Cakes by Steph

This cake is for my youngest daughter - her cake to celebrate with family.  I wasn’t sure how this would turn out but overall I’m pretty happy with it - and she loved it. Its fondant covered…chocolate cake with chocolate ganache and chocolate fondant. She’s in heaven!

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

Click the pics for a larger view…

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.

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.

And here is the napkin design:

“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:

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.

Click to view larger image

Birthday cake made for a little girl turning 2…based off my earlier polka dot cake with a stripe tier added.  And a smash cake for the little one

This cake was done for a friend’s daughter for her 6th birthday. All fondant covered and gumpaste stars on top (stars were a glittery gold ~ doesn’t show a ton in the pic).

Angel food cake with home made whipped cream icing. Royal icing flowers & buttercream leaves. Middle is a cake board covered in fondant to cover the hole in the center of the angel food cake. Horses are fondant (closeups below).

Here is the horse cake from Cassie’s birthday party today! I painted the bow on the horse with some pink pearl dust and I love the change (see the old pic of the horse I posted last month below). The roses on the cake are royal icing and the rest of the cake is all buttercream. I inserted a closeup of the horse to see the color better. I also made a dozen cup cakes for “extra”. These are all buttercream (including the roses). Not my best work on those roses but it was hot and humid which doesn’t mix well with icing!

Cassie’s 3rd bday cake - with the chocolate butterflies!

This was made for a friend’s son for his 3rd birthday. Cake is iced in red frosting and the ladders are made of chocolate melts and painted with a silver pearl dust. Windows and accents are colorflow. The puppy, hose and hydrant are made of fondant.

This is an S&S creation (Steph & Shelly Designed by my sister (Shelly) and I did the basic assembly and fondant and she helped do the accessory fondant decorations. Logo is a chocolate transfer (my first try at it) painted with a silver pearl dust. Real toy cars on top.

This was the cake I did for my Wilton Fondant & Gumpaste last class. Wasn’t in the mood for flowers So I did MMF for all the accents. The second pic shows the same cake with some gumpaste decorations I made. But I like it better without them ~ just perfect like that.

Present Cake ~ all fondant…

And here it is with just fondant prior to being decorated.

February 2007

Febrary 2007…
I started my official cake training in Feb. These were the 3 cakes made in this class. They were a lot of fun and I learned a lot. It was my first time doing roses.

Rainbow Cake

Clown Cake

Rose Cake

February 2007

Barbie cake pan ~ lots of pink icing and Wilton’s pink & white sparkle sugar. Roses are royal icing.

August 2006

Iced a 9×13 cake and did “grass” icing. Construced a Blue’s house replica out of a quartered square cake (used 3 pcs of it) and made the roof out of a carved off loaf shaped cake. Trees were chocolate melts.

August 2006

Did a 2 layer round cake, frosted with funfetti frosting and then traced a template of Blue’s face and decorated with buttercream and a star tip.

February 2006

Cupcakes with blue frosting star tipped long. White melt chocolates for eyes with mini m-n-m’s on them and for the nose.

February 2006

Idea was from familyfun.com. The turrets are sugar cones coated in colored melted chocolate wafers and sprinkled with colored sugar crystals.

August 2005

I found this idea in a magazine and it was pretty simple overall.

February 2005

This was my biggest project yet - a Dora island palm tree cake! Again based off a Wilton cake but I added some Dora figurines I got at Walmart instead

February 2004

This cake was made using Wilton’s Blue’s Clues cake pan. Nothing too fancy here but a great beginners project! The cup cakes are pretty basic - just used a star tip to make the paw prints.