Sunday, October 26, 2008

Farm Cake



This is by far my MOST favorite cake i've done so far. My neice and nephew were celebrating their 2nd and 4th birthday and they did so by having a party at Deanna Rose farmstead. (If you live in the KC area, you MUST go!) So, I created a farmland cake for them. I was up till 4am working on this, but it was all worth it in the end, for the entire party to huddle around the cake for a good 15 minutes examining it :) I even had a woman from another nearby party come up and ask if I could just make the farm set for her :)



I made these guys a few nights in advance. Made from Fondant/Gumpaste. Aren't they just the cutest?!?!














Barn and hay made from Rice Krispy Treats, covered in Fondant.














It's been a LONG time....

I've been absent for a while, I know! Things are WAY busy around here. We've got cakes and cookies almost every week, which is just insane that it's taken off so fast. I love it!




In the spirit of Halloween, here's some festive cupcakes & cookies we did for my good friend Linda at Floralyn. (she makes the BEST floral arrangements!), I did the cupcakes, and mom did the cookies.

The cupcakes were white and chocolate, filled with white chocolate mousse, and covered in vanilla buttercream. The skull, tombstone, and bats and moons were made from fondant.




















I just love Frankenstein - he's not so scary in cookie form!











And these cat cookies are just adorable, with black sugar sprinkles covering them. They Bling!

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Ladybug cake

For those that don't know, I am a member of Alpha Sigma Alpha sorority, and our "mascot" is the ladybug. I have ladybug everything... right down to a ladybug tattoo on my foot! :) I found this image on a flikr photostream that I subscribe to, and I just couldn't resist saying a big "AWWW!!" and posting it here. If you're a ladybug fanatic like me, and you have an upcoming birthday or shower, i'd love to make a cake like this :)



Image via Christie's Cakes

Saturday, June 21, 2008

Baby Shower

This weekend we had a baby shower for a woman who doesn't know if it's a boy or a girl, so everything was primary colors. I did three 6" baby block cakes - chocolate w/strawberry buttercream, white w/white chocolate mousse, and yellow w/lemon buttercream frosting. It was decorated with buttercream and fondant cutouts of daisies, ducks, and sailboats. My mom also made some adorable matching cookies, and two cookie displays.

I also found a neat trick: The baby bedding is supposedly black and white paisley decorations, so I wanted to incorporate that somehow. So, I found a neat paisley rubber stamp, and stamped on the decoration with white color. It turned out so neat, I think I will try it out with other different stamps.

Friday, June 20, 2008

Summer Fun Cookies

Mom is a rockstar at cookies... Seriously, how cute are these?! She made these for an office party - there were 9 suns, 9 flip-flops, and 8 beach balls. Makes me want to go to the pool!

These would be great for your 4th of July, BBQ, or pool party!

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Mint Cupcakes...Again


Yesterday we went to a BBQ hosted by our good friends Sara and Bryan, and of course I offered to bring dessert. I made up the popular chocolate mint cupcakes, and I also made up some 7up cupcakes with Strawberry frosting (with some fun flip flop picks I got from the drink mix aisle of the grocery store, and I cut off the dumb ball-thing that was on it - see below).

Before:
After:

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Bachelor Party Cake



Here's a cake that I made for my co-worker who is getting married this weekend. We had a surprise shower for him and his fiancee came, so I couldn't get too risque with it :)

Poles: pretzel rods covered with foil (I could have done fondant with dusting powder, but I took the lazy way out...)
Spotlights: Recees PB cups with some colored icing and clear sprinkles
Dancers: I found the dolls at my local cake supply shop!
Money, flames, bras, etc: Fondant


And here's cookies that Mom made... they were SO YUMMY!

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Candy Cake

Someone... anyone... PLEASE have a candy-themed birthday, because I really want to make this cake!!!! :) See the full image at the Pink Cake Box.

Wedding cakes, here we come...

Mom and I both had to create tiered cakes for our final cake class on Fondant and Tiered cakes. Here they are! The final class just happened to fall on my first wedding anniversary, and because we didn't save our top layer (eww), I just decided to make the whole thing over again :) Mom was going to create over 100 royal icing flowers for her cake, but stopped short around 50. I think it looks great as is!

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Mint Cupcakes

I woke up this morning craving some mint cupcakes... and I remember seeing some on a blog last week, and I added my own twist. These are chocolate cakes with mint flavored buttercream icing (tinted green). Then, I added grasshopper cookies to top it all off. Mmmm...

Make some yourself (or order them from me... hehe) and enjoy with a big 'ol scoop of mint ice cream :)

Yellow Doll Cake

Last weekend I bought the Wilton Doll Mold set and couldn't wait to use it, so I busted it out of the package and this yellow doll was the finished product. Not bad, considering this was the first time using fondant on an different surface than a standard cake.I didn't end up making the ribbons on the back of the cake, but I will do it if I actually had to give this to someone. I would also have put more detail on the front, and would have definitely used royal icing with those drop flowers - they were just too hard to move using buttercream icing. All in all, it was good!

Friday, May 16, 2008

A taste of what's to come


If we ever get around to selling our cakes/cupcakes/cookies. I have bought the domain www.sweetsnsuch.com, and I was bored the other night, so I started playing with the design - here's what i've got so far on the home page:

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

My new weakness


I do love cookies... and these are hands down my new favorite! They aren't too sweet, they're crunchy, and you really can't eat just three. :)

One cup of everything cookies (thanks to my grandma for the recipe :))

1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
1 cup crisco (BUT it's better with 1/2c crisco and 1/2c butter)
1 cup vegetable oil or canola oil
1 egg
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cream of tartar
3 1/2 cups flour
1 cup oatmeal
1 cup coconut (optional)
1 cup crispy rice cereal
walnuts (optional)
chocolate chips (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream sugar and crisco/butter, add in oil, add in egg. Mix in dry ingredients. Fold in rice cereal, walnuts, and chocolate chips. Place by spoonful on an ungreased cookie sheet for 13-15 minutes. NOTE: dark pans tend to burn more easily.... Use lighter pans. Bottoms will brown easily; place higher in the oven than normal. These also don't spread out as much, so you can place more than normal on a pan. Makes about 2-3 dozen cookies

Keep in an airtight container - but they'll get eaten fast!

Totally not cake related...


But David Cook is in the top two on American Idol! YAY!!!! He's gonna go all the way... but get those votes in!!! :)

Monday, May 12, 2008

Oh how I love (and hate) fondant

We're now in week 2 of our Wilton Course 3: Fondant and tiered cakes. Tonight was very busy, but we made a great looking cake. I really do hate fondant, I don't like rolling it out and coloring it, and I HATE that taste of it, but it is sooo easy to work with! It makes the cakes look so neat. We made a package cake tonight, it's below! I made the colors of the cake to kind of go with the flavors: A lemonade cake with strawberry filling! Yep, I replaced the water in the white cake mix with frozen lemonade concentrate, and I added in pureed frozen strawberries to the buttercream icing. We'll see how it tastes tomorrow when I take it to work. :)



Oh, and we learned fondant roses - I loved how they turned out! They look so much better than my icing roses :)

I'll post my mom's cake when she sends it to me..

Late post: Everything's coming up roses!

2 weeks ago, my mom and I finished our last of Wilton course 2, flowers and borders, and for the last class we made an oval cake with a basketweave border, and filled with tons of flowers from the past 3 weeks that we learned to make

On the left is mine, the right is my mom's. I didn't want to put on the birds, it was either lack of time or the ugliness of the birds... you decide.

Let's see... if I can remember off the top of my head we made:
Roses, apple blossoms, violets, primrose, daffodils, pansies, and mums....

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Update on the Harley cake...

Staying up till 3am to decorate cakes equals one TIRED girl... but will make two AWESOME cakes! The Harley Davidson cake turned out great! I wasn't as proud of the daisy cake as what I had in my mind, but it came out good, too. Everyone raved about the Harley cake - let's hope it gets some requests for future cakes! While I do like the "pretty" cakes, I definitely found that I love to do specialty cakes. I get to be much more creative with them. Onto the photos... Enjoy!

Harley cake: Yellow cake with double chocolate chip filling, chocolate buttercream icing.
Daisy cake: Bottom layer: white cake with buttercream filling; Top layer: White cake with lemon buttercream filling



Great tool!


In our cake class, our instructor had an awesome icing bag holder from Wilton, but is now discontinued. After class, mom and I went to Target for a few things, and on an endcap were a bunch of snow-cone making supplies.... including this snow cone holder. And they are PERFECT for icing bags as well! Go grab one for yourself, there's 4 in a box for about 5 bucks.

Wednesday, April 23, 2008

If I wanted to spend $35 on a shirt....

I'd get one of these cute shirts from Johnny's Cupcakes

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

Tattoo on the lower back??

This Sunday, I went to a passions party hosted by one of my good friends, so of course I had to bring along some cute cupcakes! My mom and I have started using every get-together as an opportunity to get creative and practice, practice, practice.

I had wanted to do bustier cupcakes that filled out the entire cupcake, and I found Whoppers that I thought would do the trick for the "girls," but it failed.

So, after about an hour of testing out different designs on the "bad" cupcakes (we had 11 to practice on - I only needed 13), we finally got the perfect "pair" :) And from two women who weren't graced with the "goods," I think we got it down pretty well!

The bustier's and thongs are all icing (the butts and girls are just a coupler without a tip on it), the bras are hershey's kisses (the peak cut down) covered in frosting, with sprinkle accents on them.


Gotta love the tattoo on the lower back. That was alll mom's idea. I love how the butt icing has dimples in it, too. We go for real-life in our kitchen :)

Mom, definately a bonding (and hilarious!) experience to make naughty cupcakes with ya.

BIG weekend this week. The in-laws anniversary is on Saturday, gotta get crackin' on the two-layer daisy cake and Harley masterpiece. Gotta get through the work week first, though...

Friday, April 18, 2008

daily inspiration.

found this quote and I just had to share...

"Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun." - Mary Lou Cook

Vroom Vroom

...if you were wondering, that's the sound of the KS Speedway. :)

Mom did this cake last night for her co-worker that loves Nascar.
8"oval cake
Yellow cake mix, Chocolate chunk filling, buttercream frosting and piped accents
Nascar cake toppers

Race Track is crushed oreos.



Great work, Mom!!

Late Post: Easter Cookies

My mom is amazing at decoraing sugar cookies... i'm not :) So, this easter she made easter cookies and created a neat display for the brunch centerpiece!




Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Cupcake Milestone!


My mom and I created, what I think to be, the CUTEST cupcakes for my grandma - she turned the big 75 on the 5th. We decided to give her an extra-special birthday cake - a cupcake tower filled with cupcakes in the themes of everything she loves: Sewing, quilting, playing card games, Farkel (dice game), and dominoes, eating JUNK FOOD (definitely where I got my sweet tooth), and dogs.

It took us 4 hours to decorate them, and only a two minor tip-overs on the 6-hour trip up to Davenport, IA (we highly recommend the wilton cupcake holder!), but she absolutely loved them. Here's the rundown of what we used:


Cupcakes
: chocolate and white box mix. Icing: Buttercream icing

Bottom Row... Hobby cupcakes...
Sewing cupcakes: thin layer of frosting, fondant scissors and bobbin, icing gel thread accent
Quilt cupcakes: all icing... Make a box and triangles, then just fill it in. Sprinkle accents
Dominoes cupcakes: almond-bark covered graham cracker with black buttercream icing accents
Farkel (Dice) cupcakes: cube-shaped fondant with black buttercream for the dots. By far the hardest to make. Oh yes, and I even looked at a real die to get the numbers correct :)
Deck of Cards cupcakes: fondant, red icing gel numbers. Remember to not use the ace of spades, that's bad luck :)

Second-from the bottom Row... Junk Food Cupcakes...
Most of these are pretty self-explanatory...
Popcorn cupcakes: wrapper is just printed out from a Word document, but put this on last. For the kernels, take mini marshmallows and cut them in half (hamburger-wise), then squish them back together again. I laid them out on wax paper and sprayed them lightly with Wilton Color Mist spray, so they weren't all completely covered. You could also use yellow marshmallows i guess...
Chex mix cupcakes - got the peanut butter chocolate lovers kind. They taste like puppy chow!
Candy cupcakes - set some mini hershey's on there and you're good to go.
Cookie Cupcakes - got the little individual packs of oreo, chips ahoy, and the keebler striped cookies.

Second-from the top Row... Dog Cupcakes...
I got this from the Family Fun magazine, or you can find them on Hello Cupcake (and their book has a ton more).

These were just too fun to make. I definitely loved getting creative and we brainstormed so much on trying to figure out what to use for each part! I look forward to making more of these! Oh, and Happy Birthday, Grandma! :)