Hmm - Long Overdue Update

Our Isabella Sue Horton arrived on September 11, 2009, healthy and happy.

I have since made a couple cakes and haven't had time to post them. The first was for my son's 14th birthday. Being a avid gamer, he decided he wanted me to make a World of Warcraft cake. This is the result:

He was pleased with it, and that's what counts in my book.

My most recent cake was for a lovely young lady that had a unique idea for her birthday cake. She requested a snowman cake, as her birthday is in December, with a twist. She wanted the 'head' of the snowman filled with cherry pie filling, so that when it was served it would look as if the dear fellow had just had a lobotomy. :) Well it turned out well. Hopefully going to get a pic of them enjoying it soon, but for now here is the pre-delivery picture.

Isabella is due Labor Day 2009!

Baby Shower Cake

Ok, I know I haven't posted in a while, and I still haven't finished getting all of the birthday cakes up. However, I found out last month that I'm expecting and the nausea has kept me from doing a whole lot. So . . . what do I do? I take a cake order for a baby shower. WHAT AM I THINKING?!? LOL Oh well, it turned out pretty well, and they were happy with it. It WILL be the last cake that I make for someone while I'm still battling morning sickness though.

It turned out to be a 14" two layer chocolate cake with real buttercream icing. The monster ended up feeling like it was about 20 lbs. worth of cake.

I can't get away from cakes completely during this time, because I volunteered to do 2 cake decorating classes at my homeschool co-op. This was BEFORE I knew I was pregnant, however, and now I really can't back out on the kids. I am blessed to have an assistant in class who knows as much or more than I do, so she has had to take over the class several times already during my inconvenient trips to the ladies' room. Oh well, a couple more weeks, and I pray the morning sickness will be done.

So for now, remember . . .

You are Treasured

Birthday Cakes

My son just turned 13 on December 5th! Were does the time fly to? Well, I decided I was gonna try to post all of his birthday cakes. There have only been a few that I didn't personally make, and some I'll have to scan into the computer. This will be a series of birthday cake posts instead of just one HUGE post.

I do remember that his first one was actually made by both his dad and I. I believe Dad drew Mr.Pooh freehand and then I worked on filling him in.

As you can tell, Josh enjoyed his first party and cake.

He was one of my heart's greatest desires and he's a wonderful son of whom I am very proud.

Winter Cake

Okay, so I decided to see if I would try and take a design I already had and change seasons. The fall "Harvest Basket" cake that I made for Thanksgiving didn't exactly fit with the snow outside. So . . . I decided to make it a basket of glittery snow and pinecones, all 100% edible.

I made my own marzipan/fondant mixture that I can stand the taste of. :) Then I found these really cool instructions on making the pinecones - http://www.candylandcrafts.com/marzipanrecipes.htm . Took me a while to get the hang of it and was rather messy trying to get them coated, but I do really like the way they turned out. This cake took me probably, start to finish, about 5-6 hours, including baking time. I know, I'm not the fastest decorator in the world, but I do enjoy it. At least I do when it comes out right. This turned out to be a practice cake and we'll enjoy eating it here at home. I do want to make another soon, because I somehow made a mistake in my estimation of the cake height, so I have enough basket staves to make 3 or 4 more cakes. Oh well, live and learn.

The next one I make, I'll try to photo document the process, for anyone that cares to see. :D

Here are a couple more pics of the latest creation.

Til later :)

Remember . . . You are treasured!

Cakes from the Past - Part Two

A Father's Day Surprise
This is the cake I made from my wonderful husband on Father's Day 2005; his favorite meal, a double cheeseburger with fries, in cake form. Everything is cake and icing with the exception of the 'American Cheese", which I made from rolled out and chilled orange 'Starburst' candy. I was very happy with the way it looked. However, the candy made it VERY hard to actually cut through the cake. We had to end up taking the 'cheese' off of the cake to cut it up. The 'french fries and ketchup' are made of yellow cake and red frosting. Although 99% of the icing I make is buttercream, I did venture into uncharted territory and use royal icing for these decorations. This made them hang correctly off of the burger, but basically made hard candy to be picked off and eaten later. I got a request to make this same cake for the birthday of a church friend's father, but didn't get pictures of that one.
Anyway, my husband is a wonderful man and will always be "#1 Dad" in our family. Love you, hon.

Happy 4th of July!

This was an interesting adventure! I decided that I didn't really need to spend the money, nor did I have room, for yet another cake pan. So I decided to wing it and made my own 'pan' out of cardboard cake board and aluminum foil.

To my great surprise and relief, it DID NOT leak all over my oven and came out wonderful, esp. since it was a freehanded drawing as well. We have fun making either cake or cupcakes to take with us out to the fairgrounds to pass the time waiting for the fireworks show. Happy B-Day, USA!

Congrats!

This was a half-sheet cake made for one of my husband's co-workers.

Grapes anyone?!?

Got up to my mom's house for Labor Day and, well lookee here, I just happened to bring along my cake decorating supplies. I decided we needed a dessert for the dinner table. So I once again, went creative and tried something new. It's always an adventure when I step out of my comfort zone and experiment.

To a wonderful Mother in Law

Happy Birthday! to my M-I-L, or to my son - "Gran". We surprised her with a birthday cake and my son made a homemade greeting card for her. :) Very sweet!

Double Chocolatey Dessert
My son and I decided to make a chocolate cake for dessert. He decided he wanted to learn how to make roses. So this was his very first attempt at making buttercream roses. I made the middle rose and he made the other two. Awesome job, Josh! I saw gals in class that their first attempt was not as good as yours. :)

The next two cakes are probably the hardest that I have done and by far, my favorites.

Friendship in Bloom

I believe this was the very first cake someone actually paid me to make. Still needed work on the lettering and practice with my script, but she was happy with it, and so was I.
This one I made for my best friend on her birthday. It took me about a week to make. The flowers had to be made ahead of time and set to airdry, so that they didn't just melt and the petals fall or break. There are roses, rosebuds, carnations, daisies, bachelor buttons, white lilies, tiger lilies, pansies, and odds & ends flowers. The sides of the cake are decorated with cream colored basketweave and a rope border around top and bottom edges. Considering I had only finished 2 out of the 3 Wilton courses, I was fairly proud of this cake.

Fall Harvest Basket

This was another cake that took me about a week to do. The 'fall basket' is made of a double layer cake and the staves and leaves are all made of a marzipan/fondant mixture. I made 3 of these cakes within about a 3 week timespan; one for home, one for Rob's workplace, and one to take to Iowa for Thanksgiving at my parents' home.

Mom always sets a beautiful table anyway. But I wanted to give her a 'centerpiece' for Thanksgiving Dinner. Love ya, Ma!

Cakes from the Past - Part One

I decided I needed to get the pictures of the cakes that I have made in the past, out onto the web so I didn't lose them. So here they are.

I took the Wilton cake decorating courses with my mother-in-law (YES, my MIL) back in 2005. It was really fun for me and that turned me on to wanting to do cakes for other people. Here are the cakes I made for class. The 'Thank You' above, I took in to my chiropractor's office :)

And for the last course of the classes, we were instructed to make a tiered cake.

I'm going to be doing this blog, and getting these pictures up, in stages as I am new to blogging and have to do this in my 'spare time' - lol.

Stay tuned for more pics.