Cookie Cake

I haven't done a cookie cake in some time and needed a practice run before I make 2 for a Lingerie Shower coming up next weekend. It turned out delicious! I wanted to practice drawing a margarita glass so I made it with bright colors for my bunco group I hosted this week.

Baking Weekend

My friend asked me to make a birthday cake for her office. I was excited because this would be my first order! So I spent extra time making the cake super fluffy and perfectly strait and then I made a new icing that was SO good. It costs more to make but it is really good. The only problem was I ran out of icing to do the decorating part! Yikes! So I made some chocolate icing to do a little decoration. I wish I could say that it looked fabulous but it looked boring. Although, I know it will taste FABULOUS! Which in the end is what you want. Next time I will make more icing for a square cake (size: 2 - 10x10x2). Oh well, it was great practice and I love the new icing. There is a chocolate border on the sides you just can't see it in the picture.

My next posting will be hot pink cupcakes and ZTA cookies...I will redeem myself.

Cupcake tower - flowers in blue and pink

I designed this cupcake tower based on the napkins used for this baby shower. The mother-to-be is waiting to find out what she is having so the napkins had bright blue, bright pink, and bright green on them. I was hesitant to try out fondant because 1. It doesn't taste good 2. It can be expensive 3. time...since I am teaching myself, I don't have time to make mistakes or practice a lot. So I did some research on fondant and found that a lot of people love using marshmallow fondant because 1. It tastes better 2. It is cheap to make 3. EASY!

So here are the pictures of my first cupcake tower:

Inside of cake: Chocolate icing

23 cupcakes: butter/yellow cake with cream cheese icing & marshmallow fondant flowers

Top of tower: (2) 6 inch yellow cake with cream cheese icing & marshmallow fondant flowers & bright green ribbon

Cupcake Tower

Me with my first cupcake tower!

Halloween 2009

I don't decorate much for fall or Halloween, but Bailey got this pumpkin at her school Fall festival the Friday before Halloween so Blake and Bailey carved it out.

Blake and I took Bailey to my parent's church for their Harvest Festival. My sister was in charge of the cake walk so I made a cake for it. I made it with cream cheese icing, but it doesn't dry at all so you can not do too much detail unless you make the icing more stiff and that takes away the taste so I did just a small design and it still turned out cute. I also made white flowers out of marshmallow fondant to stick on top but I forgot to take a picture of that.

Bailey was a very pretty lady bug and she had a great time with her cousins - Police officer "Logan" and Butterfly Fairy "Abigail". After the Harvest Festival, Blake and I went to a costume party. Blake went as "Charming" and I was a princess.

Where to start?!?

Well the past month has been really busy at work and home so blogging took a backseat for over a month! First it started with recruitment weekend. I am the rush advisor for Zeta Tau Alpha - Theta Nu chapter so that kept me overly busy for an entire week. Then I planned and decorated a cake for my best friend's bridal shower three weeks ago. Two weeks ago we went to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic for 5 days. Last week: Blake left for the entire week to play war games in MS; I had a 3 Family Yard Sale and made some great CA$H with two friends; and Tuesday I had an Initials Inc. party(www.initials-inc.com/1521) - love their stuff. This past weekend I helped with my best friends bridal pictures, we went to a wedding on Saturday, and church on Sunday.

Bridal Shower Pictures (3 weeks ago)

Party Favor: Chocolate chip cookie with their initials on each one.

Blake and I in Punta Cana (2 weeks ago)

Birthday Cake

This past Saturday I made a cake for my best friend's birthday. It turned out so cute. I used a 6 inch pan but they are 3 inches high (around 7 inches tall with both layers and icing in middle)- it turned out so good. I did chocolate cake with chocolate icing. The monogram and design on bottom are chocolate as well but the decorating kind of icing. I think I will make these cakes more often than the 9 inch pans because they look dainty and girly...just add a ribbon and you have a fancy cake. This was also practice for the cake I am making for her bridal shower. This is the size I am making for the top tier of her cake. I'm getting better! Almost done with this hobby...ready for the sewing classes to start!

Cake for Work

I know looking at this picture it doesn't look special but it took FOREVER to make. It is 2 sheet cakes stacked on top of each other along with filling in the middle about 1 inch thick. I used around 8 cups of decorating icing to make this cake and it ALMOST was not enough. It took around 6 cups to do the white cream cheese on the bottom and top layers and around 2 cups for the blue/green icing to do the bottom border and lettering. I was going to be really fancy and put the logo on the top but after I spent hours on it I did not want to spend another hour figuring out how to portion everything and make it look good. I also wanted to do a border on top but I ran out of icing. I was really proud of myself because I made it look so white and very smooth plus it did taste really good. I made this for our work party - it gave me a reason to practice. Anytime I find a reason to bring a cake I get excited so that I can try to do something new. I bought Wilton's Course 2 book this week so I will start trying all the new stuff from that book too. My next step is practicing with chocolate icing and making it taste out of this world. Wow I sound like a fatty! Blake said, "This isn't such a good hobby for someone trying to loose weight." ha! ha! I know...it really isn't, but I don't care much about the cake...I do test the icing quite a bit which probably isn't good on the thighs...but I only do it once a week and this week we didn't practice because of our schedules.

Cake Decorating Has Begun!

Well I found this book "Creative Cakes anyone can make" at Ross for only $3.99 and I didn't realize it came with a "How To DVD". Well I told my friend about it and she wanted to do it with me, but they sold all the other copies so we are just sharing this one. We met on Tuesday and had our first trial run of decorating a cake...well we ran into some icing issues but all in all it we were pretty good at it. I read the book and watched the DVD before going to her house and she did the same...so we knew how to do it but we had never decorated before. Well our cake turned out to be a blank canvas and we tried about 10 of the tips out and different styles all over it...there wasn't an area that didn't get covered with some decoration. We did have problems making the roses - that lady made them look so easy to do but I couldn't get the hang of it. So the next day I youtubed cake decorating and a lady had a 2 minute video showing how she made them and BAM! It hit me and I realized how to do it and where I went wrong. A big issue was that the icing wasn't thick enough and the other big issue was....I was holding the tip upside down. Those two things will make a big difference. So last night I got out the left over yellow icing and added flour (I ran out of powered sugar) to make it thick and well they turned out really good! So my friend and I are going to do one more class together before our real class starts on July 9th at Hobby Lobby. They only charge $17.50 for 4 classes and they are giving us a $15 gift card to use on cake products...what a deal! We skipped Course I because the DVD taught us everything they would teach us in Course I which is why I have to practice because I don't want to look like we skipped Course I. I'm making my best friend's bridal shower cakes so they have to be perfect...I have a while to get good at it. Here are pictures below and keep in mind it was our first time & we were just doodling on it. The big green blob was us practicing the grass look with a particular tip. The roses were done last night...practice makes perfect.