Welcome to my cake blog ~ these are my cake creations. I love cake decorating. I have been doing it in general since my daughter's first birthday in 2003 but in Feb of 2007 I began taking Wilton courses to learn technique. The rest is history :) Feel free to browse each page or by categories (on the right). If you have any questions, please feel free to email me: cakes@halderman.net
And here come the cakes… Today is Emily’s birthday party with her friends. They should be here in a couple hours… But I found some time between decorating to upload the pic of the cake for today. This is an 8″ round iced in buttercream. The guitars are the royal icing (like the guitars on the cupcakes from Thur) and the stars are cut from fondant. Girly and rock star! Just what she wanted – she declared it “the best guitar cake I’ve ever seen”.
Click for a larger view
And here’s a pic of it on the decorated table later…
So its my oldest’s birthday tomorrow (she turns 7!!!). A couple weeks back we started talking more about her birthday and what theme she wanted…and she decided on rock star.  This girl loves guitar hero, rock band, guitars and all that goes with it. Yet in the next breathe she plays barbie and my little pony. I can’t figure it out!  So when it came time to pick a cupcake for school she said “guitars!!! or drums…or maybe a microphone…”  So we settled on guitars as that was probably easiest (and most fun) for me. She picked the colors and wanted this style of guitar.
The guitars are royal icing piped (I made 30 of them! Only broke one – yay  ). The stars are cut out of fondant and left to dry so they harden. Then there’s icing and pink cake sparkles. There will be more guitar cakes to follow as the celebration continues
Well here is February’s birthday cake. It didn’t need to be this big but I wanted to do this style. My plan was just two tiers (the bottom two) but I had extra batter so I made a 4″ and threw that on too. It completes the look I think  This cake was inspired by one I ran across online. Had some things I had wanted to try and I loved the look. Plus I had short notice to plan it so I couldn’t do anything to labor intensive. I did this one fondant for my ease and the bow is fondant as well.
I know … football season is ended now. Done and over… BUT I still had this extra logo waiting for use! I had made up two of these for another cake (in case one broke) so this is the leftover. The logo is made from a royal icing type medium…traced out and filled in, then left to dry/harden. The rest of the cake is buttercream frosting.  I had extra green from the last packers cake too so I pulled that out to use. This was my “demo” cake from cake class last night that I used to show them how to base ice a cake.
Here are some more giant cupcakes! This time for a male so bring on the blues  To give some reference the base on these has a diameter of about 5-6″ and they are about 7-8″ tall.
There are few women who don’t enjoy a bit of shopping. This cake was created for a lady who loves to shop. She is a co-worker of my husband’s and they are celebrating her birthday tomorrow at work.  So for this I created a purse cake and a shopping bag … after I finished I thought the shopping bag could be interpreted for just a gift bag but really either work for the occasion!
The purse is about 6″ wide x 6″ tall. The gift bag is 7″ long x 6″ wide and 4″ tall. Everything is edible except the wires inside the handle to form it  Even the “tissue paper” in the gift is fondant. The purse is painted using a pearl dust to make it shimmer.
My MIL’s birthday is on Monday and tonight we are taking her and FIL out to dinner and then to our place for – cake of course  This cake was inspired Eric Lanlard’s design in the book Glamour Cakes. Looking back I could have used a smaller tip for the lavender buds – this especially came to mind when my 4 yr old walked in and said “Mommy, you made a grape cake?”  Gotta love kids  But I still like it – and its chocolate cake so what’s NOT to like?
This was a 1st birthday cake – winter themed. The lamb was requested because the little girls nick name involves the word Lamb  I had so much fun sculpting these little lambs out of fondant.  All I could think about as I made them was that saying “Mares eat oats and does eat oats, but little lambs eat ivy. A kid’ll eat ivy too, wouldn’t you?” When I was a kid we went camping in northern WI (Hayward) and they had a few animals at the camp ground – one of them a lamb called Lambsydivy (not sure how they spelled it though!)… Lambsydivy = lambs eat ivy   For some reason I’ve never forgotten about that lamb.
But enough about my lamb filled childhood  – we need the rest of the cake details! There are 2 cakes, sizes 8″ and 10″. Both pink butter cream icing with royal icing snowflakes I piped out, then painted with a pearl luster dust when dry. Below the cake pics are a few close ups of one of the lambs.
I related to some friends earlier today that I have an illness – a cake decorating illness. This cake was one I prepped and iced for my course 1 students on Tuesday night. So today is Thur and I’ve had a chocolate cake with chocolate icing sitting here looking at me….yet I could not eat it. I MUST DECORATE THE CAKE! Simple cake will not do around here…its not about showing what I can do or being Martha (though I am accused of that at times)…its just that I love to do it….and can’t stand the site of a naked cake!
So I brainstormed today and decided to try out my new flower plungers. They cut the flower shape and then you press the plunger (think syringe type pushing) and you stick the flower directly to the cake. Such fun – now I want more sizes and shapes!
This cake was made for my uncle Al for his 60th birthday! His wife (my aunt  came up with the idea to change the wording of the Harley logo to say this. The Logo and skulls are made from color flow / royal icing. Everything on the cake is 100% edible. The caked is iced in butter cream frosting. I tinted the cake layers orange (white cake) and black (chocolate cake) to match the theme.
Well in 2 days we are having a pirate luau party. The pirate cake is yet to come but I finished up the luau cake this evening. Here’s the details ~ its an 8″ & 12″ stacked cake. The 8″ is chocolate with a coconut buttercream filling and the 12″ is white cake with a pineapple filling. Both are covered in a blue marbled fondant (hard to see in the pic). The cake board itself is covered in crushed graham crackers for “sand” and the bamboo is hand painted fondant pieces.
The flowers are gumpaste hibiscus and plumeria. Each hand made and hand painted by me. The hibiscus took me about 9 min a piece to make. I made 19 total but didn’t use them all (always good to have extras!) It was my first time making them and I’m pleased with how they turned out. Oh and a note that the bamboo has a little more yellowish tint in person. It looks very brown in this pic.
This cake was for a friend for her twin daughters’ bday party. She gave me the party napkin so I based it off that somewhat. All icing with a gumpaste flower and a real candle on top. Pic of the napkin is below the cake pics.
I made this pair of angel food cakes for my dad’s birthday party. They are frosted in home made whipped cream icing and royal icing “hibiscus” flowers top it off. We served it with a strawberry-raspberry sauce. Delicious!  I had a hard time getting the colors to come out just right in the photo but the flowers are a dark teal/blue, bright/dark pink and a dark peachy-orange.
“Welcome to the place, where words come alive … let’s build a word – WORD WORLD!”
Any of you with PBS loving small children will understand this creation  My “baby” turns 4 today and she loves this show. On one of the shows they create a C-A-K-E! Mine is different colors but more girly In one episode they build the cake:
All of the figures are from fondant/gumpaste – including the C-A-N-D-L-E. Chocolate cake as she requested and I threw in a peanut butter & chocolate filling. Yum!
And these are the actual characters from the show:
This cake was for the daughter of a friend of mine.   Using the phrase: Fully Rely On God (which is where FROG comes from and as a result – the frog!). This is an 8″ cake. And my super hubby found matching ribbon for around the cake base!
I had a cake dummy covered from the class I taught last night. Plus I had the bow I showed them how to make so I tried to decide what to do with it… This is what I came up with and it was done kinda fast  So not perfect but still fun. Its pink & brown stripes – lighting wasn’t the bestwhen I took this pic. The bow and fondant ribbon holding it are are dusted in pearl dust.
I had this cake dummy (styrofoam) covered in fondant from the last class I taught. Decided to try something new…not sure how I like it but it is what it is  The swags are dusted with pearl dust but doesn’t show up a ton in the pic.
This is the cake I made for my hubby and I to celebrate our b-days (his is the 21st, mine is today the 23rd). We are both big Nintendo and Mario fans but he’s even a bigger game player than I am. This was really fun to make and if I hadn’t had a sick child I would have made a few more fondant characters to go along with it. Fortunately I created the top pipe/flower part yesterday. Cake is covered in fondant and fondant figures. The pipe and flower head are made from rice krispie treats and covered in fondant.  He doesn’t know what I’m making for the cake so it will be a surprise for when he gets home today
Another view…Closeup view of the decor…coins and brick blocks
This cake was made using Wilton’s Giant Cupcake pan. Iced all in buttercream and the dots and flower are made from fondant. The pic makes it look like the flower and base are very different in color when they aren’t. Someday I’ll perfect using my camera & lighting
This cake was a S&S creation for my sister’s (the other “S” in S&S) church for an auction to raise money for a missions trip to Honduras. The butterfly (as noted in my previous post) is an evenus coronata butterfly from Honduras and the flower on this cake is a hibiscus-like flower found there as well.
We kept this clean and simple ~ gumpaste flower and perched butterfly, fondant covered cake and ribbon around the base with a simple bow on front. I love the how the colors came out together! And I hope that the cake gets a high bid at the auction to raise them a lot of money.
I’ve wanted to make this style cake for awhile now so I got to try! It didn’t take that long either. Candle on top is fondant and whole cake is covered in fondant (with an icing border).
I had an extra hunk of cake leftover from my calculator cake (below) so I decided to decorate it for fun. This cake is only about 4.5″x4.5″ and about 2″ tall. Fondant covered and ribbon around the base. These are some gumpaste roses I made previously.
I created this cake for my husband’s co-worker. He was in charge of bringing a cake of some sort for an office b-day celebration for her. She’s an accountant and this is what I came up with! He helped me figure out some details on how we would do it.  Here’s the result! Its about 8″ wide & 12″ long with the icing and about 4″ tall at the top of the back. Its covered in fondant with fondant “buttons” and a fondant/gumpaste “paper” on top.
This cake was made for my little sister for her 17th birthday. She found the design/graphic below (below cake pics) on the internet and I based the design off this image. The flowers on top are gumpaste. Everything else is fondant except the real ribbon around the base of each tier.
Here is a cake made for a friend. The cake is 12×18. Golf club is made of a fondant/gumpaste mix (as are golf balls). The writing at the side was something she came up with – the sayings are: “A little ‘birdie’ told me you’re turning 30″, “You ‘putt’ the ‘tee’ in terrific” and “We think you’re above ‘par’” Everything is edible except the stick for the pole of the flag.
These cakes were made for my sister and her husband for their birthdays. He’s not a chocolate fan (and the rest of us are!) so I made him a special yellow cake.
First the “hers” design…I based the design on some fabric I saw on a purse. The choclate icing is buttercream and the strip is fondant. It didn’t work out perfect but in the end most of the “flaws” are hidden.  The design on top is two fold…first it is a replica of the scrolls on the side and secondly it is an S which start’s my sister’s name (Shelly).
And for the “his” cake… her hubby works in construction/home improvement/remodeling. So he got a “wood” cake with a gumpaste circular saw blade cutting in.  The saw blade is painted with a silver shimmer that doesn’t show as much in the photo. The cake is a 4″ round, fondant covered and painted to get that wood look.
Here she is … Emily’s Island Princess cake for her party with family tomorrow. I had to fight with Barbie a little to cooperate and almost took a friend’s suggestion to take her legs off LOL But a little knife work later {to the carboard base, not barbie } and she got in there far enough. Icing is all buttercream and the dress is covered in a shimmer pearl dust. The flowers on the cake corners are Frangipani (a tropical flower – she IS the island princess you know ) and it was my first time doing them. I was suprised at how easy they were. Those are made of gumpaste. The barbie cake was made in a pampered chef 8c measure bowl (glass) and the base is a one layer 10″ square.
This smaller cake is a 4″ one made with some extra cake batter I had. Thought it would make a fun “personal” cake for Emily. Again has the Barbie’s dress pattern on it and the shimmer dust.
These castle cupcakes I made for my daughter to take to school for her bday. I had found this idea online along with another idea (princess crowns). I let her pick thinking that won’t take too long. Ok…well lesson learned  I spent a good 4 hrs on the castles alone. Fortunately the baking and icing/glitter part was super quick.  But she loves them (other than thinking that the castles were going to be really big cause of the pic I had shown her). They are dusted in a pearl dust so they shimmer. I had to make 24 of them to take. Whew…I’m tired of that now  But they did turn out cute.  I wish the pic could show the details and shimmer better…I need to make that light box!
Here is the cupcake cake I made for my daughter’s 6th birthday party with her friends tomorrow. Cupcake cakes are made by putting a whole bunch of cupcakes together and icing over the top. Then to serve you just take a cupcake off – no cutting!  On top is the tiara I made earlier this week (see pics below in the last post). I’ve put a pic below of the island princess barbie this was based on.
This cake was made for my mother-in-law’s birthday last week. Its an 8″ cake trimmed to be an octagon. She is an avid quilter ~ so I made each side a quilt block design. I did 4 different designs, repeated each twice. I also used an impression mat to quilt behind the blocks. Everything is buttercream icing.
This first pic shows the cake better but the second pic is more true to life of the colors. The third is a pic of all 4 designs.
 Gotta love kids 
“Welcome to the place, where words come alive … let’s build a word – 
Another view…
Closeup view of the decor…coins and brick blocks
