Minions Cupcakes

Made just because I wanted to try them. LOVE them.

All homemade MMF,  hand-colored. Very time-consuming, but much appreciated by my co-workers.    I took them to work on my 18th Work-Anniversary this week.

When Milk Goes Bad

The youth pastor at our church is leaving. I only know him from sight; Isabel's too young to be in the youth  group yet and Jake's too old.  He's an energetic (ENERGETIC!) man who loves the Lord with all his heart.  He and his wife are moving and the church planned a going-away party, with the theme "I Hate Milk!"

Totally confused by this, I pondered making a cake for the potluck dinner this past Sunday.  The first image that came to mind was this:

It was an image I saw on a T-shirt on-line.  I wanted to make milk going bad, but I wasn't jazzed about the guns.  I sat in the loft and sketched my idea; a milk carton that's robbed a bank.

Mmmm, white chocolate ganache.

Still a little lumpy.  Need to add more FAWNDANT.

The finished product.

I really like him!

I took Mr. Milk to the church, all nervous as usual.  It was a wonderful time and everyone who walked by the cake commented on how great it was.  I was asked to help cut it up too.

P.S.  Oh, the "I Hate Milk" theme?  His motto for the youth group was "Milk Sucks!"

Why?

Hebrews 5:12-13

New Living Translation (NLT)

12 You have been believers so long now that you ought to be teaching others. Instead, you need someone to teach you again the basic things about God’s word. You are like babies who need milk and cannot eat solid food. 13 For someone who lives on milk is still an infant and doesn't know how to do what is right.

He teaches the youth to be adults in their walk with God, not babies on milk.  Hate milk.  Love solid food.

Wedding Cakes Revisited: Pricing and Expectations

I won't do wedding cakes.  I've mentioned this before.  I don't have the time, nor the space, nor the guts to do them.  On one of the most important days of a woman's life, I will not be the cause of someone's high expectations gone to pot.

I've made exactly one wedding cake; my sister's.  It was slightly tilted, but she helped and still loved it.  She can overlook flaws. That's what sisters are for.  And it was free to boot.

I recently got asked if I would help someone out to" save money" on a wedding cake for 450 guests.  Four hundred and fifty guests, and they came to me to see if I could help cut costs.  The average is anywhere between 100-200 guests.

I was shocked.  And not at the same time.  People really just do not understand cake pricing at all, so I can't blame them.  At the same time though, I am taken aback that someone thinks I am o.k. helping someone else I don't know save money by spending easily 20 hours (for a cake for 450!)  of my personal time to do this.  I have a full-time job.  Prepping would take weeks, because it would have to be done on my nights and weekends.  My personal time.

When I bake, I am baking out of pure love for the people I am helping.  I bake and create these fun cakes just to see their faces.  Makes me so proud and so happy.   I LOVE seeing my sister's, my friends', my co-workers', my nieces'/nephews' faces when I present them with this bit of my love in cake form.

I know that I am not a professional baker.  My many, MANY mistakes and failures that I publicly post on this blog are proof. I'm not scared to show you all I'm human.  What I am not is someone that will do something for free or cheap, just because I am *not* a professional,  because guess what? For every failure, I have 5-6 successes that I am SO proud of.  I have skilllllzzzz.

So let me educate ya'll on wedding cake pricing, okay?

EVERY baker will quote differently.  Buddy from Carlo's  (I love your skills and your show, Buddy)  is going to charge WAY more than the local bakery down the street.

What we do quote the same, though, is a "per slice" price.  Bakers range from anywhere in the $1.50 to $3/per slice range for plain old vanilla cake with butter cream frosting and maybe  some sugar flowers to $4-$10 per slice for fondant, custom figures, custom shapes etc.

PER SLICE PRICE for 450 people.  Do the math.  This is a really big wedding.  The average is anywhere between 100-200 guests.  This is 450.  This is not your average wedding. This is way above average.

Buttercream Cakes:
$1.50 (SUPER CHEAP)  x 450 = $675
$3.00 x 450 people = $1,350  ( and this is my "rate", and mine are with fondant!! Fondant pricing below.)

Special cakes (fondant, gumpaste, figures, unique designs, labor intensive):

$4.00 x 450 = $1,800
$5.00 x 450 = $2,250

etc. etc.

You're seeing these prices, yes?  Know what we hear?  "What? I can get a cake at Walmart for $50!"  (not a wedding cake, you can't.  Also, Publix's wedding cakes will run you about $200-$300 to serve 100-200 people, and that's buttercream.)  The reply?   Well then you, ma'am, will have a Walmart cake at your wedding.  You will not have a custom-made cake that someone spent 10, 15, 20 hours on.  You will save money and have yourself a nice cake.  What you won't have is what you're hoping for and see on tv and in bridal magazines.  Hey, I'm not knocking Walmart cakes, or Publix cakes (and I LOVE ME some Publix cakes) but if you want something spectacular, you're going to have to pay for it.


I seriously doubt 450-people wedding couple are going to want to spend $1350.  Heck, even if I was uber-crazy and said "I will make you a small fondant cake. Then I will make you tons of sheet cakes you can hide in the kitchen and I will do this for $675 (the $1.50 a slice rate that's crazy-cheap)," I doubt they would do that. They're calling me to save money.  I cannot help them. What I can do is prepare them for the shock they're about to meet up with.

Let's look at cake serving sizes now.  We are not talking a big ole pie wedge here.  If you don't know this, now you do.  Wedding cake servings are small.

Two inches by two inches!  Tiny pieces!

If I am reading this one right, these servings are even smaller
than the picture above this picture.  They want 450 servings!
 Look at # 9.  That's not even half the guest list!

Here's someone's pricing chart I found.  $990 for 180 people for a 3 tiered
fondant cake.

The cake would have to be a tower.  This is not realistic.  Your best bet is to have a nice small 2 or 3 tiered cake (4", 6", 8".  It's small.  About 26 to 46 servings, depending on how you cut it. Teeny teeeny to get 46 out of that) or any of the permutations in the second picture, remembering that the bigger you go, the more $$ you're spending.  Then have several flat sheet cakes in the kitchen ready to be cut. The baker could probably give you a better per-slice rate for those.  You're still looking at a little over $600 for all this.

OR, you bake your own flat sheet cakes and then spend about $150-$200 on a small, pretty decorated cake made by your decorator.

Just a little education so you understand why cakes are so darned expensive.  You're not paying just for the flour, eggs, butter and sugar, the cake boards and the dowels.  You're paying for that expensive fondant, the gumpaste and most importantly, the decorator's time and skill.

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!

Cappuccino Truffle Cake

I decided to try a new recipe for a Cappuccino Truffle Cake.  In attempting said recipe, I tried making chocolate truffles.   This was quite funny.  Not.  Actually, it would have worked had my white chocolate melts not petered out.  Rather than melting into a nice coating, they melted into a paste.  Bye bye chocolate truffles.

The cake itself was REALLY yummy.  Almond butter cake with a coffee/Kahlua butter cream, with nuts and store-bought truffles.  (I hid some non-coated truffles under the store-bought ones.

It was a hit.  Sadly, I forgot to take a picture with anything but ze' crappy cell phone camera before we hacked right into this puppy.

My sad little non coated dark chocolate
truffle peeks out from the bottom right of the stack.

Out of Business?

My daughter's inventing.  Should I be worried she'll put me out of business?

Should I also worry that the machine that makes cakes and cake pops can also alter your molecular structure and make you invisible?  ;)

Think Geek: Customer Action Shot

Oh Yea!

This picture

is one of the Action Shots on Think Geek's site!

Tee hee!

I'm Here! With Coin Cookies

If I told you all the things I've been up to, you would not believe me. Suffice it to say, from end of July to September, I was on 16 different airplanes, the computer died, we had all 3 of our cars break down or give us problems in the same week and had other various things occur.

The cake-making has been waylaid.  Big time.

My son has been rehearsing for his school's production of "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" for several weeks.  Last week, Wednesday through Friday, were the performance evenings.  Jacob played Hamlet.  If you don't know about the play, Google or Wiki it.  I, for one, love it, but I'm a literature freak and love Shakespeare, so I get "R&G are Dead."

I wanted to make something special for all the kids involved in the play, whether it be on or off stage.  I decided to make cookies.  In the play, they play with coins a lot.  So, I made them one large coin cookie on a stick, and two smaller cookies depicting the Comedy and Tragedy masks.

Then last week happened and I ran out of time.  I was decorating until midnight and 1 a.m. on two nights, and got off early on Friday so I could put the cookies all together for them.  The mask cookies looked like a 5th grader made them; they were horrible.  I was pretty proud of my coin cookies though.

50th Birthday Cake

My son's aunt (his dad's sister; my ex-sister-in-law.  I hate calling her an "ex" because my ex's family is wonderful. I love them and they love us right back) turned 50 this week.  Unbeknowst to her, her father (Jake's grandpa) was planning a surprise 50th birthday party.  He and my two other ex-s-i-l's called me 3 weeks ago and asked if I would make the cake.  Of course!

I Googled pictures and found a cute design by the famous Pink Cake Box bakery that I decided to copy.  

Three weeks early, I worked in the gum paste items that needed to dry and harden ahead of time. 

(My sister & son both asked "Why does it say 'So?'" LOL)

The Friday before the party, I took a vacation day and got to work.  I had baked the cakes Wednesday and Thursday nights.  Now it was time to put everything together.

I rolled over 100 fondant balls.

The top cake above, was a carrot cake covered
 in homemade marshmallow fondant.

The bottom cake was almond butter cake with buttercream, and fondant accents.  What you see above are spaghetti sticks propping up the bow while it dried on to the ribbon on the cake.  I pulled the spaghetti sticks out at the party.

I really liked how the topper came out.

 Then, the problems.

I did not dowel the bottom cake enough.  Carrot cake is definitely a denser cake than the butter cake.  I only put about 5 dowels in the bottom cake, and more towards the center, not nearer to the edges.  As time went on, we got droopage.

I was so bummed, but what could I do now?  Nothing.  Just learn for next time.  The bottom should have been the carrot cake, or I should have used more dowels.

You can see the drooping already.

The party was great.  The birthday gal was totally surprised, and everyone raved about the cake, droop and all.

The Aftermath!

Little Big Planet Cake

For my daughter's 7th birthday, I created a Little Big Planet cake, per her request.  The pieces were made way in advance.  The actual cake was made in a mad rush!  I did not count on there being a banquet for my son's Academic Team on the same night as I was to decorate the cake.

Below are some of the items I created based off the game and the Strategy guides we own.

One of my favorites with regard to how it came out.

I also created a Sack Boy.  I love how he turned out.

I baked a round Wilton Ball Pan chocolate cake and covered it in fondant.

I then added some random green "land mass" shapes, added all the little round discs I created and added the little Sack Boy to the top.

Cute!

Next, I iced two each 10" almond butter cakes.  This was where the rush came in.  It was 10 p.m. and I was still making butter cream. That plus my icing skills stinking and you have a not-so-much smooth finish.

I piped a shell border, added some lettering and decorated some cupcakes (I had extra batter) and voila! 

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!

1969 Wilton Cake Decorating

Ah, 1969. A good year. :) I volunteer at the local library's book store. It's a great place to find books for CHEAP prices (10 cents up to $3) that you don't have to return or worry about late fines.

Cleaning books, pricing and shelving them is fun, especially when we get first dibs on the books we're processing. Imagine my surprise when this passes through my hands.

"Modern Cake Decorating," by Wilton; 6th Edition published in 1969. The cover's not the greatest, but the book itself is in great shape.

I LOVE looking at it. Some of the designs are so dated they make me laugh aloud, but for the most part, a lot of the tricks and lessons are the same 41 years later.

Today, we're mortified is we can't get a super-smooth finish on cakes. Check these ones below out.

Hee hee!

The also show some neat borders and designs I've never seen before.

There's the rose.

There's a detailed section on making figures with royal icing.

My son saw this and begged me to find the pans and legs, etc. Yes, they are available on E-bay. No, I will not be paying $50-$85 for it, but it's pretty awesome, no?

Here is another display of making figures with royal icing.

I am excited about owning this book. Total cost?

$1.00

I love the library book store.