 cupcakes to deliver too.  I will post more pictures of the Eagle Ceremony later.

Eagle Cake Level 2

The top of the Eagle Cake is actually not a cake.  It's the rice krispie eagle head.  The middle tier is two 10" x 10" chocolate cakes with chocolate frosting, covered in homemade marshmallow fondant.

Isabel and I placed the white stars on the cake.  

Then I decided to put the eagle on top, to see how it would look.  Nice!  

Next up will be the third/bottom section of the cake; 2 ea. 11x15 yellow sheet cakes.

Eagle Cake Topper

Well, it's time to make the real Eagle Scout cake for four Scouts in Troop 196 getting their Eagle Award.  I made the practice one back in November.

Homemade Rice Krispie treats.

Covered in homemade MMF, that my sister and I colored with food color gels.

He looks mighty mean

The rest of the cake will be baked and assembled later this week.  I'll post updates as I go.

UPDATE:  Level Two, Level Three, Day of Ceremony.

The Eagle Has Landed

I've been asked to make an Eagle Scout cake for a friend's son and other Scouts all getting their Eagle Scout Award in January. This is Jacob's old Pack and Troop before we moved away 4 years ago.

After showing them a few cakes I could possibly make, we narrowed the field down to two. One of them involved two square cakes and an Eagle on the top made (see the cake made by Cake Central Member klbright here) of rice krispie treats (aka RKT.) I figured there's no time like the present to practice that Eagle. The bottom two cakes would be a breeze.

Here we go.

Look, it's GONZO!

Gonzo was covered in brown and white homemade marshmallow fondant. Then my daughter and I made the individual feathers using leaf cutters and a cutting tool.

Isabel draws the "mouth" with a food color pen.

Here Isabel uses the tool to striate the cutouts, making them look like feathers rather than leaves.

He's kind-of squat. This was using only one batch of rice krispies. I will most likely use two, to make him taller and thinner.

I tried working with luster powder, but it kind-of failed. He just looks like someone punched his eye. Tee hee. This is why I practice.

Bye Bye Gonzo. Om nom nom!

Ponyo Cake

If you haven't heard of Hayao Miyazaki, get on board with us. We're discovering him and Studio Ghibli too.


The movies he's done for Studio Ghibli include:


Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
Castle in the Sky
My Neighbor Totoro (seen it)
Kiki's Delivery Service (seen it)
Porco Rosso
Princess Mononoke (seen it)
Spirited Away (seen it, own it)
Howl's Moving Castle
Ponyo (on the Cliff by the Sea) (seen it, own it)


I can't embed the English-dubbed "Ponyo" trailer; Disney owns the rights to the English-version, but here it is so you can see it on their site: Ponyo Trailer.


Such a cute film. HAM!! (we yell that a lot. If you've seen the movie, you know why.)


We wanted to make a Miyazaki-themed cake. We started with "Our Neighbor Totoro," but after thinking it over, and buying "Ponyo," we changed our mind. Here is the picture we based the cake off of.







I baked two 6x3 cakes and stacked them. I carved them down a bit to try to get a tapered pail look. I made homemade fondant and colored it green. I iced the cakes and covered them with the green fondant.


Side bar: I am not happy with the MMF recently. I have a love/hate relationship with it. For some cakes it is great; mainly flat ones. But when covering a shaped cake, it is just too thin and looks bumpy. I don't know if it is Florida Humidity doing the deed, but I am not happy with it.


The rim that would hold the water ended up being Rice Krispee Treats, molded into a rim and covered in green fondant.


While all that was going on, my big sis Brenda colored and shaped the gumpaste Ponyo.


I created blue Jell-O, boom, bam,


Ponyo Cake.

We can't stand the cuteness!!

Moose in Boxers, a Pain in the Butt and a Prince Fan

Where, oh where, did we ever come up with these ideas? *grin*

I was making cookies for an out-of-state co-worker who kept asking (over and over) when he was getting cookies. He's a avid hunter, and I had Moose cutters. Not that moose are hunted, are they?? I wanted to use my moose cutter, ok?

My sister and I worked on the cookies. She made three ginormous ones, so the batch you see is rather small.

This is for the hunter co-worker.

I was making the moose cookies, and I remembered a "special" moose, who has a thing for boxers, so I decided to add some boxers to this batch. My co-worker will have no idea why the moose are wearing boxers, but it makes me grin.

While I was making the above cookies, my sister decided to make some cookies herself.

My sister is staying with us to help in my son's recuperation from surgery. She made this LARGE cookie. It is about 6-7 inches long. The lips are another cookie placed on top of the butt. My son thought it was funny.

She also decorated a cookie for Isabel and another one for David and me.

She is also a huge Prince fan. Huge. She hand-crafted the dough for the Prince symbol cookie and used my ginormous bear cutter for the bear one. These cookies are 6-8 inches long.