Rainbows and Ponies

My three year old wanted a rainbow pony cake for her birthday. It's a chocolate cake filled with chocolate frosting, salted caramel swiss meringue buttercream and salted caramel.  It's covered in fondant and gumpaste decorations.

Tinkerbell Tree Stump Cake

 A friend asked me to make her daughters birthday cake. She wanted a Tinkerbell cake and I had the freedom to experiment with the design.  After looking through a ton of Tinkerbell designs, this is what I came up with.

Here are a few pictures before I added the flowers on top and some close ups of the decorations.

I love how this tree stump turned out.  I could have just left the Tinkerbell candle on top with out the flower, but felt it need a little pop for a special little girl.  This cake would be cute for a couple as well.  Their initials could be carved on the side in a heart.

The cake was my new favorite chocolate recipe with butter cream icing inside.

Rose Swirl Cake

This is a chocolate cake with a rich cream cheese frosting. 

Brenna and Emma's Princess Party Cakes

Brenna turned 2 and Emma turned 5 in August!  To celebrate, I made a carriage cake and one pillow cake for each girl.  The pillow cakes were topped with personalized tiara's.  They are made of a delicious yellow cake and filled with butter cream.  The decorations are made of fondant and gum paste.

Pillow Cake and Tiara

Brenna, my petite princess, turned 2 this month.  She's sharing her birthday party with her cousin Emma.  Originally her party was scheduled for Friday, but Emma's dad ended up having to work.  We needed to move the party out a few days and that left me with a partially finished portion of the cake.  I decided to go ahead and finish it for an at home celebration of Brenna's birthday.  This also allowed a trial run on a portion of the finished cake. 

 

 Little Miss Brenna was very impressed!

 And she loved her little tiara! It edible (made out of royal icing)!

 Not only did the cake turn out well, but it tasted great too!

Freezer Paper, Masking Tape and Extruder Guns.

Over the years that I've been making cakes for the kids, I've picked up a few trick here and there.  Every now and then I'll post some of them on here. 

Freezer paper.  I happened upon this trick this year.  I hated cleaning up the table over and over after coloring fondant or rolling it out. It was time consuming and well, I hate the extra work! I was wrapping meat to freeze one night and noticed how smooth the plasticy side was and how it might just solve my little mess issue.  On my next cake I tried it out and fell in love!

 All you have to do is pull off a large section and tape it down.  I used to use the clear tape to try and hold it in place while I worked, but oil from the shortening I used would make it come up. 

 That's when I decided to have my sweet husband pick up some masking tape.  It worked like a charm.  The paper stays in place and because of the plastic cover and oil does not dislodge it.  And when I have to change the paper, I can retape it without worrying about the tape coming up. 

My last tip is if you work with fondant or gumpaste a lot, get a clay extruder! I've been eyeing this bad boy for a while and had the perfect excuse to purchase it!  And with a 40% off coupon to Hobby Lobby, I was able to score it for less than $10!

As you can see, it makes all sorts of shapes. I tried a few of the heads and they are a dream to work with.  Hand rolling ropes and other long shapes was necessary before but time consuming.  This speeds things up dramatically!

Chocolate Chip Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Buttercream Icing

We had good friends over for coffee and dessert.  I wanted something special, but did not have much time to throw things together.  I decided to make a traditional boxed white cake mix more exciting by adding chocolate chips, vanilla extract and almond extract.  Next time I'll throw in a  little brown sugar to give it more of a cooke flavor!  On top, I added a healthy portion of homemade cream cheese buttercream icing.