The Little Fire Engine That Could

This cake was for my littlest boy, who turned two back in February (this is how behind I am with my blog!)  He was obsessed with fire trucks for a few months, and I knew a fire engine cake would absolutely thrill him.  I just about didn't do it since I had no idea how to go about carving a fire engine. But after searching on the internet for awhile and finding a really simple way to stack and carve the cakes, it all came together in my head.  Getting my head around the cake is half the battle!

After stacking, carving and covering the cakes, my DH and I worked on the decorating together.  It was a lot more fun to do it together, and my DH had all sorts of ideas how to make the cake special with some cute details.  He kept asking if he was taking over my cake, but I couldn't have been more thankful for his help!

The last little detail we added was our little boy's name written with the hose.  I rolled that hose so many times!  The fondant kept on drying and cracking each time we tried to write his name.  I'm glad we persevered, though.  It just adds so much to the cake.

Our son was a little overwhelmed with all the people, so didn't show terribly much emotion during his party.  However when the cake came out, his eyes got just a little wider.  I think he approved.  I love making these cakes for my kids. 

Speaking of kids, we'll be welcoming a third addition to our family this Fall!  Hopefully early this coming October!  Sadly this pregnant body is just in no shape to create cakes so I am taking a break.  It's really hard on the back to hover over a cake for hours on end.  Not to mention the fact that I've got two little boys to run after!  I've got a few more cakes to blog about that I completed earlier this year, and then it will just be a post here and there about cakes I create for my kids. 

Can we build it? Yes we can!

No, not Bob the Builder, but this cake makes me think Bob the Builder with all the construction going on! This was the first cake where I used plastic toys on top. I like it! It really works well with the whole construction theme.

I looked around for awhile for some inspiration for this cake. The only thing that was super cute was a cake decorated to look like a large chunk of cake was being taken out by a backhoe. The backhoe I had to use was pretty small, so my DH suggested cutting a hole into the middle of the cake to make it look like it was digging. I loved that idea! So I cut the hole, smeared in some buttercream and pressed in some oreo crumbs to make it look like dirt. I also put a little piping gel onto the hoe of the backhoe in order to dirty it with more oreo crumbs. My DH also gave me the idea of piling a mound of piping gel beside the backhoe and cover it with crumbs. It worked beautifully and won't just fly off the cake with the slightest bit of wind. Even though I've got two boys, I'm not terribly familiar with how all the construction vehicles work together. My DH is responsible for the placement of all the machinery on the cake. I'm so thankful for his input!

Once I had most of the elements on the cake, it was all looking a bit brown, so I added a strip of grass beside the road, and the colorful chocolate rocks in the dump truck and beside the front end loader are such a fun addition.

The last element was David's name being pushed in with the excavator. I love that part! I added some traffic cones and ribbon around the bottom to give a little dimension and called it good.

Pretty Purse

I love this cake. Plain and simple, I love it. I made it for a beautiful little girl who turned four this past Christmas. Her mom is a very dear and wonderful friend of mine, and I love that I get to make cakes for her daughters. I get to play with pink fondant and I'm usually afforded quite a bit of creative control. I also got to cheat on this cake and not put it on a cake board. Somehow not having to decorate a cake board made the process seem so much faster!

I started out with a rectangle cake which I cut into three equal pieces and stacked with buttercream in between the layers. I wanted to keep as much cake in tact as possible, so did as little carving as I could to achieve a purse shape. Unfortunately the fondant went on horribly (I had a little boy run to my legs and want to be picked up in the middle of covering the cake, which was not helping matters) but the white band detail on the bottom really adds something and hides the puckers. I made the flowers by pressing fondant in a silicon mould. These type of moulds are great since you get so much detail. This was the first time I had used this mould, and I love these little flowers! To make the butterfly, I just cut out a butterfly shape with a cookie cutter and sort of moulded the wings how I wanted them to look. After all the details dried, I dusted all them with white pearl dust to make them pop. The pearls were just a little added sweetness and are supposed to look a like the path the butterfly has flown from the flowers to the clasp of the purse.

I used gum paste to make the handle, which dries faster and harder than fondant so you're able to make these type of details without the fear of them drooping or falling over. It's also very light, so easy to adhere onto the cake.

After finishing I phoned my friend to describe what I had done. I was worried that it was too simple. I love simple and clean, unfussy design, but not everyone shares that same esthetic. After describing it to her I told her that if I had a daughter and this cake was for her, I would stop decorating now, and leave it. That was all she needed to hear. Thankfully she loved it, and most importantly her daughter loved it, too.

Vrooom!

This cake was for a friend of mind who's son was turning two. This was my second car cake and it was really nice to do a repeat of a shaped cake. We decided that it would be easiest to use the car pan and decorate it like a race car. I think this pan makes a really cute Herbie-like kind of car, and used that car as my inspiration while decorating. I kept the cake board pretty simple with a race track and a few chocolate rocks here and there as to not take away from the car.

It was fun to decorate and when I asked how her son had enjoyed her cake, she said he had thought it was a real toy car! That's exactly what I was going for. Love making cakes for these little people. They're always so amazed and excited.

BATMAN!

This cake looks deceivingly simple but was anything but. Once again I made the mistake of not researching a design before agreeing to it. Even if I had, I would have said "yes" to this cake, but still...I had no idea what I was in store for when I started. You think...oval...yeah, that's simple. And an outline of a bat...yeah, that's simple. Um...nope, not exactly. You see, pans do not come in an oval shape, and I only have a certain size of rectangle pan. Thankfully I have a perfectionist husband who enlarged and traced both the oval and bat to scale and encouraged me all along that it could be nearly perfect.

It ended up that I could piece together cake to make a true oval, which is a lot trickier to make out of a rectangle than I originally thought. You see, in some ways it's easier to carve an abstract shape than to create a symmetrical shape since the abstract leaves room for interpretation and even an ounce of imperfection.

For the bat, I used the paper template that my DH had made for me and by the third or fourth try, got it just right. I loved it when it came together, but the journey there was quite the learning experience!

Dinosaur Party

This summer, a my dear friend, C, really wanted to make her son an amazing birthday cake. Her son was turning two and loves dinosaurs. So the cake design was obvious. A dinosaur. She found a design online and phoned me to see if I could help her make this dream cake a reality.

She started out by borrowing my pans to make the base, which is an 8 inch double layer round cake and the dinosaur's body, made from half of a ball pan. We then set up an evening to me to come and show her how to drape the cake in fondant. That first evening we got both cakes draped and started forming the dinosaur's neck out of rice cereal treats. The next morning I went back and helped with the decorating. We cut out leaves to go around the base of the cake and made a cute tail and feet. C created the face, and I love it. It's the best part of that dinosaur and makes him super cute. A few more details of spots and spikes down the back, rocks to make it look complete and we were finished. It was fun to work together, and I do believe that C will be creating amazing cakes every birthday for her wonderful son!

Ladybug's Picnic

This past summer my oldest son turned four. Four! I can't believe it! I remember when he was born that kindergarten seemed worlds away. And now it will be here in a year's time. Birthdays always seem to remind me of how quickly time passes by and how important it is to cherish each moment. I forget this too often. I love how we make a big deal of each birthday at our house. Lots of friends, family, food and of course a special cake chosen by the birthday boy. O loves to think about what kind of birthday cake he'll have all year. He's already got his fifth birthday cake picked out!

So this year, O's cake of choice was a ladybug. He loves all things ladybug so this was a natural choice. He originally wanted another ball, but after I told him I could make him a ladybug...well...there was nothing to top that! He was excited. The crazy thing is, this cake just about didn't happen. I got really sick the week before his birthday and was confined to my bed the day I was to begin decorating his cake. Thankfully my sister was willing and able to come over the day before the party so I could quickly make this cake happen. I'm not sure I could have pulled it off without her help.

The cake design is pretty simple with the base being an 8 inch double layer cake and the ladybug body being half a ball pan. I covered the base with leaves for the ladybug to sit on and made her some fondant feet. To make the ladybug head, I mixed together some extra cake and buttercream to make a cake ball. I chilled the ball so it would be easier to cover with fondant. I love how it turned out. So cute!

O had also wanted a butterfly somewhere on the cake, but I didn't have a butterfly cutter, and my molding skills do not apparently extend to "butterfly" so in the end, just the caterpillar made it on the board. Oh well. Can't do it all! I have to constantly remind myself of that. O loved the cake, and had a blast at his party. I'm so thankful for all the friends and family we have who lavish love on our kids not only on their birthdays, but all year round. We are blessed!

An Early Birthday

This summer my brother-in-law got married and most of the Hoeppner clan came out for the festivities. It was a lot of fun, and a gorgeous wedding! In the weeks leading up to the wedding my cousin and I were emailing back and forth making plans for the days leading up to the wedding. She asked if I could possibly make her mom a birthday cake. Mind you it would be early, since her birthday is in September, but what better time to celebrate when the entire family is together in one spot, which rarely happens! I was so happy to make this cake. I love our dear Aunt Myrt and jumped at the chance to do something for her. She is one of the most generous and kind-hearted people we know, and she deserves all the recognition in the world!

So I was excited. Until I realized I had no inspiration. I wanted it to be perfect, and as such I was paralyzed to think of anything. A day or two before I had to start decorating I phoned my cousin and begged her to tell me what she really wanted and what her mom would truly love. We decided on blue and green daisies, since those are Aunt Myrt's favorite colors and flower. So, I went to work making a few three dimensional daisies, but it just wasn't working for me. So I started to think about what kind of person Aunt Myrt is, and a few words came to mind, which were elegant and not at all fussy. So instead of the large daisies which were looking a little out of place and juvenile on this cake, I decided to make a few tiny blue daisies and place them around a vine-inspired design. The resulting effect, I believe is elegant and not fussy. I love it when a cake can reflect a person, and I do beleive this one did.


The cake was a complete surprise to Aunt Myrt, which was the best part. Of course she wasn't expecting a birthday cake a month in advance! It was a lot of fun, and I'm so glad I got the opportunity to do this. This part of our family lives too far away to visit on any kind of regular basis. It was amazing to spend time with them, catching up and celebrating C and J as they walked down the isle! Such good memories!

Cake charms...or a charming cake?

So this was my first experience using cake charms.  And yes, there is such a thing!  They are they little jewels that can be hung on the end of a cake wire to give a cake a kind of different and funky look.  I kind of like them!  Originally I was going to go super simple with this cake and just do pink fondant with brown ribbon and wires and cake charms.  I did that, and felt like it was missing something.  So enter the circles.  I might have gone a little crazy with the circles, but oh well..it's still cute.

This cake happened to be a farewell cake for one of Nathan's coworkers, and she loved it.  Mission accomplished! 

A Sweet Little Smash Cake

I apologize for the lapse in time between posts. It's been such a busy summer and I haven't found the time to keep up with this blog! As such, I am a few cakes behind. Hopefully I'll be able to get them on here in the next few weeks!

So this cake I did for a good friend of mine, Joanne, who has a great eye and talent for photography and has a photography business called, Taken {photography by joanne}. Check out her blog here.

Joanne emailed me one day back at the end of June with the request for a smash cake for one of her clients, and of course I jumped at the chance! She had a picture that she sent me with all these cute little circles. I stayed as true to the original picture as possible, just changing up a few things to suite the sweet little guy that had the pleasure of smashing this cake! Of course I added a "G" to reflect his name, and then we decided on different shades of blue for the circles. It was fun and simple to do. I loved how it turned out and love how these photos turned out! Joanne is one talented lady!

Smash cakes are some of the most fun cakes to make since the resulting pictures are so dramatic! I love it when babies really get into destroying the cake, and this little one didn't disappoint!

Little Antique Clutch

This past weekend I threw a bridal shower for my sister-in-law-to-be! Of course I had to make a cake for her, and this one was so much fun. I've been wanting to make a purse cake, and since C & J's wedding has an antique theme, I figured an antique clutch was the perfect cake for this celebration. The whole shower was a tea party, complete with scones, Devonshire cream, beautiful antique tea cups and plates. Super girly and fun!

I had originally found an antique clutch cake online that I really liked and was hoping to make. I started out carving that particular shape (it was more rectangular), but ended carving more of an oval. Of course I panicked. That just has to happen at least once in a cake-making experience. But once I stood back and re-thought my cake strategy, I realized that this was now my design, not someone's that I was trying to re-create. This afforded some sort of freedom for the rest of the carving process. So I visualized a new cake...my cake...and got excited once again.

After carving, then came covering the cake in buttercream and fondant. I have found that Gum Tex and cornstarch are my new best friends when covering a cake in fondant during the summer. I used to struggle so much with soft fondant, and now by adding Gum Tex to the fondant and rolling it out with a combination of icing sugar and cornstarch I don't get all the pulling and stretching that result in stretch marks (yes, cakes can have stretch marks) and cracks. Covering cakes has become much less stressful. Doesn't mean it always goes amazingly well, but it sure is going better than it used to for me!

The flower and pearls were so much fun to design and I love how simple and monochromatic the whole cake turned out. I had a leftover rose from the cake I had made for my mom's birthday last week, so I put that on the cake board as just a last finishing touch. I love it.


The great thing was that the cake was just as much fun to eat as it was to stare at. Of course this was C's favorite...chocolate cake with peanut butter filling. Yum. My favorite, too. It was such a pleasure to do this for C. She's so wonderful, and I'm so excited for her to be my sister-in-law!

Roses are Red...

Back when I was taking my fondant class and had to make 40 fondant roses for one practice cake, I swore I would never make another rose. Not that they are difficult by any stretch of the imagination...just labor intensive. And they have to be done over a couple of days. No banging these puppies out in a few minutes!

When my mom saw pictures of that cake with the 40 roses she gasped and declared that was the most beautiful cake that I had ever done (I couldn't agree since it was very much a practice cake, but I do agree that the roses are pretty). She has bugged me ever since to make her a cake with roses.

So this weekend was her birthday and I made her a cake with roses. My mom's favorite flavor of cake is lemon, so this was a 6 inch lemon cake with vanilla Swiss Meringue buttercream filling. I really love how simple and pretty this cake turned out. My mom loved it too! She was so surprised when she opened the cake box! It was a lot of fun to make her something that I knew she would really love.

A Smashing Good Time!

It's a little late in coming since L turned one at the end of February, but these pictures were well worth waiting for! I love that we did this smash cake photo shoot with our little man! A million "thanks" to our dear friend, Cory Loewen, who is passionate about taking photos and was kind enough to come and take these amazing pictures of our baby demolishing a cute little cake!

Pink and Pearly

A dear friend of mine asked if I could make a cake for a bridal shower she was organizing for her sister-in-law to-be. She showed me a napkin with the picture of the cake she wanted and I figured this would be the easiest cake design ever! Unfortunately that was not the correct assumption. This is one of those times were I was humbled by a cake. The colors were easy enough to match, but the issue came in when I was doing the pearl swags along the sides. I kept wondering why it was looking so strange...

First off I realized that the pearl sprinkles that I was using were all sorts of different sizes, and the larger pearls were making the swags look really messy. I remedied that by picking off all the larger pearls and replacing them with smaller ones. It was a time-consuming job, but well worth the effort. It was looking better, but still unfinished in some sort of way.

My DH and I kept looking at the picture of the cake and then at the cake not understanding what the issue was. Then it hit us...in the picture you couldn't see where the pearls start on each tier, since it's a two dimensional image. This means there was no reference on the cake for where the pearls were attached. So after a bit of head-scratching (and a whole lot fear that this was just going to be a less-than-beautiful cake) I thought little flowers would be cute and give the pearls some reference. The great thing was that there were these exact cute little flowers floating around the cake on the napkin. The flowers on the napkin were pink and blue, but I thought that those colors would make the cake too much like a little girl's cake. Since this was for a bridal shower, the slightly more sophisticated brown won out. Thankfully, my friend was just as excited about this change as I was and loved the cake.


So I learned a valuable lesson through this experience. That a two dimensional image does not always translate well into a three dimensional cake. Who would have thought?! Next time I think to myself "wow, that will be super-easy!" I am going to think twice, deconstruct each part of the cake into steps, and visualize how it's going to look. I do that with any complex cake I am considering, so I need to do it with the so-called "easy" cakes as well. Good lesson!

Airplane Cake!

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So I took a little trip down memory lane today and read some old blog posts. I honestly can hardly believe the cake I did this weekend in light of how intimidated I felt only one year ago about carving and constructing a cake like this. Yes, it's been one year since I took that wonderful fondant cake decorating course. I never in a million years imagined myself doing cakes such as this one at that time.

I am proud of this cake, and for more reasons than just the carving and decorating. You see, I still tend to approach cakes somewhat timidly and wonder each time if "this will be the one that really flops". I was thankful it wasn't this one for two reasons. First because I really wanted to pull it off, but second, and most important...this cake was for one of my son's very good friends, who is also our neighbor. We have the best neighbors in the world, and I loved doing this for them!


So onto the cake! I began conceptualizing this cake a few weeks before the party...looking online for sample cakes from which to take inspiration as well as trying to deconstruct the entire cake into steps in order that my cake making days might go smoothly. This is one of the most important steps for me. I can have no confidence going into a decorating day if I don't have a very clear idea of each thing I need to accomplish. So I made templates, and talked it over with my husband, who always has really good ideas and is quite the perfectionist (he pushes me to do better and go farther, which, although at times frustrating, is exactly what I need). My neighbors had also left all the creative work to me, so I had full reigns on this one! (scary!)

The first day of decorating came and I carved out a rough airplane shape with my template and stacked my cakes. Then all I had before me was just a monstrous block of cake. Oh my... I wondered once again what I had gotten myself into and how this very "un-airplane" looking thing was going to turn into a fabulous airplane cake! So it was with a pounding heart that I dove into that cake and started shaving away. Somewhere in there I got into a groove and my excitement mounted. This thing was actually starting to look like an airplane! YAY! I kept carving and about an hour and a half later, the shape was done and looked quite fabulous to me! I covered the cake in fondant, decorated the cake board, and called it a night.

The next day I made the wings and tail out of foam core (I tried making the wings out of gumpaste, but they were too thin and light for the size of airplane, so I went with foam core because it's thicker, but very light and wouldn't pull down on the cake) and covered them in fondant. I decorated the airplane, and started wondering how big those engines were going to have to be in order for them to hold up the wings. I went back and forth between a few different ideas, but in the end I decided to cover foil wrapped chocolates in gumpaste (cuts down on the amount of gumpaste needed, and since gumpaste is not terribly palatable, gives a fun treat inside the engines for the kids). After painting on some pearl dust I was ready to call it done. It had been a very long day of decorating and there comes a point where it just needs to be finished! But my husband had other ideas. He wasn't convinced the engines were quite right, yet, so he decided to give them a little more realistic look with a black insert and knob in the centre. I was so happy he helped me with this detail. They look amazing and really do add to the cake as a whole.

After all this it was time to assemble the cake! The wings went on and we were excited (my husband helps me with all these little picky details...he's just the best!) and then after the tail went on I stood back, and honestly couldn't believe I had made that cake. It looked just like an airplane!


Before starting the cake I had no idea how big the airplane would end up being. I was afraid it wouldn't be enough cake for everyone at the party, so since I was completing a cupcake order for Barely Burnt Cookies and More (a fun little cupcake and cookie "non-business" that my sister and I started not too long ago...check out our blog here) I offered to include chocolate cupcakes (the airplane was vanilla cake with white chocolate peppermint filling) just so there would be enough cake...and it also added an extra flavor for people to choose from. I had found a fun airplane cookie cutter and it made for a perfect fondant cupcake topper.


So this was a fun one. It was a lot of work, but it was worth it!

Dots and Daisies

Spring has sprung! Well...not really. Perhaps just in my cake world it has. The forecast for flurries today would suggest our Manitoba "Spring" is more than just a little chilly.

It was once again Spring in my kitchen this weekend, though! This was such a fun cake to decorate! From the moment that this wonderful customer sent me a picture of an inspiration cake for her daughter's graduation celebration, I was excited. I had never made daisies like this before, and have always wanted to try, since I think they look so adorable. I love how they look on the cake. I love the bright colors, the dots...I love pretty much everything about this cake, right down to the flavor combination they choose. The bottom tier was lemon cake with lime buttercream filling, the middle was chocolate cake with white chocolate peppermint filling and the top tier was vanilla with lemon buttercream filling. Really tasty combinations, and I have fallen in love with lime swiss meringue buttercream. Wow, is that ever yummy!


The only downside on this cake is that I wasn't on time. I am thankful for my customer who was so gracious to wait for me to finish each detail on the cake. Making cakes with two little ones around can be difficult, and this week and weekend it seemed downright impossible.

In the end, my customer was really happy, and I've been told that her daughter loved it as well!

That same day we had a "smash cake" photo shoot with our littlest guy. It's a little late (his birthday was in February) but it was so much fun and I'm glad we did it. So it was the weekend of cake. Stay tuned in the next few weeks for some action shots of a little cake being destroyed by a little guy. I'm exited to see the pictures, myself!