Cake Pops!

A couple of weeks ago I lost my mind and volunteered to make gifts for all of the volunteers at our school. Turns out we had more than 40 volunteers this year!

I decided to attempt to make cake pops. This lady is the queen of cake pops, I even have her book.

It took a while to get the hang of things and find a good system. After a few delicious casualties, I had a pretty good system down. Each volunteer will be getting 2 cake pops and a handwritten thank you letter from the students.

In total, I made about 120 chocolate cake pops and only ended up eating about 5 myself :)

TITANIC!

This week I made a delightful cake for a wonderful little guy who just happens to LOVE the Titanic. My little friend Mekhi was turning 4 this week and he wanted a Titanic cake.

Thanks to my wonderful baking assistant who helped to cut out all those little white windows, we got this cake done and delivered before midnight on Tuesday night.

Happy Birthday Mekhi!

Diva Cupcakes

Last week I got a call from the receptionist at my chiropractors office. Let me just say, this lady is the sweetest thing in the whole world and the main reason we ever went to this chiropractor in the first place. She should be in charge of training all customer service employees!!

Anyway, apparently she is in a singing group and they were having a "Diva" party. One of the girls in her group had also recently got engaged. When I asked Jenny what she would like she said it was completely up to me!!

This is what I came up with. Teeny tiny purses, shoes and a little engagement ring on a pillow.

P.S. These less than stellar photos were taken using my iphone. If anyone knows of a used DSLR camera for sale, I am VERY interested!

Tea Party

This week was my current principal's retirement party. The plan was a very casual tea party. Well, it turned into a beautiful art gallery/tea party.

When I was trying to decide what I wanted to make I had to consider the very short amount of time I would have, how far in advance I would have to make the cake and Judy's personal style.

I started with two 8 inch round vanilla cakes and two 6 inch round vanilla cakes. After the cakes are baked they are frozen and leveled.

Next, the cakes were filled with Lemon Curd filling using Judy's own delicious recipe. The cakes were then lightly iced in vanilla buttercream.

To get the cakes as smooth as possible I use an ironing technique. I use extra smooth disposable shop towels and a little plastic trowel. After the icing has crusted I rub the trowel lightly, in a circular motion over the entire cake.

Next I covered the cakes in white fondant. At this point I also added 5 dowels to the bottom cake to support the weight of the top layer (forgot to take a photo).

At this point I was not too happy with how much of the base of the top cake I could see. I decided to add a pearl border around the base of both layers. This meant cutting out circles of fondant and rolling them into many, many, little balls.

VOILA!

 Finally, my favorite part, the decorating!!! I can not take all the credit here. I chose a design I had found on the internet and put in my inspiration folder. I chose it because it wasn't overly girly and had a little bit of retro flare.