Rub-a-dub-dub

Happy Birthday to my littlest guy! I can't believe my baby boy is one year old!

Of course I had to make my son a super-cute cake for his first birthday, so after much thought and searching online for a fun cake, I settled on a bathtub. Random, I know! I happen to know from experience that the only birthday cake I get to choose is the first one. All subsequent birthday cakes get to be chosen by the birthday boy since by the age of two they've got all sorts of ideas and opinions as to how a cake should look. At least my eldest son does! He's got his next two birthday cakes planned already!

I was asked several times at the party how long it took me to make this cake. I would guess somewhere between 10 and 15 hours with all the planning, baking and decorating. I haven't done many carved cakes. Only one, actually, so this cake took a major amount of planning on my part so I would have the confidence to carve a perfect (or near perfect) shape.

The carving went really well. Much better than I had expected it to go. I had a few issues while covering the cake with fondant, but in the end realized that there is a better and easier way to cover cakes than I had learned in my class. We'll see if it really is easier the next time I do a cake! After I finished carving I also realized how easy this cake could turn into a Noah's Ark! I'll have to keep that one in mind for a future birthday just in case one of the boys needs help deciding on a cake!

The bathtub on it's own was pretty cute, but for me what really makes it is the flooring. I love how the checkerboard floor turned out. After the flooring was in place I got more and more excited with each additional detail . The day before the party I spent the evening making the taps and faucet, ducks and a little cartoon figure of my baby. Just before the party I put all the elements together, adding the wires with splashes on the ends. Those splashes put the cake over the top!



This was also my first time using gum paste (the faucet was made from gum paste). For some reason I have been intimidated to work with gum past up until now. I'm looking forward to doing some more experimenting with it in the future.



So even though my son was oblivious to what was going on, we had a blast watching him enjoy his first taste of cake! Looking forward to many, many more birthdays and cakes in the future. I love making these cakes for my kids!

Oh, and just in case you were unsure if this was really cake, here's a picture of the cake after we took out the first slice for the Birthday Boy! It was a lot of fun to have the pleasure of cutting the cake and seeing everyone enjoy it! This particular cake was four layers of rich homemade chocolate cake with Swiss Meringue Buttercream frosting. I have to say...it was tasty!

Snowy Wedding

I had the privilege of making a cake for my cousin's wedding last month! This was my first wedding cake and I was given quite a bit of creative license, which was awesome and scary all at the same time. She just wanted a small cutting cake since they were already having a served dessert. So this was an 8" bottom tier with a 4" top.

After we decided that the theme of the cake would be "snowflakes", I started to think about how to make snowflakes that look real...not just like cut-outs. I started searching online, and came across these incredibly detailed snowflake moulds that could be used with fondant. Each fondant snowflake was pressed into individual moulds and frozen in order to maintain the incredible detail of the delicate flakes. Then the snowflakes were dried so they could be painted silver before being adhered to the cake. The cake was finished with silver balls and dark purple ribbon (silver, white and dark purple were her wedding colors...beautiful combination). Everything went fairly well, except for a few fondant challenges, but nothing that couldn't be overcome with a little extra work.

Since the cake couldn't be stacked before delivery I couldn't get any great pictures. My camera is just a little point-and-shoot and the dim lighting of the reception hall made for some terrible pictures (sure made for an incredible ambiance, though). Ends up that I was lucky enough to meet the talented Becky Radtke, who was photographing the wedding with b2 Photography. She graciously agreed to send me some pictures of the cake! I'm so thrilled with these pictures! Just so happens she's also launching a new Photography business, Jack and Ruby Photography. Check out her websites! Thanks so much, Becky!

You'll also notice some of the pictures have cupcakes. My sister and I make yummy homemade cupcakes and cookies with our little label, Barely Burnt Cookies and More! My sister made mini cupcakes topped with shimmery white chocolate snowflakes. Check out our blog here!




All in all, this was a great experience. And creatively speaking, I feel like I've found a bit of a groove. I'm learning so much with each cake, and am thankful for each opportunity to do so!

Cute Little Birthday Cake

I made this cute little 6" heart cake for my wonderful friend, Becky, for her birthday. She was so thrilled that she declared that she must go home and photograph it before anyone ate it! This is the same talented Photographer friend that has photographed one of my cakes before...take a look at her website here. The photos you see here are all hers! Thanks, Becky, for allowing me to use your beautiful pictures!

This was the most stress-free cake experience that I've had to date! This was such a fun cake to make!

An Elegant Farewell

Once again my husband, N's, boss asked if I could make a farewell cake for someone leaving the office. I asked N a few questions about what design and flavor she would like, but he wasn't entirely certain what were her favorites. Since this request was coming just before Christmas with the cake due the day after N was to return to work, there was no time for detective work. I had met this co-worker of N's on a couple of occasions and although I did not know her well, she had struck me as an elegant person. So this is what kept in mind as I started conceptualizing the cake. This was the first time where I had all creative control on a cake, which was great, but also intimidating for me, so I went online in search of an inspiration cake and found something beautiful. I wasn't hoping to copy it exactly but just simply take inspiration from the cake's colors and lines. It made me very excited.

N and I decided that a small 2 tier cake would be best since we were not sure if her favorite cake flavor was chocolate or vanilla. This also gave me the opportunity to try out some new recipes. The bottom tier is an incredibly moist chocolate cake. I am in love with this new recipe. And the top tier is vanilla. I am usually not a fan of vanilla cake, but this cake is moist, fluffy and very tasty.

Decorating day came and I was just starting to recover from a terrible cold. I was still excited to decorate, but was hoping that it would go relatively quickly. In my head I was very organized and figured that things would go off without a hitch. Man, was I ever wrong! I've never had so much trouble with a cake before!

First off my buttercream separated. If you've read previous posts, this has happened to me once before so I knew I was in for a hard time covering the cakes. In hindsight I should have made another batch, but eventually I got the cakes covered in buttercream. (this type of buttercream can still be eaten and tastes very good once separated, as it does not become soupy, just hard to spread)

Next was the fondant. Since the buttercream was a bit lumpy the fondant went on terribly. There were air bubbles everywhere! I went to work popping the bubbles, knowing that the decoration on the cake would cover any small pin holes, but I still wasn't satisfied. I smoothed and smoothed...stood back and just about ripped all the fondant off and started again. After the cakes stood for a bit they looked quite a bit better, so I just left it. But I was starting to feel like it was a loosing battle against this cake.

So it was with discouragement that I started decorating. The resulting design was looking okay, but not amazing. I had lost any previous inspiration for this cake and was just being random. I took a break while I put my boys down for a nap and thought about what I had originally wanted this cake to look like. Went downstairs, studied my inspiration cake for awhile and ripped off all the fondant decorations (not the fondant base). After putting the first few new strips of fondant on I felt like the cake was going to have some potential. I kept going and started to get very excited. I was loving the colors and how the cake was flowing and elegant which was exactly what I wanted. I debated for awhile putting the silver ball details on, but figured that they added some dimension and a bit of shine. I couldn't believe how much I was loving it! Mind you it was 8 hours later, but I had conquered the cake!

Before I did this cake I had talked with a very close friend and amazing photographer, Rebecca Croft Photographer to see if she would be willing to take some photos if the cake turned out nicely. So after my marathon cake decorating day I gave her a call and she popped over for a little cake photoshoot. The pictures you see in this post as well as my blog header are all her photos. Thanks Becky!

Hands down this is my favorite cake. I mean, I love them all...but this one has a special place in my heart. Partly because I fought with it and won, but also because this is the cake that says "Julia". The design, although inspired by another cake came from within, which felt incredible.

I'm a Little Teapot

So much pink! I was very excited to make such a pink cake. A good friend asked if I would consider making a three dimensional teapot cake for her daughter's third birthday this past December. I needed to do just a bit of research before saying "yes" to this cake, since I had heard that covering a sphere with fondant can be tricky. I needed to be sure I could pull it off.

After researching a little, I realized that it probably wouldn't be that hard, and agreed to the cake. We went into planning mode and decided on two shades of pink with some simple flowers.

The day came to cover the cake. It went fairly well...except for the moment when I was holding the cake upside down in my hands yelling for my husband to come help me! We managed to get the cake upright and after smoothing out the fondant I was very happy with how it covered. I was so excited to get decorating that I sat at the table that entire evening, playing with pink fondant coming up with a few extra cute details to the cake.

The next day I made rice cereal treats and molded the handle and spout. The spout was a little tricky, but the handle came together quite easily. I covered them in fondant and went to work adhering them with piping gel and toothpicks. The handle was pretty easy to place, but that spout was giving me some trouble. I had placed it too low and was nervous to move it higher. In the end, I did move it higher, and was so glad I risked it.

I spent the rest of that evening placing the flowers and finishing the cake with a little pearl dust. I was truly happy to see the finished product. The hours of planning and work were worth it, for sure!

I had also made 24 mini cupcakes with pink icing and flower fondant toppers to go with this cake. They looked absolutely adorable together. My son and I were lucky enough to attend this birthday party and sample the cake and cupcakes. So tasty! The birthday girl was also thrilled with her own little teapot!



This is the last of my "past cakes" series! I have three cakes that I've just done this January to share with you in the next couple of weeks. I do believe they are some of my best work so far. I feel as though I have come really far in my creative journey these past months!

The Barnyard Cake

I have to say...I loved making this cake! All the little farm animals were so incredibly fun to make. Thanks to my friend, C, for doing this cake with me!

It all started when C and I were talking about cakes one day this past Fall. She expressed some interest in learning how to use fondant, so I offered to do a cake with her for her baby's first birthday and show her a bit about working with fondant. My sister had made this cake a few months before and it had turned out so amazingly, I wanted to try my hand at it. Since C didn't have much of a preference for a theme, I showed her a picture of this kind of cake and she said that sounded good to her! So we planned to get together one night to drape and decorate the cake just before her daughters birthday this past November.

That week I spent a few evenings making all the little farm animals so they would have a bit of a chance to dry. I started molding animals and realized how much fun I was having! The ladybugs were my favorite. They were so cute and terribly fun to make...even though they were so small. I finished the cows, pigs, sheep, ducks and ladybugs and set them aside to dry for a few days so they would be a bit easier to put on the cake.


C came over the night before the party and we decorated late into the evening. She took charge of the top tier, covering it in fondant and putting the fence on. She did a fabulous job! We then figured out where each of the animals was going to go and placed them on the cake with toothpicks and piping gel (the cake-makers glue). C went to work cutting out flowers and I made the pond on the top of the cake. After a quick little bit of buttercream around the cakes for some grass (I had lent out my grass icing tip, so we improvised on that one) and we were finished. We were so proud of our work!


This was my favorite cake to make so far. I absolutely loved how it turned out and everything went so smoothly!

C's daughter seemed to love the cake (at least the picture she sent of her daughter munching on a pig suggested she was having a good time with it!) And all the kids at the party had fun with it, too. That's the best part of making cakes...seeing people enjoy it.

Dee Dee Doodlebop

So this past September a friend asked if I would be able to make a Dee Dee Doodlebop cake for her daughter's fourth birthday. My first question was "Dee Dee who?" But I agreed and asked what she would like me to do. She said that her daughter really wanted a cake with Dee Dee Doodlebop's face on it.

After I Googled and You Tubed the Doodlebops, I was not confident that I could pull off this face on a cake. Especially a face that was human and had only a little cartoon-like quality. Creating a likeness of a character is a difficult thing to do. Too many times characters like this look nothing like what they are supposed to, and this is what I was afraid of. So I asked my friend if we could do something else, and she gave me a few other ideas, but I kept thinking about ways that I might be able to make that face. It is after all what her daughter wanted.

I remember not being able to sleep well that night because I was thinking so much about how I could make this face! I decided that I could probably pipe it on the cake using a gel transfer (the image is traced onto wax paper using clear gel and then transferred directly onto the cake where the outline can be piped in icing) and told my friend I would give it a try. So we decided that the face would go on an 8" purple top tier that was sitting offset on a 10" pink cake. Around the bottom tier would be a keyboard (Dee Dee is the band keyboard player).

During the planning stage of this cake I had the opportunity to talk with a fellow cake maker and she asked if I had considered doing a buttercream transfer. She explained that the image would be traced in layers with buttercream and frozen so the buttercream could be peeled off the wax paper and be placed onto the cake. This seemed way too complicated, but I decided to research this technique to see if it might be a better option. It was. Less room for failure with this type of transfer since I could actually practice!

If I'm honest, I'm not sure I love how the face turned out, but it sure looks better than I had ever imagined! I do love the bouffant (molded out of cereal treats and covered in fondant) and headband, and really like the way the keyboard turned out. The face isn't perfect, but it sort of looks like Dee Dee, and my friends little girl loved it. And that's really what matters!