Beach Themed Birthday Cake

A couple of months ago I ran a cake raffle and donated all the proceeds to the Make-a-Wish foundation. The winner decided they wanted a beach themed cake for their birthday, and decided to share it with a friend who whose birthday is on the same day.
I poured melted white chocolate into silicone molds and then airbrushed them to simulate the real things. Umbrella and chair were sculpted out of gumpaste. A little difficult to assemble the chair but fortunately I had enough time to let it dry. The sand was crushed up gram crackers mixed with a few types of sugar.
Starting to become more of a fan of royal icing. I used it for the rope on the fence and it was actually much easier to use than I expected. Definitely something I will be using more of in the future.

Pool Table Cake

Another 3D object cake...my favorite. This pool table cake was made of strawberry cake with a cream cheese filling.
This is a cake I had known about for a while but I wasn't sure how I was going to execute it. I think I thought it would be so simple that I wouldn't have to worry about it, so when it came time to get started I realized I had a few things to figure out. I used a layer of rice cereal treats for the border of the table so that I wouldn't have to waste any cake and it would also give me sharper corners.
Thick wooden dowels were used for the legs, which I covered in tubing from some gift wrap to give them some bulk, which were then wrapped in black fondant so they matched the rest of the cake. As with most 3D cakes, there were a few more details I would have loved to have added but there just isn't always the time. Not perfect but cool cake nonetheless.

"Sex & the City" Themed Bridal Shower Cake

When I first started Cake Lab last October, one of my first cakes was a "Sex & the City" themed birthday cake. I was happy with the cake back then but I've come a long way since.
This time around, I decided to use edible disco dust for the city. I have to say...that crap is a pain! It's hard to stick on and very expensive, but it does result in a unique look when you walk by it. Nothing else reflects the light quite like it. I think from now on I will stick to using it for smaller objects.

I do like this cake but overall I feel like something isn't quite right, just can't put my finger on it. What I do love is the accessories. First time making gumpaste shoes and it wasn't too tricky. The nail polish looked exactly like I wanted. Applied a little vegetable spray on it to give the bottle a shiny appearance, something I learned from a flickr member. The bag was rice cereal treats covered in modeling chocolate then fondant. It was the easiest accessory to make but I think it looks the most impressive. Funny :/
Jello for the drink and fishing wire for the gumpaste pearls. Overall a fun cake and I look forward to upping the ante next time I am asked to do the theme again.

"Space Needs Color" Cake for Threadcakes Contest

A cake contest that is based off crazy graphic T shirt designs? Count me in!
The competition is put on by Threadless, and if you are interested in seeing all the possible design choices you can click here.
If you decided to check out the link, you will see that the options are pretty much endless. Not easy to choose just one, so I decided to start off with a simple one that caught my eye called "Space Needs Color":

My full Threadcakes entry can be viewed here.
Nothing really complicated in terms of technique. It's nice carving lumpy items like rocket exhaust and volcanoes after doing something as smooth and shapely as a car. Again, airbrush came is super handy. Don't know what I'd do without it!
The rocket and paint tubes were made of rice cereal treats covered in modeling chocolate and fondant. I used some fishing wire to suspend the paint drops. It worked out pretty well but I regret not adding more of them. Guess there's always going to be something on every cake that could be done a little differently.
There are many more deign options I want to convert to cake, but I'm probably going to just have time for one, and it's going to require lots of details. Can't wait!

Volcano Cake

Wow, I'm not sure how I've gotten so far behind on my blogging. It's a good habit for me to keep up on for numerous reasons so let's see how many I can whip out today.
When I was first asked to do a dinosaur themed cake I got really excited. Not like I'm a huge dino fan or anything, but I do really enjoy Jurassic Park and they just look...cool haha.
For this cake I invested in some molds which is something I don't normally do. I do enjoy sculpting figures from scratch, but the molds definitely make things go a LOT faster and leaves me more time to focus on other details. The palm tree mold was an excellent choice, they turned out great, were easy to make, and I'm sure I'll be using it again in the future.

The idea for the bottom tier actually came from another cake I saw online. They used the cricut to cut out dinosaur silhouettes, and I loved the contrast of the black on the light blue. Unfortunately, my silhouettes ended up being my least favorite part of the cake. I see now how I could have made them better, but it was the final push in a really busy week. At least I won't make the same mistake again. Still, a fun colorful cake!

Yellow Maserati Car Cake

I've made a decent number of 3D cakes in the past 6 months, but most of them are fairly simple in terms of carving. Not since my batmobile cake have I carved something so complex (that was only my second time carving cake and was on a much smaller scale). I forgot how long the carving process can take! Even though I had previously prepared a scaled and elevated cake board for the cake to sit on, and a stencil to get the proportions correct, it still took me about 2.5 hours to do all the carving. Honestly I'm not sure how the time can fly by so quickly! I just kept on carving it away little by little because I had to factor in for the extra bulk that would be added by the buttercream and double layer of fondant. In the end the shape of the car isn't quite as slender as I wanted, but I'll accept it for now! Next time though...gotta be better.

The wheels were pretty time consuming, made of rice cereal treats covered in fondant with a gumpaste center. If I didn't make them the week before I'm not sure I would've been able to finish the cake on time!!
My favorite part is the LED lights. The client wasn't expecting them but I thought it was such a cool idea and really wanted it to work. Took me a while to find them but so happy I did. They are battery powered and last about 100 hours, so it was no problem to put them in the cake switched on and covered in fondant. I painted the fondant with silver petal dust and it gave such a realistic effect, definitely something I will be using in future cakes when appropriate.

Purple Pink and Black Topsy Turvy Cake

What a busy week it was! Not often do I make three cakes in one week. Fortunately there were elements on all the cakes that were able to be done in advance so it wasn't as crazy as it could have been.

This topsy turvy cake has been planned for a while and I couldn't wait to make it as I really like the color combo. Nothing too complex going on here, and for the most part it went pretty smoothly...until I got to the topper and name. I had prepared the name a week earlier, but at that point it was just the sparkly purple text with no background. I liked the look of it, but when I placed it on the cake it got so lost in the busyness of the background. It needed something to help it stand out, so I put a base layer of white under it. I didn't love that, so painted some pink...but didn't love that so added some black. At the same time trying to figure out how to position the wires the way I wanted. Just kinda funny looking back at how much I stressed over this fairly simple cake in the final hours the night before the cake was due. Now that it's over I'm actually quite happy with it! Haha I guess the stress never ends...

Chessboard & Pieces Cake

I don't even know where to begin with this cake...
One week later and it's still haunting me! I usually have a couple mood swings while working on a cake, but that's just part of the process. This cake literally almost brought me to tears multiple times (but for the record, no actual tears were shed).
The cake started off smoothly enough. Covering the chessboard was simple enough, but I first came across some trouble with the small chess pieces. I thought it would be a great idea to make them out of chocolate versus gumpaste because it's so much tastier. But that meant there was the extra step of melting the chocolate, pouring it in the molds, placing in the freezer and removing. Sometimes there were air pockets in them so I discarded them. The black chocolate presented another problem. You can't actually but black colored chocolate, so I bought dark chocolate and thought I could easily enough turn it black by adding black gel color to the melted chocolate. Not so fast. That stuff turned into a sticky gunk. I then tried dusting the brown pieces black and airbrushing them, but neither of those methods were effective. Then I learned that you could add a little bit of vegetable oil to the melted chocolate to help keep it a soft mixture and that worked pretty well, but still...more time lost and another couple steps.
After successfully making all the chocolate halves, each half needed to be warmed so the pieces could be molded together and the seam could be erased. Basically just took way more time then I needed.
The night before the cake was due I stopped working at midnight. Unfortunately the thought of chess pieces couldn't leave my mind so after an hour or so of tossing and turning I decided to go back to work till 4 am. This may not seem like a big deal to most, but I never stayed up so late for an exam during my 5 years in college. I was clearly stressed.
Once I got to the big pieces, things were going pretty well and I was feeling pretty confident. As I was covering the black piece, I noticed the white fondant on the other piece was beginning to sag. My heart just sank. The finish was so smooth earlier, and now it just looked like crap. I wanted to redo it but not enough time.
I had a whole scene planned out, with cool a cool 2D gumpaste knight and bishop and a medium sized rook made out of rice cereal treats that would all be scattered around the board to make it look complete. But the only accent I finished was the knight, and without the other pieces it didn't look like it belonged, so I decided to leave it behind as the client was only expecting the chessboard and pieces anyway. The last couple hours I was just a wreck. I realized there was no way I was going to be able to complete all the accents I thought were so cool and I was barely going to finish making the big pieces look acceptable. Even writing this now is making me feel depressed all over again!
Right now I'm working on three cakes for the week. I feel like I have to work extra hard to prove to myself that I can make really cool cakes that I can say I'm proud of. But no matter how great those cakes turn out, it still won't make up for my failure. However, what's done is done and there is nothing I can change, so I just have to move forward with these next cakes and learn from this experience.
Grr...this "fun" job is stressful.

Buffy TVS Slayer's Scythe Cake

It was my birthday earlier this week which meant I had the chance to make a really cool cake for myself. Normally I enjoy working on just about every cake I make, but it's extra fun when I get to make something based on one of my own interests.
This Slayer's Scythe cake was the perfect selection, as it allowed me to make a big sculpted cake (my favorite type), without needing a ton of cake. I decided to make the handle out of brownies since it was so thin, and I like brownies more than cake anyway!
It was fun making the cake section by section. I tried to give the wrap a leather look by rolling it over plastic wrap. It did give me the exact texture I was looking for, but I had time making it as noticeable as I wanted. And gotta love my new extruder for the rope, such a useful tool and I've used it on just about every cake since I bought it!

The only challenge I had with the cake was figuring out how to get the blade silver and red while using the same piece of fondant. I decided to roll white fondant over the cake and then covered the part I wanted silver in blue masking tape. I then airbrushed the cake red, removed the tape, and dusted it with silver petal dust. Not as difficult as I thought!

Oh and I had to have a little bit of fun in photoshop with this cake :)
Have some really cool cakes coming up in June and this was the perfect way to start the month!

Hebron Academy Graduation Cake

Hebron Academy's middle school graduation was held yesterday evening and I was asked to make a cake for the celebration. It also happened to be the 20th anniversary of the middle school, so they wanted that incorporated into the cake.
Now that it's summertime I have to get used to working in the heat and humidity. Even though I decorated the cake in an AC environment, I had more issues with sagging and cracking fondant than I ever have before. The sagging on the side really annoyed me before I left for delivery, but during transport it became even worse! I guess that even just walking through 80+ degree weather for a minute caused the buttercream to melt and shift. I will definitely have to do some research on how to avoid these issues on the next cake.
Overall I really like the look of this cake. Classic like Hebron, but not too formal by being topsy turvy. Definitely a nice addition to the portfolio, and kinda cool because I graduated from the middle school exactly 10 years ago. Crazy!!