Cake roundup

Hi. I haven't been around much. Sorry, blog. I guess I should catch you up on what I've been up to. Or just dump a bunch of cake pictures here and move forward. Now that summer vacation has started, I'm going to need this blog to document our adventures again, so here's a quick catch-up on what I have been up to in cake-land.

Quidditch cupcakes for a dear friend's son's Quidditch team. Yes, really!

Cat in the Hat cake for Dr. Seuss day at my daughter's school. The hat was wonky and not my favorite, but I loved the pictures I stuck all around it to cover its imperfections.

Cupcakes for a "Dive-in Movie" party... awesome party idea!

A Bugatti Veyron made from modeling chocolate and fondant atop a buttercream-iced cake for a 9th birthday.

A BB-8 cake for our friend Lia's 5th birthday. We got to eat this one too! Sidetone: I still haven't seen The Force Awakens.

Fireman-themed toppers for my nephew's 3rd birthday. His mom made him a donut cake.

A peacock cake for my big girl's 8th birthday. She had a Spa party, and it was pretty fun, but I was too busy to do a write-up on it, so you'll have to take my word for it.

I also made her some peacock cupcakes for her birthday at school.

These cupcakes were for our local police department who captured 2 criminals on the run in my backyard, right outside my bedroom window. I was thankful the police were there!

A moon landing cake for my nephew's 7th birthday.

My big girl's First Communion cake and my first gum paste lilies.

A ganache piano cake with gum paste flowers for my daughter's end-of-school choir party.

A Shopkins cake for my husband's ex-secretary's niece's 5th birthday.

An 8th grade graduation cake for the kids who are finished at our school and heading on to various high schools. 

And now it's time to put my "teacher" hat back on. Sorta. Because schoooooooool's out for summer! And Camp Mom will soon be in session. I'm excited. It's all planned out, and it's going to be great.

I still hope to have some more cakes to make, but currently I have no orders until August, so if you need a cake in June or July (or beyond!)...

Katie's Octonauts Cake

Katie finally (yes, finally... it seemed like she would be three forever!) turned four, so we celebrated with an Octonauts-themed pool party, which was a lot of fun, and has yielded a lazy pajama day today to recover from the weekend. Not to mention the fact that I started working on the components of this cake several weeks before the party (and then made another large cake at the same time). So I have been living, breathing, and, yes, eating cake for a long time now. But the outcome was so very worth the effort.

Like I said, I started several weeks ago with just a bunch of drawings and a little Tunip.

Then I made little tiny furniture.

I poured gelatin repeatedly over silicone domes (and a metal ball pan) to make the "glass" for the pods. I am still amazed that gelatin will dry completely hard like this!

Then it was time to put the little pods together. Here's Tunip's garden. I forgot to take a close-up picture of the games room. Oops.

And here are the bedrooms of the Octo-crew. Barnacles and Kwazii share a pod, and Dashi and Peso share another. Making all the tiny furniture reminded me of our gingerbread house from last Christmas.

Next up, the HQ.

And Professor Inkling.

The small details are the most fun to make.

Once the furniture and contents of the pods were done, it was time to focus on the characters: Barnacles, Kwazii, and Peso!

I let everything sit and dry for a few days, and I went to work on another cake before coming back to the Octonauts.

Paul helped me with the structure again. We used the same board as the wine cake, but it had a thicker center post and additional supports for the arms.

Paul also helped by making sea creatures with a silicone mold.

He got creative and made a few without the mold too... totally awesome. He always likes contributing to our kids' cakes in whatever way he can.

I airbrushed waves onto the bottom cake and then covered the bottom and the center with rice crispy treats. Then I used candy melts to get a smooth surface before covering the whole thing in fondant.

This took a lot of fondant to cover!

I added the characters, sea creatures, and the final details to the Octopod and finally finished around 1:00am. 

Katie saw it first thing when she woke up, and I heard her exclaim "Thank you Kwazii! Thank you Peso!"

She was so happy, and THIS is why I make cakes. 

Happy Birthday to my Katie!

Paul's 32nd Birthday Cake

My husband's birthday was today, and birthdays=cake! But he isn't really a cake guy. And I love making cakes! Cakes=love! What kind of cake do you make for someone who doesn't really like cake? A brownie, of course! I baked brownie batter in 2 6-inch cake pans and then stacked them with an extra cake layer in the middle (more on that later), covered them in ganache, and shaped the ganache into a barrel. 

Then I covered a wooden board with fondant in a wood-grain pattern. 

Next up, fondant on the barrel, but it needs something more...

That's better! I finally got to use my airbrush on a cake, and I loved it! 

Then it was time for detail work. 

This project wasn't without struggles... I tried a lot of new techniques, like gelatin decorations. Gelatin is a tricky medium, but it's really cool. I had no idea it could dry completely hard. I used it to make Elsa's cape on Ellie's cake, and I figured it would be good for a wine bottle. I was wrong. 

As it dried, the gelatin warped, and the result was not very pretty. 

Another not-so-pretty part of cake making is color mixing. It can be quite messy and difficult to mix up the colors to that just-right shade. 

But in the end, despite the setbacks, all the effort and time that goes into each detail is worthwhile. 

I borrowed some leaves from our grapevine to make the leaves as realistic as possible. 

I like this angle, wine pouring in. 

The label was easy: just food marker on a fondant rectangle. 

Jacobs Estate Winery: Birthday Blend! I ended up pouring colored chocolate in a wine bottle mold since the gelatin bottle failed, and even that didn't work out perfectly, but it turned out good enough for a midnight finish. 

The wine glass was a gelatin success, with minimal warping. Gelatin decorations are technically edible, but plain gelatin, no sugar, and a hard plastic texture do not make for good eating. At least it looks cool!

Here it is, the whole cake. 

We had some fun at cake cutting time. 

Not nearly as yummy as the real deal!

About that middle layer... Remember that gender reveal cake? I made a pink and blue layer to avoid a time crunch, so I had an extra pink layer that I didn't want to go to waste... Paul only ate the brownie part, but the kids were so excited to eat fondant, brownie, cake, ganache... Everything!

They ran around like sugar high maniacs after presents, but even so, I think Paul enjoyed his birthday! Happy Birthday to my love!