Pink Ombre Cake

 

So ombre cakes are all the rage right now. In case you're not a cake world groupie like myself, ombre is a fancy word for graduated color. So when it was time for me to make a 21st birthday cake for my sister-in-law, I knew it was time to experiment with some color. My sister-in-law is as crazy about this style as I am and is always sending me pictures of beautiful ombre cakes she finds on the internet. I had some leftover pink fondant from the first birthday cake that I made earlier this month so I decided to go with a pink theme. First thing that I needed to decide was the type of flower I wanted to put on the cake. Since my sister-in-law is turning the big twenty-one this year I wanted to make something soft, elegant and grown-up. I decided on dogwood flowers because they were big enough that I wouldn't have to make a hundred of them to cover the cake and have a nice elegant look to them.

I made four different shades of pink, from almost white to a nice medium pink. I mixed some white gumpaste into the pink fondant to make the colors and to help them dry so they wouldn't droop on the cake. I only have three flower forming cups so I made three flowers a night for four nights in a row. It really helped me focus on getting them just right! Next I baked up three paisley chocolate cakes and then I mixed up about 18 cups of frosting. Way too much frosting! But it is better to have too much than not enough - it is hard to duplicate a shade if you run out. I'm sure it would be impossible when dealing with a graduated color cake! I stacked the cakes and frosted them with buttercream, light at the top and dark on the bottom. Then I mixed up some of the layer icing to make sure the borders added to the ombre effect. Last but not least I attached the flowers, starting with the darkest and ending with the lightest on the bottom.

Then I took a whole bunch of pictures because I love this cake! One of the better ones I think I have done up to this point. I put my camera into color accent mode for this last picture to really show of the color of the icing as it gradually goes from light to dark. It turned out beautiful. Happy birthday Abi! You have become a beautiful young lady over all the years I have known you!

Peyton's First Birthday

Last Sunday I received a phone call from my husband's best friend's wife asking for a first birthday cake for their youngest daughter, Peyton. May seem like a little late planning at first but the real deal was that they had tried to contact a bakery to do the cake several times and the bakery never returned their phone calls. Bummer. But at least I got to do the cake! I hadn't done one in awhile so I was gunning to get creative. I baked two 12" by 18" cakes (one chocolate, one vanilla) and frosted the entire thing in BC frosting. Peyton's mom had sent me a photo of the napkins she had bought for the party and I pretty much took the design and transferred it to the cake. Kneaded up some MMF, colored it according to the design and cut it out into cute shapes to decorate the cake. Then I made a mini version with the birthday girl's name on it and presto - cake and smash cake for 60 first birthday party-goers done in less than a week! I was pretty impressed with the turnaround on it myself, especially for how large it was in the end. Coming up at the end of the month is my annual back-to-back sister birthday cakes - stay tuned!

He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not Cake

 Valentine's Day practice cake complete! It's amazing how all the work that was put into this cake ended with a mere 20 minutes to put it all together into this beautiful creation! Let me go over the things that I have accomplished (and the things I have learned) from this cake...

1. Gumpaste Roses: I had an earlier post on these so I won't do a big repeat. Mission accomplished!
2. Covering cake boards in fondant: Originally I thought this was the stupidest thing ever so I refused to do it. Thought it was a waste of time, fondant and energy. I was wrong. I am trying to "up my game" as a decorator and that includes presentation - the cake board being a huge part of that presentation! I have tried covering cake boards in wrapping papers - no good. The grease from the cake and icing seeps into it. Fondant is sturdy and can be colored/ decorated to match the theme of the cake. Will be doing future work (and more challenging designs) with this.
3. Covering shaped cakes in fondant: Not that hard. Same as any cake - take your time and smooth from the top down!
4. Quilting: Going to need some work on this one. Pressure is key to making it look even and purposeful. The sides of the cake really need to be thought through to know which lines cross. The sides of the top of the cake turned out beautiful since that was about the point I figured out what I was doing... will be practicing more in the future since I really liked the end result.
5. Piped ruffle border: I practiced this one a lot on wax paper beforehand. I knew I was using black icing and there was one chance to get it right. Beautiful! Will be using a lot in the future! Next time I think I will try also piping over the top line with a bead border to give it a really finished look.

All in all a successful practice cake. Got to do a self-designed, simple yet dramatic cake. The color scheme is one I had been wanting to try for awhile now. Simple bold colors that really gave a clean professional look to the finished product. I chose to name this design the "He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not" Cake. Valentine's Day is definitely a holiday that brings on high emotions in both directions. I wanted to create something that included everyone in this holiday whether it was an I never want to forget or I can't wait to forget this day!

Monogrammed Snowflake Brownie Cupcakes

So we have a family dinner every Saturday night in my family... or I should say families. We rotate every other weekend between my family and my husband's family. This weekend is my husband's family's weekend and I was asked to bring something sweet. I wanted to stay away from Valentine's Day since I already have a cake in mid-design so I decided to do one of my favorite things - snowflakes! Lana and her cousin Elise just learned all about snowmen at the library this week so I just decided to keep the theme going :) Lana and I whipped up a batch of triple chocolate brownie cupcakes. Then I cut out some snowflakes and embellished each one with the first initial of a dinner guest. The extra cupcakes were topped with a secondary snowflake. Monogramming is very in right now (especially for weddings) so I figured this would be a good thing to have in my cake portfolio :) Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow... cupcakes of course!

Let Them Eat Practice Cakes!

The practice cake has officially begun! Here are the finished roses that will be the main focus for my February practice cake! What is a practice cake? It's a cake that lets me practice all those techniques in cake decorating that I have been dying to try! Since I don't have any cake orders this month it is the perfect time to create and execute a self-designed cake. My husband has been urging me to do this for the last 6 months. Since it's the only way I'm going to advance my cake decorating skills, I have finally seized the opportunity. Back to the roses... I am really happy at how they turned out. The roses themselves were not hard to do but the stems were a completely different story! My husband challenged me to forgo the traditional green paper wrapped floral wire and instead cover the wires in gumpaste to make the flower look uniform. It took several attempts to achieve this. And I don't even want to talk about attaching the leaves! Hopefully I will either get better at it over time or discover an easier way to accomplish rose stems and leaves. Stay tuned for the finished cake later this month!

The Challenges of Gumpaste Flower-Making...

This weekend I had some time to try fashioning some gum-paste roses. I have never made them before but would like to put some on the practice cake I am planning for February. They are a lot harder than I was expecting. I have made roses before using fondant but the gum-paste just seemed to be so much harder to use! It dries out a lot faster and the "glue" to hold them together is terribly messy. Above is the end product to my first attempt. I used the single petal method to make this rose, the Wilton instructions and I weren't getting along. I liked the color that I made but wished it had leaned more to the pink rather than the purple as it dried. The end rose wasn't exactly what I was shooting for - I wanted the rose to be more open - so the next morning I did another attempt...

 

I tried a marbled delphinium blue for the second flower. I left it slightly unmixed to give it a marbled, highlighted look. Very natural affect in the end I think. I attempted the Wilton method again and this time it sort of worked. This flower unfortunately  was dropped , crushing the center, and then I smashed it trying to get the petals higher than the middle part. Although I think I figured out the Wilton method this time around, I was not happy at all in how it turned out so I tried one more time...

Third time's the charm! This is how I expected the flowers to look using the Wilton method! Although now after all the work I think I prefer the first single petal style. This method gives the rose a more natural look but the single petal method gives it that crisp look - a clean perfected flower to place on a cake. This last rose gave me enough practice to really know how to soften the petal edges though and which sides to place on the flower to have them curl towards the center or away from the center. Hopefully my flowers for my February cake will be successful!

Jungle Dirt Cups

Not only did Elise get a super awesome Go Diego cake for her birthday but I also made her some jungle themed dirt pudding cups for our family birthday celebration. I simple whipped up some dirt pudding, spooned it in between two layers of Oreo crumbs and then slid them into some jungle cupcake wrappers and topped them off with giraffe toothpick toppers. Simple and easy, yet looks like you fussed!