Okay, occasionally I make cakes for friends and relatives for their birthdays. I’m not very practiced at it and it is a hobby that pales in comparison to my love of costuming, but here are some of the cakes I’ve made.
Our friends Matt and Brandy got married in Vegas. The usual gang went out there to celebrate with them, but a lot of friends couldn't make the trip so we threw them a wedding party once they got back.
I made them a "wedding cake" for the party. This was the first (and only) time I've ever made a tiered cake. It turned out fairly well, except the Bavarian cream filling in the middle of the layers wasn't solid enough and kept wanting to squirt out the side. You can see it in the bottom layer. The cake is decorated really simply with flowers.
Michael told Elizabeth he wanted a dinosaur cake. So that is what he got. Afterwards we learned that Michael told Elizabeth that he thought Adam would want a dinosaur cake. But whatever, who doesn't want a dinosaur cake?? The frosting is melting off the cake like crazy. It was HOT outside. The cake is made from two round layers and a bunch of those chocolate covered graham crackers to make up the spine. I got these instructions somewhere on the internet. He's pretty cute.
So after the dinosaur cake, I had to do something else cool for Michael. D&D anyone? PS in case you are wondering, Michael is turning 33 with this cake.
Here is the cake with appropriate background.
Jude's 1st Birthday Cake. I wanted to go all out for the little bud's 1st b-day. He loves his Fisher Price farm, so I used that as my theme. I made two regular layer cakes and a small "smash" cake for Jude. The cakes had to serve about 20 people which is why I made so many. Yay for big families!!
This one has a royal icing fence and tree made from an upside down ice cream cone and some Fisher Price cows and sheep (don't worry, I washed them off first!) The fence around the side of the cake is also made of royal icing and I made a drillion of the little royal icing pink flowers and stuck them everywhere.
The barn is a graham cracker construction covered in more royal icing and the tree is another upside down ice cream cone. The little chicks are also made of royal icing and are really cute. They are eating graham cracker crumb "seeds" and are surrounded by a Fisher Price chicken and farmer.
The smash cake is a little pig (Jude's favorite animal which he calls the Oink) in a royal icing mud sty.
Ready for smashing!
Family pic with happy boy and not quite ready dad.
Family pic with Jude looking a bit worried about the proceedings.
Ummm.....what exactly is this????
Hrmmmm...cake....I think I like cake.
Oh yeah, cake is GOOD.
Jude’s 2nd Birthday Cake
I wanted to make something cool for Jude’s 2nd birthday and he is really into trains. What 2 year old isn’t? So I hit the internet to see what I could find and to get inspiration. I found a cake I loved and then pretty much copied it exactly. Here is the flikr page I got the image from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/simplysweets/2158744694/
The cake is a two tiered cake with stars shooting out the top. The train is a figurine running around the bottom and since Jude has about a million trains, that was not problem.
I started by making two yellow cakes with chocolate frosting. One 2 layer 8″ cake for the bottom tier and a 6″ 2-layer cafe for the top.
I then made several red and blue stars out of royal icing, the letters JUDE, and a big blue 2. Here are the red decorations. I left them on the dining table, so the royal icing could harden overnight. There are wires sticking out from the stars so I can stick them into the top of the cake.
When I got downstairs the next morning, the red icing was hard and looked pretty good but the blue was missing. I found it a little bit away, on the floor, half eaten by my cat Molly. So there was an emergency trip to the store to buy a “2” candle so I could make an emergency cake topper. Sigh.
Here is what I ended up with.
The fruits on the trees are made with cut up jelly beans. The track and all the decorations are made with fondant. The clouds were originally going to be royal icing, but I made the royal icing the night before decorating in order to make the red letters and all the blue stuff that Molly ate, when I went to put the royal icing cloud on the next morning, my royal icing ran down the side of the cake having separated during the night. The clouds on the back of the cake are extra huge to cover up the spots where the royal icing had to be wiped off. The emergency cloud substitute was a can of store-bought frosting with a bunch of confectioner’s sugar mixed in to make it more stiff. All in all, I was pretty happy with it.