2008 Milestones in Sugar

After realizing that I've been toying with my new hobby for well over a year now, I thought it would be fun to pick a few milestones from 2008. Let's just say we've come a long way baby! In no particular order, here were three milestone cakes from this year.

1. July 2008, My Birthday Cake: First time with three tiers - whew!

2. October 2008, A Cake for Damaris: While a sad occassion for this cake, I am forced to point out that under that pressure, I piped the BEST buttercream roses I have ever managed to pipe.

3. August 2008, Baby Shower Cake: First time wiring flowers and using them on a cake! Not only were my wired flowers successful, but I loved my clever idea of putting litle baby footprint blooms in there. Also, I was given the shower invitation to match, and well, I was impressed with my color matching abilities here. (see earlier post for pic of invite.)While I'm at it, this was also my first "bow" which was also successful.

And the greatest thing about this is you learn from every experience, and so next time I do any of these things, they will be even better!

Cheers to a Happy New Year and more Happy Cakes.

Merry Christmas Petit Fours

Click photo for close up.

I knew going into this world of tiny covered cakes that there was potential for absolute disaster. So, I must say I was pleased with the relative lack of disaster... I think there is still some ganache on the kitchen cabinets, but that comes with the territory.

I do believe everyone enjoyed the taste, and for a first attempt... not bad looking! Right? Note the tiny gingerbreak men and candy canes :)

There were almond cake with white buttercream and almond filling, almond cake with apricot filling, chocolate fudge cake with Kaluha-Chocolate buttercream, white cake with rasperry or buttercream... and a few other variations. Merry Christmas. Easter will be a good second attempt at petit fours.

After making it from my Mom's house to a dessert party and to a post-Christmas party the following day, they were finally all eaten!

Chistmas Cake

A friend is trying to teach his son that Christmas is about more than the presents. Each year they celebrate with a cake for Jesus' birthday. This year, I had the honor of making that very cake, and here are the results. I'm excited because I used some of the left over batter (Mandarin Orange Cake - cream cheese frosting with a hint of orange) to make mini cakes so I can make my first attempt at petit fours for Christmas at mom's house. Watch for that post soon.

Happy Belated Birthday Sherry

Happy Belated Birthday Sherry! She's a fan of Audrey Hepburn and all things classy. So I just wanted to make some beautiful and elegant treats for her. They are mini french vanilla cupcakes with cinnamon buttercream roses / sanding sugar. Very sweet!

A Cake For Damaris

My best friend's husband's mother passed away last week. They wanted just something pretty to have at the reception at the house after the service. So I make this vanilla poundcake with lemon curd filling and a light lemon buttercream. On a lighter note, I must say, these were THE BEST buttercream roses I've made to date.

Addendum: December 23, 2008--Wanted to post a better picture, so I tried to cut the background out...
haha.

Happy Birthday Dad

Daddy's birthday again. He's a chocolate man, so every year I'm determined to design all chocolate cakes. mmmm.

Happy Birthday Anna and Lily

These cupcakes were made for my adorable baby twin cousins for their second birthday! The each had their own tray of cupcakes, one for Anna, one for Lily. They matched the garden set my mom bought them.

Tropical Storm Fay Cupcakes

Well, here's life and cake together again: It's been a soggy, blustery week here in Orlando, and I was looking for an excuse to play with chocolate. So I decided that I would whip up some "FAY CAKES" in honor (and in the vein of comic relief) of our ever-lingering tropical storm.

I'm preparing for cupcakes for my 2 year old twin cousins' birthday, and I wanted to see how making the chocolate shapes worked out. I was just playing around, but it's pretty fun Fun and easy! Next time I will take a little more time, and I'm not crazy about melting in the microwave. But for a one hour project this was fun.

And yummy too.

It was nice knowing you Fay.

Welcome Baby Harris

My mother's best friend was hosting a baby shower for another good friend of hers. She gave me the invitation to match, but otherwise pretty much gave me artistic freedom. We discussed something more elegant, with some touches of baby. So, I decided to go for a bouquet of blooming flowers with some "baby" elements tied in. I created a garden of flowers from gumpaste/fondant, and used a mold to make the tiny baby feet and storks and diapers and wired those in as if they were blooms as well.

Color is hard. Colors don't always come out exactly the way you want, and if you're off too much in one direction, you've got to start over. So much to my delight, on my first try, I matched the green from the invitation both in fondant and in buttercream!

I could have taken the easy way out and covered the cake in fondant, but I'm still determined to master buttercream, so I stuck with pink buttercream.

This was a yummy cream cheese poundcake with lemon curd and lemon buttercream.

True what they say

"Once the word gets out, have fun with the requests..."
They are coming faster than I can even keep up with!
Baby Shower, Work Party, Get Well Soon, Birthday... Can I get a bigger kitchen?

Forever 21! Happy Birthday Sue

It was Sue's birthday and we went out to brunch, but we brought our own dessert! It was a surprise. She loves to play cards in her free time, so her son (myboyfriend) and I decided to go with a card theme. He helped since it was his mom's cake-- he's become quite the sous chef these days :)... He came up with the idea "Forever 21" and doing the blackjack cards. Cake makes people smile and that makes me happy. Happy cake! (pictured -- Sue and her friend Chris at brunch.)

Cute Cakes From Convention

Here are a few cakes that I thought were super cute from the 2008 Convention Show Room.

In the second one, if you can see it, there is a pea under one mattress-- princess and the pea! How CUTE!

Okay, and one cool demonstration I went to was about using stencils on cakes... pretty neat stuff. At first I was like...eh, maybe this makes you lazy-- but it looks SOawesome it doesn't matter.

Cake for Joy

Well, this was a cake for our friend/colleague Joy who recently lost her mom. We wanted to cheer her up, but thought flowers were boring and not nearly as comforting as some yummy cake.

Here's to Joy and her mom!

More convention stuff

This is me with Norman Davis, if you watch the Food Network Cake Challenges you've seen him a number of times. He's won a couple and lost a couple... the PIXAR challenge was so sad when his SULLY totally fell apart on him.

He was really nice and answered a lot of questions. His demo was "Wedding Cake with Inlaid Bow"-- simple technique, I probably wouldn't have thought of myself for a long time.


Here's what the inlaid bow looked like (he showed us a few other techniques too as you can see.





And here are a few of my favorite cakes from the cake display room, (people bring their work from all over the country to display)but the pictures do NOT do the cakes justice:

Cake Convention - Some reflections

I always wondered what really went on at Trekkie conventions, or ComicCon, or any of those things. What happens when you put a bunch of people obsessed with the same thing in one place, I thought?

Then I became one of "them." I am now the girl who goes to cake convention. The International Cake Exploration Society holds this conference every year in a different city, and this year it was Orlando, so considering my new hobby, and the money and time I've already invested, I was encouraged to go. So I went.

I learned a lot of great tips, and saw some really cool things. There is something to be said for SEEING something done vs. READING about something being done.

I saw lots of familiar faces. People I know, that don't know me. I'm a Food Network junkie and of course I was thrilled to walk in on Friday and find many of the "CAKE CHALLENGE" types wandering around and/or selling things or teaching. Mike McCarey, Bronwen Webber, Kerrie Vincent, Norman Davis, and quite a few others. I sat next to the woman who put the head on backwards on the recent Soccer Bday Cake Challenge!

Happy 50th Birthday JT!

I will post a better picture later-- this isn't quite the finished product, but those pics aren't on my camera.
Back to adventures in Buttercream... it's all about trial and error. Anyway-- The party was Luau themed. Chocolate cake with a hint of coconut and a tropical chocolate buttercream.

I've stopped thinning my buttercream so much and I'm getting more comfortable with it...I have finally managed to ice a cake and not pick up crumbs!! Success is mine!

Happy Birthday JT!

check back for new pictures!

ICES Convention 2008, Orlando

Okay, cake teacher said I should take advantage of the fact that ICES, the International Cake Exploration Society, (hehehe) was having their annual convention in Orlando this year.

So I did.

It was a five day ordeal at the Contemporary hotel at Walt Disney World... I only participated in three days. It was quite an experience, I've never gone to anything like this before, so I was amused. And along the way I learned a bunch of awesome tips and techniques, so it was worth the money spent.

I will write more soon and post pictures of some stuff-- I'm having issues with the internet at home. I'll tell you about my "cake celebrity" sightings and other musings about cake and cake people. Stay tuned!

Happy Birthday July 13 Kids!

Singing: Happy Birtday to Carol, Happy Birthday to Paul, Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to us all!

Like I previously posted, Carol asked me to make a birthday cake for the three of us, and kindly provided me with some money to get supplies. I couldn't resist the temptation of trying to stack up a three tier cake. Tada!

I'm pretty proud of it. The best part is that I'm getting faster, more organized and neater. This took me a total of probably 8 hours over the course of the week. Good thing I have no life!

Okay, who gets a cake next?

Three tiers of cake for three fabulous July 13 babies. In case you would like to know, the first and last tiers were orange supreme cake with lightly lemon buttercream, and the middle layer was chocolate butter cake with chocolate almond filling. yummm...


(Picture: Paul, Me, Carol, The Cake)

Three Tier Time

My wonderful volunteer at work, Carol, and another colleague of mine, along with me, myself, and I, all have the same birthday. So Carol gave me a little money for supplies and asked me to make us a three-person birthday cake. No better time to go for the third tier right? I've done two tiers a few times now... gonna step it up. So I'm working on a very colorful celebratory cake, no real special theme. Each tier will honor one person's birthday... the older you are the bigger your tier. 10", 8", and 6" -- I'm the 6"...Anyway--Stay tuned!

Happy Birthday Aunt Caroyln!

Car came to visit for a few days, so I did a rush job and made her an impromptu early birthday cake!

Cherry blossoms blowing in the wind. Pretty cake, for a pretty aunt!

I'd post a better pic, but Mom hasn't sent them. Sad. This cake is out of chronological order slightly, but that's okay. This was the first all buttercream cake I had done in awhile. And the first time I ever went for the square cake.

If I only had more time and space!!

Happy Birthday Maile

Just wanted to make Maile a pretty birthday cake! She deserves something girly and fun this year.

I really need to practice with the buttercream, so I'm forcing myself to make buttercream cakes and practice things that I'm not so confident at yet...practice makes perfect.

I'm pretty happy with this cake!

Happy Birthday Maile!

Sand Cake

Lil sis and I went to the beach.

Sand castle?

No tools.

Sand cake?

Yeah, boy.

Happy Father's Day

Lil' sis and I worked on this one together. What do we do for Dad's cake?
Golf? Whatta a snooze-fest.

Dad... Dad... When we think of Dad? What comes to mind? Besides the Godfather and the chicken dance?

Sis suggests that crazy song Dad always sings-- the one I had always thought he made up, but then I heard it on NPR last month and called him at 7 a.m. to say "DAD!! I heard your crazy song on the radio!" Turns out it really was some crazy exercise song from the 50s or something.

Push-ups, every morning
ten times, not just now and then
give that chicken fat back to the chicken
and don't be a chicken again...
nooooo...
don't be a chicken again.

I've heard this a million times between 4 years old and 27 years old-- so what better way to honor my dad with a cake interpretation of this silly little tune?

This was pure fun -- and the second we revealed the cake, he got it!
[picture coming soon]

Drained doctor leaves patients for pastries

Nothing new-- just another story about people checking out and doing something crazy. This one was sent by a friend who hears me joke about my future pastry shop all of the time.

I always like to read stories like this. No matter how played out. I like stories about people going out and doing stuff without boundary, if you will. This one was close to home since Alex and I always joke about doing culinary school together! We'd kill each other I'm sure.

I've been spending a lot of time trying to figure out what my next "work" step in life will be. More PR? More Marketing? More Arts & Culture? Or is it time to do something crazy. I'm not that old, am I really justified in "checking out" already?

Hmmm....

Read "Drained doctor leaves patients for pastries" on CNN Living

She likes Disney

A co-worker approached me and asked me to make a cake for another co-workers going away party. "Sure!" she says enthusiastically, "what do you want it to look like?" "She likes Disney, like Ratatouille and stuff" he says. 20 hours or so later....

Hippie Happy

This was so exciting. I'm not one for starting small... I say it often... if you're gonna go, go big. So we convinced cake teacher that it was time to do a tiered cake. So, here's my first tiered cake!

Draping and Flower Power

Hmmm...no holiday to work around. So, i thought I'd go for just pretty. Tried some things I'd never tried-- draping, marbling fondant. Not too bad, right?!

Happy Valentine's Day

Another class project. The roses were candy clay. I was pretty content with this one!

Happy Valentine Cake
(cake circa February 2008)

Self-Destructing Cake

As you can see, this cake began to self-destruct pretty early in its life. Lesson learned: Careful how much icing you put in between layers. A combination of heat, humidity, and a quick stop at a stop sign created some sliding and some cracking.

Nonetheless-- huge improvement in piping flowers! Looking back to Happy Cake original, I can kinda see it -- too bad, they all started to melt!

Christmas to Superbowl

Okay, so along the way there has been other sugar fun-- cookies, cupcakes, gingerbread houses.

Some of the xmas cookies I made this year--each stocking had a family member's name painted on it... how cheesey, right?

And then there were the Giants vs. Patriots Superbowl cupcakes. Fun, right?