Barbie Cake

My girls were so excited when they saw this cake. It was one of 4 cakes made in my class!!

Cant wait for the next series of classes to start in Jan.

Dakota turns 16

My nephew Dakota turned 16 last month and I was asked to do the cake.. I jumped at the chance since this is the first big cake I have been asked to do.. A half sheet.. And boy was it big. And heavy. 4 full cakes are sitting there on that board.

Happy Birthday Dakota..

Baby shower

A friend of mine is having a baby and she asked me to make a few mini cupcakes for her shower. the theme was... yes.. red and white.. I will just say now.. I can not shoot white things. My camera and I were not getting along this day. I love how the little baby chocolates came out.

I enjoyed making these. Cant wait to see the new baby girl when she arrives.

14 layer cake

This is what my kitchen counter looked like.. 8 cake pans ready to go. I used round cut out wax paper to fit the bottom of the pans.. I use this a lot when baking breads.. but never with cakes.. saw it in the recipe and thought it was a good idea. I will used this now with all my cakes. It makes it so much easier to get the cake out of the pan. No worries that it will stick.

I use regular pam to spray the bottoms of each pan first. Then put the wax paper down on that so it will stick and stay in place. Also I love using....... wait for it........ PAM for baking.. LOVE IT. when I don't have my quick release for cakes I reach for this. Works great everytime.. and for greasing down 14 pans its a must have. Made the moring go much faster.

This is what my counter looked like with layers of cake cooling. I did not even have enough racks to cool everything down. But they cooled fast and as soon as the last batch came out I was ready to start putting the cake together.

With one daughter looking and watching..

Now the stacking starts. Glaze... Layer... Glaze.. Layer..

14 layers

after putting the glaze on, this is what it looks like.. a huge stack of pancakes that are shiney!! not too pretty.

So chocolate frosting went on the outside to even everything up and make it look nicer. Now I am at small group.. I had to wait all day to see what the inside would look like.. :) I wanted to cut into it so bad.. As soon as we got there I was reaching for the knife to cut.

Now.. imagine.. :) pink borders around the bottom and top.. with hearts out of frosting on the side.. now see me scraping it all off!! yup.. I did not like how it looked and the hearts looked... well... like poo. So I just could not stand it and took it all off.. re-frosted it and left it plain.

I was excited to cut it open.. I had no idea if it would hold up its form.. Well it did.. :)

Looks pretty cool.. taste.. well again honestly.. kind of bland.. I think the glaze needed to be sweeter.. So next time I will change it up a bit. :)

this is where you can get the recipe if you want to try it out. http://www.oprah.com/food/The-Smith-Familys-12-Layer-Cake

All Aboard!

Welcome to the J.D. Express.. ALL ABOARD!

My son turn 1 this last week. This is the train cake I made for him. His gift this year was the Geo Trax train set.

This would be my first "Boy" cake.. And it was very hard not to girl it up with some flowers. But I controlled myself and kept it boyish.
Happy birthday baby boy!

Luau Cake

This is the second luau cake I have done. These I love doing. No fondant and just tons of fun. I had seen this out of a parent magazine and changed it up just a bit. Loved the little huts. And they were very simple to make. Starbursts and mini wheat. Sour green staws for the tree's, green licorice for the seaweed, nerds and jelly beans for the bottom rocks. The sand is shortbread cookies. Yummy!

Happy Birthday Eva!!

Father's Day Cupcakes

 

We had 20 minutes tops to put these together. We sent Todd on a popcorn run and Eva and I got the stash of baked goods out. She was very excited to be able to help with one of my baking projects. And she did a great job also. These are made out of cupcakes (with a little brown coloring added to the batter) and brownies for the beef part. Then just colored icing. And white pearls for the top. Super easy to make. Todd loved them.

 

 

 

Beavers or Ducks??

I am making these for our church's youth group. They are having a bake sale and they asked me to do them. I went through all my candies.. I needed a reason to organize them. They had become a big mess everywhere in my cabinet. So.. I found these cute little ducks and decided to do ducks and beaver pops on a few of them. Sorry. No little beavers but I did find black and orange candies. I will have to do the beaver ones different next time.. I am thinking on that one!

 

 

I love these flowers. They came out nice and bright!

 

 

Flower Cake Pops

Just experimenting with different ways to make flowers with cake pops!

 

 

Easter

Had a bit of fun with these cupcakes. The girls could not wait to eat them.

 

Also working with my light box... Ahhhhhh I need more light from the other direction.

 

Slumber Party Cupcakes

My two daughters had a slumber party over spring break. So I had to make these cupcakes from the Hello Cupcake book.

 

I would have to say, using canned icing is just not the way to go. Even though I know they swear they use it in the book. I have my doubts. It just does not hold up. Also.. I found salt water taffy works great for the blankets. Wow.. it rolls nice. And it comes in a zillion colors. I tried Air heads also.. They have just a few colors. But bright.

 

 

 

I had fun adding my own touches.. The bows were my favorite. I must say, I really enjoyed making these. And the look on all the girls faces when they saw them was priceless.