Happy 6th Birthday Adriana! June 2016

Johanna wanted a very specific cake for her daughter's birthday, and I couldn't wait to meet the challenge!  This party was for 100 people.  And it's a 7" round, 9" round and 12x12 square cakes.  She purchased the 10" cake stand, so we needed to make it work with that, along with the "look" of the cake she found and wanted to recreate.  The inside of these cakes are coconut, raspberry mousse, and chocolate cake.  The circles are covered in fondant and the square is buttercream iced.  The purple seaweed is gumpaste.  There are candy shells that I made and the pearls are edible as well.  The only thing you cannot consume on this cake is the Ariel candle on top.  The hardest part about making this cake was seeing my daughter react to it and wonder why it wasn't for her.  The surprise part about this cake (to me) was that the party was outdoors (poolside), so I wanted to be sure they could keep it inside for as long as possible before putting it out in the heat.  All in all, I was very pleased with the end result.

Happy Graduation! 2016

Patrice was referred to me by my brother to celebrate four graduations on one cake!  Here was her request: 
"It doesn’t seem critical to me that each of the names is connected to (or near) the specific college logo, but I will trust your artistic eye in creating some sort of happy decoration for the cake! I included logos to show you the colors, in case that helps. I am getting excited for the party, and this will be a special addition. Thanks.  Just to confirm, we are going with half chocolate cake, half vanilla and strawberries somewhere!"
Patrice was very trusting.  She was ordering this fairly blindly, as she had never tasted a cake of mine before.  I assured her that I use the best ingredients that I can...In this particular case it was too early for the strawberries in my garden to be ripe (they were there, but NO hint of red, what-so-ever).  However, I picked up 2 quarts of strawberries from Tendercrop.  Every cake I have made this year get the eggs from my chickens (one of the best additions, in my opinion)!  Again, about a week prior, I started with the gumpaste, which was specific and detail oriented.  I wanted something unique.  She could have gone anywhere for edible paper that layed flat on a cake, so I knew right from the get-go, I wanted to have them raised up and off of the cake.  I decided to take pictures showing how you achieve the two flavor look, going side by side.  The strawberries I incorporated by making a strawberry buttercream.  I cooked down the strawberries, pushed it through a fine strainer, and added this to the buttercream.  I then diced up strawberries and folded it into the cream.  For an outdoor event, you don't want anything cream based...mousses, whipped creams, etc, so I steered Patrice away from anything that would spoil.  This 12 x 18 that served 50 people. 

Happy 2nd Birthday Ben! May 2016

Ben's mom had a real creative foodie take on this cake for her son's second birthday.  She ordered a half chocolate cake with chocolate mousse.  The other half had a white cake with one layer of lemon mousse and the other layer with raspberry mousse.  She wanted it large enough to serve 25 people, with a little leftover.  This is a 12 x 12 cake, covered in buttercream.  I made the mickey plane out of gumpaste a week ahead so it would dry out.  The wings are held up by floral wire.  The tops and sides of the cake were airbrushed.  I like airbrushing because it cuts down on how much food coloring you're actually ingesting.  Gives the cake color without turning your whole tongue a different shade.  A challenging cake for me, with the elements and components, (and that I hadn't really worked with gumpaste in a while) but I was very pleased with the end result.

What started off as a "just because" cake... 2016

This cake started off as just a delicious cake for a Greek family.  Maria had tasted Neffy's Baby Shower cake and decided to place an order for her large Greek family.  She loved the cake so much, she wanted the same exact cake and flavors.  Here I'm just showing you what the inside building it looks like, and my daughter helping with the cake batter.  When the timing got closer, her daughter had an accomplishment to celebrate, which is how this cake got it's writing and decoration.  This 12 x 18 cake serves 50 people and I think it's wonderful to have cake just to enjoy it as a family.  Thank you for your order Maria!    

Neffy's Baby Shower April 2016!

 This is my FAVORITE photo of a reaction to a cake I've created.  :)

Neffy had a surprise baby shower and I decided to make a cake I've never made before.  It's a gluten free hazelnut cake for the top layer!  The filling was a raspberry mousse and the bottom layer was a cream of coconut cake.  Covered with buttercream and toasted coconut flake.

Happy 7th Birthday Aiden!

A sneak peek inside the oven...

 Aiden had a Ninja Turtle themed party and requested a cake to fit the theme.  I chose to do a chocolate chiffon cake, being that it's the summer and wanted to do something lighter.  The birthday boy chose a rich blackberry cream filling that came out great I thought.  The outside is vanilla buttercream that is airbrushed in an industrial style to go with the ninja turtle.  Since red is Aiden's favorite color, I chose to do the appropriate ninja.

Happy 4th Birthday Blake!

 A Thomas the Train themed sheet cake for a wonderfully excited little boy.  This was a white cake with chocolate mousse filling and a vanilla buttercream.  Thomas was made using food dyed marzipan covering rice krispie treat.  The train tracks were my favorite.  Shaved coconut flakes and piping on top of that.  The homemade isomalt was meant to give the element of water, since Thomas makes trips on the tracks by oceans on the island of Sodor.