Cakes by Steph

This cake was a labor of love for my mom and my little sister, Kelsey.   My mom graduated in May with her Master’s degree and my sister graduated from high school in June.  So proud of both of them!   Their party was this weekend and I had seen a cake done in this structure last year some time.  I loved how fun it looked so I sweet talked my older sister into helping me and we planned out the design last week.  Then spent over 4 hrs decorating it together.  The top two tiers on this cake are fake cake because they didn’t need quite that much cake for the party – however this type of cake can be done with all real cake.  Its all a matter of physics people   All of the tiers are 8″ squares, covered in fondant.

They loved the end result so that made us happy as can be!   Hope you enjoy it too…

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This cake was made to celebrate the birthday of my mom’s coworker.  He likes beer from what I’m told   So here is a big mug of … cake   And no – it doesn’t taste like beer   This cake is about 6″ in diameter and 8-9″ tall with a gumpaste handle.  Cheers!

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My little sister turned 18 last week and we celebrated her birthday party this weekend!  She is all about fashion, design and shopping (and her cell phone   ).  This cake was all about her.  My older sister and I designed and created this together – another fine S&S creation   Some details…

The purse and the shopping bag are cake, covered in fondant.  The tissue in the gift bag is gumpaste.  The handles on the purse are fondant as are all the decor – except the piping…which Shelly painstakingly piped for THREE hours!  She has a cramped hand now   But she did a great job!  Meanwhile I put together the gift bag and dress model.  The model is all fondant that I sculpted and then made a fondant dress for.  It is embellished with some piping.  We finished off the “Louis Vuitton” handbag with both tan and gold painted embellishments (including a zipper pull that Shelly embossed with a LV logo.  Its all about the details, folks   The shoe and cell phone I made a few days earlier from gumpaste.  They are painted with luster dust to shimmer.

In the end it took us just about all day to do this cake….lots of putzy time (and kids interrupting) went into this!  But well worth it.

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This is March’s birthday cake for my husband’s work.  Two days after St. Patrick’s Day so we did a themed cake.  The pot is cake, covered in fondant, base is cake with icing.   The only things non edible are the coins ~ just didn’t have time to make something.  But its all good.  The rainbow is gumpaste.  The base cake is 10″ square to give some size reference…

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Here’s another variation – similar to one I made recently but with some awesome lime green added in! This is a great big cupcake cake.

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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.

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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.

Click an image for a larger view…

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Here is another creation for my hubby’s work ~ turkey cake!  Made up of cake and 4 waffle ice cream cones   “Stuffing” is cut up cake – lettuce is … well real lettuce   This cake went really fast and turned out better than I had thought it might LOL

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I was going to title this post “the great pumpkin” ~ referencing the Charlie Brown movie ~ but then I decided that sounded kind of conceited LOL  Though I am happy with the outcome and the fact that it went together very quickly.  This festive pumpkin was made with 2 bundt cakes and then covered in fondant.  The leaves/stem/vines are all fondant too.  I also added some petal dust to accent the pumpkin.

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Ahoy thar ~ this be the pirate ship SS Halderand!  And along with that ~ another S&S Creation   (and Halderand is a mix of our two last names   ).  My sister came over this morning to help me deck out this cake.  I had it carved & base iced and we went to town.  Each board is individually cut, wood grained and placed on the cake.  Took shorter than I thought it would (which is great) but even at that with the cake carved & iced it still took us 2.5 hrs to do the actual decorating!  So everything on there is fondant with the exception of the sails, which are gumpaste with – of all things – pirate tattoos affixed on them!  They are fastened to dowels.  This was really fun to make…

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Today we celebrated the college graduation of my cousin (in law   ) Nick.  His wife (my cousin) wanted a funky cake and requested a topsy turvy cake based on the invite colors/pattern they used for the party.  This was my first topsy turvy and lots of lessons learned.  I want to send a big thank you to a fellow cake-buddy, Jeanne from Well Dressed Cakes for the great instructions she gave me to help me pull it off.

The cake itself is 4″, 6″, 8″ but each layer is carved to taper in at the bottom.  Each layer is also 3 layers high (standard cake is 2 layers).  They are fondant covered, with fondant accents and wires with fondant balls on the top.  The words around the middle tier were taken from the invite and say “inspire”, “dream”, and “believe”.  This was another S&S inspired creation – kudos to my sista for helping me come up with the designs for it and she helped with the actual decor as well and gave me moral support when the original top tier was falling apart in my hands (I later redid that entire tier)

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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

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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

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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).

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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.

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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.

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Made this today for labor day and my FIL’s bday. All cake except “beef” part is brownies…cheese/lettuce/tomato/onion are fondant. Watermelon is chocolate cake covered in fondant!

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Made for a friend for her 40th bday, 70′s themed party! Colors were inspired from the retro ribbon I found. All fondant and the topper is gumpaste.

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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.

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Cake for memorial day/me and hubby’s bday…

And this is before putting the star explosion in

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Present Cake ~ all fondant…

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

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April 2007

Basketweave with chocolate icing. Rope border on top and bottom. Green icing grass & malted egg candies inside. Handle was made with chocolate royal icing with a bent hanger as a “frame”.

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February 2006

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

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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

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