A look at the past!

I've been pretty busy lately with work, family & friends, and of course baking that I'm still working on the posts of my latest stuff; but I didn't want to keep y'all waiting so I took to my file of past works and decided to share my favorites from here.
So without further ado here they are...

Weddings & Anniversaries

Last August I was asked to do a cake for a 50th Wedding Anniversary. Like most for this occasion, the color scheme was gold and ivory. The family wanted sheet cakes since they are easier to cut. The cake was a white almond cake with fresh pineapple filling, then iced in vanilla buttercream. I must say this has got to be my favorite flavor combination by far. I hand made all the sugar flowers (first time doing these I might add), the Calla lilies and roses were done in off white, ivory, and yellow gum paste. On some of the callas I dusted them with gold luster dust for the "Golden Anniversary" theme, the others were dusted with a light shimmer, gold pearl, and yellow dusts. The plaque was done in fondant and painted with a gold luster dust paint, then the edges were dry dusted for a faded in effect. Even the leaves had a bit of gold dust. It was super pretty.

Last June my friend Janie asked if I would do her wedding cake, of course I said yes. After some thought she decided to go with something elegant yet non traditional. I did two cupcake towers for the wedding, one representing the bride's cake and the other a grooms cake. For her cake there were 150 lemon cupcakes filled with a lemon cream, iced in lemon buttercream. They were then topped with a sugar daisy. Her colors were an array of spring shades so I made daisies in a light pink, fuchsia, lavender, and a light orange. On top of the tower was a 6" cake matching the cupcakes flavor with a simple scroll design. The grooms cupcakes were chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream and on top was a gum paste bow tie. The florist brought in flowers for the top of cake, unfortunately no pic of that.

Here is a close up of the groom's cupcakes. Did I mention I hand cut each of these suckers...cause I totally did!

This past September my cousin John Paul got married, but unfortunately I wasn't able to attend the wedding so I sent this up to him and his bride-to-be. This was a 12" carrot cake, his favorite, iced is cream cheese icing. I topped it off with a gum paste bow and plaque with their monogram. The colors of their wedding were pink and black so I dusted the bow with pink dust and went in and game some smokey highlights. The plaque was done in the same technique as the one in my anniversary cake except I used a black food marker and dusted the edges with more pink dust. On the actual cake i used a diamond impression marker all around and piped pearls at all the intersections. I was so pleased to hear that they liked the cake.

Cookies

These cookies were done for my cousin Nikki's birthday last November. She wanted a Cinderella theme party so to accompany the cake i made tiara and glass slipper cookies. The tiara's were iced in pink royal icing with pastel dragees and the slippers were iced in white royal icing with blue sparkle accents. She totally loved them!

These next cookies were done for a family friend who's business was hosting a casino night party. She wanted petit four desserts and cookies. The cookie design I opted for were small round cookies to resemble poker chips. I colored the dough in red, blue and green; cut out the small 1" cookies and then iced the centers with white royal icing. Then with my trusty food markers I wrote the company name on them as well as dollar values. These were totally a success, I want to have a casino party myself so that I can remake these.

When Janie got married I knew it would be the perfect time to bust out my bra & pantie/ bikini cookie cutters. For her bachelorette party I made 24 bra and pantie sets for the party, and if I say so my self they are fantastic! Along with them I make strawberry cheesecake cake truffles and sprayed them with pearl spray after they were dunked in white chocolate.


Usually during the holidays I like to make stuff and give to our neighbors so this past Halloween I did these sugar cookies. Ghosts, bats, pumpkins, and cats were done in vanilla and chocolate sugar cookies. Each box had 2 cookies of each design (one of each flavor). I think they came out super cute!


These cookies were done for a pasta dinner for a girls volleyball team. I personalized each jersey with the girl's name and jersey number, then added a dog paw on the lower corner. Initially I was only doing the jerseys for the girls but then thought it would be cute to add a small volleyball cookie to go along side it. Aside from these cookies I also did a cake for the dinner, figuring that the girls might not want to open their cookies and eat them.


The final cookie pic for this series is that of my first cookie bouquet. I two of these for my cousin's teachers to give to them during Christmas. There were 4 snowflake cookies decorated with white royal and colored dragees, then each cookie was outlined again with royal icing and white sanding sugar was sprinkled on top of the wet icing. I must say I do love doing these bouquets!


Celebration Cakes

I did this cake for my friend Roxann's birthday last year. It was a white chocolate cake with white chocolate ganache filling. It was then iced in vanilla buttercream and decorated with black fondant zebra stripes, which I hand cut. I then added some ribbon roses and fondant leaves for a girlie look.


Here is a present cake that I did for a girl's birthday. Chocolate cake with vanilla filling. All the decorations are fondant cut outs with a gum paste bow and gum paste stars dried on wires.


This was my first attempt at doing a doll cake. A coworker of mine was having a Snow White theme party for her daughter so she asked if I could come up with something for her. I don't have the Wilton doll pan nor did I want to go out and buy one, seeing how this was probably the only time I going to use it; so I opted for another plan. I baked 3 cakes one was in a bundt pan and the other 2 were 9" rounds for the bundt to sit on. At the time I thought it looked great, but know I would definitly do some carving on the dress, ah ceste la vi! In the planning of this cake I figured what would Snow White be without her Dwarfs? So a few weeks before I took to the Internet to find little figures of them, what I was envisioning and what I could find were totally different but I think I found a happy medium. I ordered these small pendants to place on top of flower cupcakes and placed those around the cake. Hope you like.

This is the cake that went along with the crown and slipper cookies. It was a almond cake with vanilla filling. I iced the bottom tier in blue vanilla buttercream and the top in while, applied the diamond impressions like I did on an engagement cake, and finally the frosting pearls in the contrasting colors. I think it came out perfect for a Cinderella cake. As for the figures, Cinderella and Prince Eric were purchased at one of the local bakery shops and the bird, Gus Gus, and Jacques came with a little set I picked up at Target. I love fairy tales!

This comic inspired cake was for my friend Michael. It was a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting (the decorator's recipe I have), then decorated with his favorite superhero emblems. The emblems were done with royal icing and left to dry overnight, I also did some word bursts and words to place on the cake. It was meant to resemble the old TV series of Batman, where when they would have the fighting scenes they would flash a POW, BAM, WHACK instead of the actual contact of fist to face.

This is a birthday cake I made last year for my cousin Robert, whose birthday is on Halloween...don't think I'm wishing death upon him people. For his birthday we had a costume party for him and so appropriately I thought a coffin cake would be perfect. The scull was a white chocolate piece I found at Target and the bones were formed from gum paste and dusted with black petal dust and cocoa powder. After icing the cake I allowed it to crust over and then went in with an knife to add the wood plank detail and with a ball tool added the nail holes. Dirt was crushed oreos.


Frankenstein was created a few years ago for a Halloween party at my friend Becca's house. He was created from 2 12x18" red velvet cakes that were carved to give him that squared jaw line. The scraps were then used to form the brow and nose as well as the eyes. Iced with a moss green buttercream, piping gel was tinted red for the veins in his eyes and piped into the cuts all along his face. For the bolts in his neck I used 2 tootsie pops and just covered them with regular foil paper. Becca had the idea of using red velvet cake so that when we cut into it, it would look like bloody flesh...disturbing yet delicious!


These are the petit fours that went along with the poker chip cookies for the casino party. 100 mini dice cake truffles were created.

Finally, here is the volleyball cake I made for the girl's team pasta dinner. This was the first time I actually used my ball pan to create a ball cake. Chocolate cake with...you guessed it vanilla buttercream, buttercream dog prints went up the front and down the back of the cake as well.


Here is the set up at the dinner.

Well I hoped you guys liked this entry. I think this is my longest posting to date, I know I'm exhausted! Have a great day y'all!

Luv,

-Chris-