Charlotte's Birthday Cake

This year my friend's daughter had her first birthday. I really wanted to make her a beautiful cake AND practice my icing skills. Unfortunately, I had to learn another lesson the hard way. I didn't put the cake in the refrigerator over night and I think that I left it in the car too long before delivery. The cake ended up bubbling out on the front side OF COURSE! It just couldn't bubble on the back could it?! Anyways, better luck next time!

Merry Christmas!

Some cupcakes for the hubby's work party :)

Faculty Luncheon

I made 90 of these cupcakes for the faculty a week ago. I used the opportunity to try some new things like a dark chocolate filling and a lemon filling. The coconut was delicious and so cute to use on the cupcakes!! Sorry the photos aren't of better quality...not such great lighting at my house.

David's Scrapbook Welcoming

Sorry for the delay! These were some cupcakes I made for my sister-in-law's baby shower. They were simple cupcakes but mostly I wanted to practice making some flowers from gumpaste. There are lots of lessons here but good practice. I can't wait to make them again soon!

Birthday of Independence!

This was a birthday cake for a friend of mine's daughter who was turning 1! After struggling with the fondant for some reason - I managed to pull it together. It turned out cute! I hope everyone enjoyed it!

Baby Shower

Cupcakes with Flowers

Birthday!

This cake was for my sister's birthday. I saw the idea in the book "Confetti Cakes". It was originally square and tiered but I made it smaller for our crowd. I liked the colors - super easy to do and looked really nice!

Tink Cake #2

This cake was for a little girl's birthday party. Lots of lessons learned here!!

1. The husband is AMAZING!! when I ran out of cake AGAIN and had to make another batch at 11:30 at night because one of the layers broke he ran out and got the ingredients I needed while I suffered a little panic attack. ;)

2. Read the directions for stacking cakes. Who knew that you could hammer in the dowel through all three layers?

3. Plan for accidents. I am notorious for NOT doing this. I think Matt's favorite phrase is going to be "I told you so" very soon...

Graduation

Happy Birthday Sissy!!

For Kristine's birthday we went to Canvas and Cocktails! I made this cake for the party.

What I do when I should be grading...

First attempt at a basketweave. I liked it! Also made my first set of daisies with royal icing...still trying to figure out the best way to use that stuff without creating a layer of cement on top of my counter. :)

Cream Cheese Icing with Orange Zest

Made these for school friends because I had some left over cream cheese icing with an orange zest that was so yummy I couldn't waste it!

Happy Easter!!

Happy Easter everyone!

Fantasy Flowers

So, Wilton teaches these "fantasy flowers". I am not in the class this month so I had to wing it on my own with the book but once you get the hang of it their not too bad. I loved the quilting idea but lesson of the day: the right tools make a difference!!

Tiered is much better!

This is the first time I learned how to use tiers for a cake. I love them! Very easy to manage. The roses here are made out of fondant and I loved making them even though it took some time to get all of them done.

Eden's Tinker Bell Cake!

For my niece's 4th birthday I made her this Tinker Bell cake. I found the design on the Wilton website. It was my first time trying a stacked cake and I'm still not sure how I feel about that. :) Learned a lot through this experiment though!

1. That Wilton "color mist" gets EVERYWHERE.

2. Buttercream with real butter - much harder to use than I expected!

3. Royal Icing - not as scary as everyone made it out to be!

Fondant!

Here is a picture of the first cake I covered in fondant. I am not a fan of bows but it was fun learning how to use the stuff! I took this picture before I actually finished making the cake so it doesn't have the border on it here.

Buttercream Roses

Ok, one of the best lessons I learned in the early classes - icing consistency. As you can see here mine was a little too stiff lol. But, I was able to make a decent batch of roses out of buttercream icing. I got the technique down but the icing makes all the difference in the world!

Did I mention how much I despise clowns?

This cake called for two clowns made out of buttercream icing. I learned how to stripe my bags, which was cool! I wish I had different colors at my disposal but it was a neat technique to learn. The clown heads were scary and I don't know that I would ever do anything like this again - but still, good learning experience.

Experimenting

This is a picture of the first cake I made at my first Wilton class. (What gave it away?) It cracks me up how terrible it is!! At the time, I was so proud... :)