The Blue Ocean

This cake was so much fun! I made this cake for one of my sons best friends. He has quite a few BEST friends. This best friend lives across the street from us and happened to be outside when I was taking the McDonald's cake out to the car. He was so excited about that cake, that his one request to his mom was that I make his birthday cake every year for the rest of his life. What an honor, he is a great kid!
Right before his party he came over to see the cake. He said he loved it and looked at every piece on the cake. He looked at the sugar coral and exclaimed, "Wow is that Fire Coral!" "Ummmm, yes, I guess it is" I said. I have never heard of fire coral before but hey it looked like it to me. We chatted for a few minutes, then he looked right at me and said, "I was thinking next year you could do a space shuttle with an astronaut!"



Happy Birthday Christian!!!


The one thing I really liked about this cake is that everything is edible! The fish, sea shells and star fish are all done in chocolate. Then I hand brushed each with luster dust to give them shine and depth.

The sharks and scuba diver are made out of fondant. I thought about using gum paste, but I knew those pieces would be the first things eaten and I wanted them to taste good too. Plus, gum paste may be edible, but it feels like a rock in my tummy, and that's no fun for a kid on his birthday.





The two kinds of coral are my favorite part of the cake! The "Fire Coral" is made with Isomalt. I just dyed it different colors and poured small amounts over buckets of ice. It is really easy to do, I was surprised how easy. I am happy to help if anyone out there has questions:)

The white coral was really fun too. I happened to find a recipe for it and gave it a try. Up close you can see that it is covered in tiny holes and looks and feels like real coral. It is edible too and tastes really good.

I love trying new techniques and am grateful to good friends and their kids who let me practice on their cakes so that I can improve and bring them happiness too!

Memories

I love baking cakes! I know you could probably guess that since this is a cake blog. But its not just the finished product, or the finished cake that I love. It's the process of baking the cake. Every time I start sifting flour and measuring sugar. Every time I fill the pans with fluffy batter I think of my Grandma. I can hear her reminding me to tap the pans on the counter to get out the air bubbles, or see her standing next to me as I weigh my pans to make sure there is an equal amount of batter in each pan before I cook them. I see her sitting at her blue table in the kitchen telling me where the pure vanilla is for the hundredth time. I think of her as a younger grandma, as I sit as a young child and watch in fascination as the makes perfect rose after perfect rose.

I think of sitting with her as I try again and again to make a rose, she is 85 in this memory and legally blind, but I go visit her every week. I take her cookie dough already made into balls and frozen so Grandma can always have fresh baked cookies to share with anyone that comes to visit. Grandma doesn't want anyone to go home empty handed. Those little cookies mean so much to her. And in return, although blind and home bound, she sits patiently with me, my cute little son playing on the floor at my feet and we practice roses, flowers and piping. Grandma can see out the sides of her eyes if it is close enough. So I work, then I hand her my rose nail with my awkward rose on top. Grandma puts it so close to her eyes I am worried she will get frosting on her face. She smiles at me and says "That is a little better, let me show you again." I lead her hand to the center of the nail and she proceeds to make a perfect rose. I smile and try again.

I looked forward to our time together. We would sit and talk, eat lunch together, I would clean her house and she would play as best she could with my little boy. I miss my Grandma and I love feeling so close to her each time I bake a cake.

Big Mac, Fries, and a Coke

Happy 30th Brian!

I have had so much fun making this cake and I have learned so much. This cake was for some very good friends of ours. Brian is turning 30 this year, and his wife Devynn asked me to surprise him with this cake. It was awesome, she set up the whole thing and he had no idea that it was even happening. The Surprise party was at The Cheesecake Factory and they were kind enough to let us bring in our own cake. (Although it did seem a little crazy to take a cake into my favorite restaurant with the best desserts in the world!)

It was great though, everyone was so kind and complementary, other customers were stopping to take pictures of the cake. Even the chefs were coming up and checking out the cake! I think someone even asked if I was single! Wow, that hasn't happened in a while!

So... Happy Birthday Brian! I hope you had a wonderful and surprising birthday!

Now, about the cake. The cake itself is Vanilla with Almond Buttercream and fresh raspberries. The cakes are covered in fondant. The cheese and onions are fondant and the lettuce is gum paste. The hamburger patties are cocoa Krispies. ( Rice Krispies treats)

The fries are my favorite part of the cake. I decided to use white modeling chocolate because it tastes much better then fondant, but is just as easy to use. I kept trying to come up with ways to shape the fries, until I decided to just make the chocolate look like potatoes and then cut them like I would fries. It worked great and brought back lots of memories of barbecues and making fries with my husband. He makes the best fries EVER!

The cup of coke was also very fun, although you can't see it all that well in these pictures. The ice cubes are made of Isomalt sugar and taste like unflavored lollipops. The "Coke" is piping gel that I tinted brown.

It was so fun to see everyones faces when the looked at the cake. It makes it so fun for me. Thank you to all the kind people at Cheesecakes Factory, especially the head chef (sorry I didn't get your name, I was a little overwhelmed) I have so much to think about and work toward. I truly appreciate your confidence in me.

One of the First

Years ago...well, 9-10 years ago my mom offered for me to make a wedding cake for her friends, daughter. I was happy to try.

This is one of the first wedding cakes I made. My mom helped me and we had a wonderful time making this cake. It took us one day to bake the cakes and another whole day to make the white chocolate curls. We experimented a lot with different tools and getting the chocolate to different temperatures.

I just recently found this picture and thought I would share it. I have great memories of that day, standing in my tiny kitchen that also included our washer and dryer and laughing with my mom and my husband as we worked to figure out how to get those curls on the cake.

Thanks mom for all the things you have taught me and all the time we have spent laughing.

A New Recipe...Chocolate Raspberry Genoise

In the past few days and weeks, though I have not been updating my blog, the wheels in my head have been spinning, turning, creating and imagining. I have been trying to figure out how to approach the cake world.

So far I have been concentrating on decorations and fondant work. I have experimented with frosting and a few cakes, but I have kept it pretty simple until now. My cakes have all been from scratch, but I was thinking I need to take it to the next level.

The problem with that is, what is the next level? So to answer that question, I went to the library and found cake books. Wow! Who new cakes could be so different. I did do a little research before going to the library and found that most professional cake decorators endorse author Rose Levy Beranbaum. She is the author of "The Cake Bible" and "Rose's Heavenly Cakes". She also has authored many other books I plan to purchase or borrow from the library:) But those will come in time.

I have spent the last few nights studying her books, the recipes and especially her tips on how to bake the perfect cake. I always loved chemistry in college, and I new baking was more science then art, but I am in awe of the information stored in these books. I have so much to learn, but I am up to the challenge...and the tasting:)

So on to the cake!

I decided to go with a new kind of cake, one I have never heard of or even knew how to pronounce, but yet I did it. It took me all day today and I had some great help from my son and my daughter. My husband even came in and kept me company while I worked. Finally after 6 hours my creation was complete.

I had made the Moist Chocolate Raspberry Genoise! That is pronounced GEN-WAH. It was intensely chocolaty, the entire cake contained 5 bars of Ghirardelli Chocolate, but also spongy (since it is a sponge cake). I was amazed at how fluffy it was. It almost had the texture of Angel Food Cake.

This cake is also different for me because instead of my regular method...make a cake, slap on the frosting and then decorate, I also had to make a Cocoa Syrup that was brushed on each layer along with an amazing Raspberry Sauce that I made to put in the Ganache Recipe.

I also learned more about liqueurs. Now I am not a drinker, in fact I don't drink at all, but I love going into liquor stores, because I LOVE cool bottles! It just one of those things, they make me happy and the best place to find cool and interesting bottles is of course...liquor stores. This recipe called for Chambord Black Raspberry Liqueur and I was so excited when I saw the bottle, I just had to show you!

Chocolate and raspberries are an amazing combination. I think they were made for each other!

I wish I could share this cake with all of you! And Rose says it tastes better the second day. Yea for tomorrow!

Dirty Martini anyone?

It has been a while since I updated my blog, sorry for the long delay. We have had family visiting a lot this month and we spent 4 days in Disney World. We have had a great time and now we are ready for summer!

On to cakes!

Just as my family came into town, I made this dirty martini cake for a lady turning the BIG 40! And she was celebrating in style! She loves Dirty martinis so she asked for it in cake. The cake was a white cake with almond buttercream icing and covered in fondant. Don't worry I didn't put in Green Olive flavoring! I hope she enjoyed it.

The "40" was covered in edible glitter to make them shiny!

Enjoy!

The Florida Day of Sharing

Yesterday was such a fun day!
I went with a friend to the Florida Day of Sharing Event in Ft. Lauderdale. Through out the day there were sugar art demonstrations on how to make amazing flowers: orchids, poinsettias, and many others. I met some great people and enjoyed getting to know them.

As part of the event anyone could bring a display to share. I decided to try a new technique and take a cake to display.

I decided on this design because it reminded me of some beautiful cupcakes I tried to ship once and they were destroyed during shipping and the poor bride had to scramble to find cupcakes the day before her Engagement party. So this cake is dedicated to Kate and Ryan. Congratulations you guys!

Here is one of the cupcakes before they were shipped.


After the demonstrations, there was a drawing and 9 people were picked to come up in 3 groups and do a Cake Challenge. So guess who got picked, Yep...yours truly!

I was so nervous, I was shaking. I knew the competition was just for fun but to be up there in front of all of those amazing artists and to know they were all watching me was terrifying!

The Cake Competition was 30 minutes and each group was given 2 8in. rounds, some spatulas, a bucket of buttercream icing, one bag and one...count them....ONE tip to try to decorate the cake. Luckily since my brain wasn't working correctly, a bunch of people not in the challenge surrounded our table and started helping us by giving direction.

My teammates were great to work with. I wish I could remember their names now, but I have forgotten them. I was kind of in a frenzy. So we whipped out our supplies and started working. After 15 minutes they told us to stop and that one person from the team had 5 minutes to make a bow out of fondant for the cake. I kept working on the cake while one of my teammate made a beautiful bow.

After the challenge was over we stood around nervously waiting for the results. After a gruelling 5 or so minutes they announced that OUR TEAM had WON!!!! Yea!!! We were so excited and surprised. All three of the cakes were beautiful!

It was so fun to laugh and work with others that enjoy the same passion for the sugar arts. I really enjoyed myself. Thank you to everyone that made the event possible!

Here are a few of the other displays at the Day of Sharing. I did not make these, but thought I would share them with you.

Rock On!!!

I had a fun challenge this week!

I made this cake for a girl turning 16!

She loves music, so we designed a cake that tried to incorporate her love of music. The iPod is made of gumpaste, the guitars are made of royal icing.

The cake was covered in buttercream icing with fondant tiger stripes. On each tiger stripe was the name of some of her favorite music groups and the titles to their songs.

I loved the way this cake turned out! It was fun and very personal, which makes it even better!

Happy Birthday to Me!

So call me a dork or a geek, I am okay with it. This year I decided for my birthday that I would make a cake for myself. Don't worry my husband offered to make my cake or take me anywhere I wanted to go, but I decided I don't really ever get to make a cake I want. I love the cakes I make, but then I always take them to someone else's party.

So this year I made my own Birthday cake! It was actually very fun, and I loved working through the process because I got half way done with the cake and changed my mind about the color scheme.

So my husband and kids decided that I needed 32 candles on my cake, now keep in mind that this cake was very small, only a 6 inch and a 4 inch, so 32 candles is a lot of candles and my 8 year old and 3 year old helped put the candles in. Well one of the candles got pushed in too far and POOF! who knew...Fondant is flammable. I wish I would have gotten a picture of the cake actually on fire, but it surprised me so much I hurried and blew it out. We were laughing pretty hard though. After changing out a few of the very melted candles, we finally lit all 32. And yes I actually blew them all out in one breath....My wish will come true!

I love my family!

An Elegant Wedding

I have had so much fun this week building and baking my tallest cake yet. The cake stood over 3 feet high! I met with Mark an Mila a few months ago and we instantly became great friends. I have enjoyed getting to know them and spending time with Mila. She even asked me to be her wedding planner. So this week I have been baking and planning for the wedding all at the same time.




The wedding was beautiful, the reception was on Mila's parents estate, which is one of the most amazing places I have ever seen. Mila's parents are both incredible artists, and their home is full of art they have created. I loved being there because I walked into their home and I immediately felt like I knew them. There was no facade, or a feeling of "keeping up with the Jones'". Their home was uniquely theirs and it was refreshing to see.









So back to the cake, each tier is 6 inches tall. The 4", 8" and 12" are Vanilla cake with Almond buttercream, and the 6" and 10" are Coconut Cream Cake with Pina Colada buttercream icing. The whole cake is covered in fondant with gum paste Stephanotis and fresh red roses. Also if you look close there is a delicate hand piped design on each tier.




I loved this cake, it was so fun to make and I appreciate Mark, Mila and the whole family. I had a wonderful time working with everyone.


Congratulations Mark and Mila!