Cakes for week of 06/16/14

Hey, ya’all!  wonderin’ where I’ve been?  VA-CA-TION!!!  I got away to Michigan with my wonderful husband for four days and then took a week of no cakes for my kids.  We wrapped up the week with a trip to Holiday World in Santa Claus Indiana.  We have had a great time, but now I’m back to the grind.  Of course by grind I mean my awesome work from home job that enables me to be creative.

Here’s what was cooking in my kitchen before vacation.

2014 Grad Cake

Here’s a fun grad cake that’s unique, but easy to cut and serve to a large crowd.

Yellow banded cake

This was a wedding cake for an awesome Purdue couple!  My husband and I are both Boilermakers and are VERY happily married, so I’m sure it will play a large part in their marriage success.  :)

Not too much this post, but next week will be chock full!  I have 200 cupcakes and five other orders!

Time to settle the score

So, I’m not big on sheet cakes.  Let’s be honest. They aren’t the best way to showcase a beautiful cake design.  But when done well, they are definitely a great option for an easy to cut and serve cake for a large group.

To make it especially easy, sometimes they are scored.  This is a very easy technique.  Let me show ya how…

First, ice the cake and scrape it smooth.

Scoring Cakes 7

Then, using a CLEAN yard stick (I have one specifically for cakes.  Let’s not get grody, people) make a small hash mark every two inches of each cake edge.

Scoring Cakes 9

Then, gently roll your yardstick across the hash marks.  Make sure the yardstick touches the icing as it rolls across the surface.  It will ever so slightly pick up a line of icing off the cake.

Scoring Cakes 11

Scoring Cakes 6

That’s all there is to it!

Scoring Cakes 3

Now you can fill in each square with the decor of your choosing.  For this one, it was fondant music notes and butter cream rosebuds.

Scoring Cakes 4

Whoops,  missed a spot.

Music Note Sheet Cake

There, that’s better.

Happy Decorating, friends.

Cakes for 6/2/14

Hello and welcome back!  Thanks to all of you that keep coming back to see what I’ve been making and welcome to you newcomers.  Last week was fun because I got to do some new techniques I had never tried.  I also got to make a cake for a very special event at my church.  Take a look at what was cooking in my kitchen last week…

Here’s bright, fun cake for a Curious George themed party

Curious George Cake

Let me explain the ridiculousness of this one.  This was for a banquet at my church that was Sound of Music themed.  This is the face of our Music Director who was retiring from his ministry position.  My husband did the photo shop handy work while I did the cake.  We make a pretty good team, don’t ‘cha think?

Sound of Music Cake

Here’s a sheet cake I made to accompany it.  Lots of people were at this fun event so we needed lots of cake!  Here’s a tutorial for scoring a cake like this one.

Music Note Sheet Cake

This last one was a bigger challenge than I anticipated because I don’t do well with architectural cakes.  Straight lines are my nemesis.  Dr. Who fans will recognize this as the Tardis phone booth that transports the characters through time.

Tardis Cake

Tardis Cake side view

Yipes, stripes!

A really fun technique to use is color striping a cake.  It always looks so great.  A really great stripe to learn with a this Dr. Suess theme.  If you look at the sketches in his books, the lines aren’t perfectly straight and clean.  Let me show you how to add color in a fun way to your cake!

Start with a cake iced in your base color.  Place it in the freezer until the cake is firm to the touch.

Striped colors 5

For this design, the stripe color is also the top color for the cake, so I started there.  I placed the color in the middle first, gradually pushing towards to outer edge of the cake and eventually over the edge.

Striped colors 4

Then, pipe on your stripe color.  It doesn’t need to be very thick if it’s a darker color than the base color.  I intentionally made the lines imperfect to mimic the look of Dr. Suess.

Striped colors 1

Striped Colors 2

After drawing on all of your stripes, use a plastic scraper to smooth all the stripes onto the cake.  You will have to clean off your scraper often to make sure the colors don’t bleed onto each other.

Striped cake 3

Again, these are imperfect on purpose.  If the stripes need to be straight, pipe them slowly and steadily.  You will also have to keep the cake cold by putting it back in the freezer occasionally.

I then added thin black piping along the edges of the red stripes to complete the look.  I LOVE how it turned out!

Cat in the Hat Cake with Smash

Happy striping, everyone!  I hope you have fun with this technique.

Cakes for week of 5/26/14

Hello all!  Guess what…my kids are out of SCHOOL!  It’s the most wonderful time of the year.  For eight weeks, we can hang out together and have fun as nature intended…in a pool.  I am so blessed to work from home and be able to spend all this time with them.  My husband works so hard at his job to make this possible and I am so grateful.

But enough about my super hot, hard working husband…here’s what was cooking in my kitchen last week.

Here are some cupcakes for a tea party themed baby shower.  My favorite ones are the turquoise ruffled ones.

Shabby Chic Cupcakes

This one was my favorite last week.  I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but TOOT TOOT!  Isn’t this cute?!  I LOVE doing Dr. Suess cakes.  There’s a tutorial for how to stripe a cake here.

Cat in the Hat Cake with Smash

Here’s a grad cake for a gal on her way to the University of Alabama.  Roll tide!

University of Alabama cake

Have a great week, cake lovers!

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