Tag Archive for Birthdays

Spider-Man Cake

January 22, 2010 / Abbi / No comments

I think we’d all admit that no kid’s birthday is complete without a theme cake, right?

Well, who better to help you turn this age…

4

…than this superhero?!

spiderman

Amy contacted me for some party/gift giving help. 1: she wanted to have a custom journal made for a gift. 2: her son was turning four and only likes Spider-Man. Nothing more, nothing less. Spider-Man. No questions asked. Aren’t 4 year olds great?! :)

So, I spent some time creating a custom-made Spider-Man cake…better than the regular ol’ sheet cakes you buy with the decal stuck on top, no?

I used homemade marshmallow fondant to create his spidey eyes and layered them on top of rich, dark chocolate icing.

eye

I used Candy Melts (dark cocoa flavored) to create the spider emblem on his spandex suit.

spider

And the edge was finished off with a row of chocolate icing beads.

beads

Happy Birthday!!

Category: Designer Cakes / Tags: , ,

Girlie Guitar

January 15, 2010 / Abbi / One comment

A couple years ago, I made a 1st birthday cake with a Rockstar theme. I recently got a request to do another guitar cake–for a girl this time–a girl that was having a Hannah Montana party.

Naturally, after being cut to the correct shape, girls’ cakes start with a base coat of pink icing:

basecoat

I added details in purple to make the cake truly “Hannah-ish”.

purple

To complete the guitar, I used chocolate icing for the frets and screws. All the details were made from homemade marshmallow fondant (which tastes much better than the store-bought kind).

guitar

All of the fondant pieces were brushed with a faint gold luster dust to give them a nice, girlie sparkle. Here are the tuning pegs:

tuning pegs

The pickups:

pickups

The knobs:

knob

And a monogram for the birthday girl herself. A true rockSTAR.

mikala

And THIS is the best part…seeing a child’s face light up when they see their custom-designed birthday cake. :)

bdaygirl

Here’s to many more happy, happy birthdays, Mikala!

Category: Designer Cakes / Tags: , , ,

#5: Brownie Cupcakes

January 5, 2010 / Abbi / No comments

In September, I started a cupcake adventure. If you haven’t read about it yet, you can do so here.

***

This is the third batch of cupcakes that was made for my mom’s birthday: Brownie Cupcakes!

And there’s no denying that once out of the oven, they definitely looked more like brownies than cake. And, boy, did they smell good!

brownies

Each one was frosted with a fudge icing and topped with a walnut half.

browniesingle

I loved using all the different colored papers for this batch…it made a simple cupcake so playful. You can get fun papers like these (as well as sprinkles, sugars, packaging, etc.) at Bake It Pretty or Confectionery House.

browniegroup

I’d like to try making these again sometime, but doing them like the coffee house Cuppies & Joe does: With a dollop of caramel on the top instead of icing. Mmm.

As the year 2009 draws to a close, I’ve made some headway on this crazy adventure. I started with 113 recipes on the to-do list, and now I’m down to 89 (24 done!). I’m hoping to finish at least another 20 batches before Baby Meadows makes his/her appearance in early July (or late June, if my mom’s guess is right!), so we’ll see how that goes. :) Wish me luck!

What was your favorite dessert in 2009? Something you made? Something you tried in a restaurant? Any baking/cooking goals for 2010?

Category: Cupcakes / Tags: , , ,

#3: Black & White Cupcakes

December 29, 2009 / Abbi / One comment

In September, I started a cupcake adventure. If you haven’t read about it yet, you can do so here.

***

This is the second batch of cupcakes that was made for my mom’s birthday: Black & White Cupcakes. According to the book, these are a familiar dessert to native New Yorkers (anyone?), but are usually in cookie form, and not cupcakes.

These cupcakes proved to be very tedious. You make two batters and place a spoonful of each into every cupcake paper.

bwbatter

And after they are baked and cooled, you make two batches of icing, one chocolate and one vanilla and decorate each one using reversed-out icing. Whew. Just thinking about all the work it takes makes me tired! :)

bwsingle

Plus, the little dots proved to be tricky to do without a piping bag (which probably wouldn’t have worked well anyway, considering how runny the icing was). Even so, the final product looked pretty neat.

bwgroup

Category: Cupcakes / Tags: , , ,

#77: Thanksgiving Carrot & Cranberry Cupcakes

December 22, 2009 / Abbi / One comment

In September, I started a cupcake adventure. If you haven’t read about it yet, you can do so here.

***

The next several batches of cupcakes you’ll see on the blog were made at my parents’ house over Thanksgiving. For her birthday, my mom requested several batches of cupcakes that she could take to the school where she works.

As it turns out, I didn’t get a lot of pictures of the process. I wasn’t feeling very good thanks to Fetus Meadows and I wasn’t really on top of my game where baking and photographing was concerned. Excuses aside, let’s get to the cupcakes!

The first batch was “Thanksgiving Carrot and Cranberry Cupcakes”, which included the obvious (carrots and cranberries) as well as walnuts and all sorts of yummy spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger).

Look at that batter! All those yummy bits!

batter

These smelled AMAZING and looked beautiful the moment they were pulled from the oven. Mmm.

baked

Yum! What’s NOT to love about cranberries?!

bakedsingle

Once cooled, the cupcakes were frosted with a spiced cream cheese icing and decorated with candy corn. ((Word to the wise: if you are decorating cupcakes with candy corn, don’t do so until the day of…otherwise the colors bleed into the icing. Oops.))

single

So cute. And perfect for celebrating a fall birthday!

corned

Happy Birthday, Mommy-O! Love you.

Category: Cupcakes / Tags: , ,

Arr, Matey!

December 18, 2009 / Abbi / One comment

Here’s a “blast from the past” cake…I made this over a year and a half ago for a friend’s little boy. He was turning 4 and the theme for his party was “Pirates!”

I started with a 12″ two-layer chocolate cake, frosted a pale peach/skin tone color. I used a red fabric bandana and a plastic eye patch to complete his look.

Pirate 1

I used tinted fondant for the pirate’s ears and gold earring (wish I’d known about luster dust back then…it would’ve been really awesome to make it actually look like GOLD!)

Pirate 3

Buttercream icing comprised the pirate’s facial features, goatee, and mustache. I used the grass piping tip to give it a somewhat realistic ‘hairy’ look.

Pirate 2

This was a fun cake to make! It’s rare I get to make cakes for boys’ birthdays…not really sure why that is. And as simple as this cake was, it’s still one of my favorites. Just seeing it puts a smile on my face. :)

Category: Designer Cakes / Tags: , , , ,

Pop Goes the Birthday Cake!

December 4, 2009 / Abbi / 2 comments

Several months ago, I experimented with making cake pops. And since I had just been asked to design a cake for a brother/sister birthday party (Carter was turning 3, Campbell was turning 1), I figured it would be fun to incorporate them into the design!

firstpic

I used primary colors for the cake decorations, and did swirls and stars.

swirl

The cake started out simple enough, but I wanted to give it a little more POP!

cake

So I added some curling ribbon to the cake pops and stuck them around the cake

redpop

cakewpops

Have I mentioned how much I love my camera? I love taking macro shots like this:

greenpop

The primary-colored stars made the perfect border for both the big cake and Campbell’s smash cake.

stars

I made a 4″ round for Campbell, the little sweetie, to smash with her fingers and face! As you can see, it was a little bitty cake. so cute!

campbellsmash

To the Moores, thanks for asking me to make the birthday cake for your children. It was fun to experiment with using the cake pops as decoration. Glad you loved it, too! :)

Category: Designer Cakes / Tags: , ,

A Book for Ann

December 3, 2009 / Abbi / No comments

Not long ago, Amy, an old high school friend whom I haven’t seen in years emailed me via Facebook (isn’t cyberspace crazy?!) Her sister Ann’s birthday was coming up and she wanted to know if I could make a special book for her.

I always start by asking the client what the recipient’s favorite color is. Ann’s is blue, so I started there.

I had a piece of blue flocked (fuzzy) paper, and it looked great against white, so I used white marquee letters to spell “Ann” on the cover and a white satin ribbon as a bookmark.

front

Ann also likes white gold and diamonds, so I added a little sparkle to the spine using gem brads.

diamond

The bright white marquee letters really popped against the deep blue cover.

marquee

The inside paste papers were a simple speckled gray.

inside

Amy called me last week to let me know that they had ended up celebrating Ann’s birthday early, and the book had arrived on the exact day of her party. Amy didn’t even wrap the package…she just took it from the postman and handed it right to her sister! Glad it made it there on time!

Category: Books / Tags: ,

Giddy Up!

November 20, 2009 / Abbi / 2 comments

Sweet Jacelyn’s birthday party was going to be at a pony farm, so the cake was a horse, of course, of course. ;)

I started with an chocolate 11 x 15  sheet cake.

sheetcake

I made a horse template on the computer and sized it to fit the sheet cake.

stencil

Since the cake had been frozen overnight, it made cutting the shapes (mane shown here) a lot easier and less crumb-y.

cutting

Ta-Da!

cutout

This horse of a different color was PINK…

basecoat

…with chocolate piped details, including the flowing mane.

starthair

hair

The horse turned out pretty cutesy, but something just wasn’t right about his eye…

bugeye

So I added a brown M&M to give this horsey a little more focus.

eye

After picking up her cake, Jacelyn told her mom, “It’s too pretty. I’m not sure I want to cut it.” ha! Gotta love kids.

horse

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, JACELYN!!

Category: Designer Cakes / Tags: , , ,

Flirty Thirty

November 13, 2009 / Abbi / No comments

My friend Jessica was throwing a surprise 30th-birthday party for her husband’s cousin. The colors were hot pink and black, and she hired me to make the cake. She wanted something whimsical, and since I am totally against black icing (yuck), I used my beaded cake style and a spiral black and white cake platter to fit the theme.

wholecake

Even the fondant that covered the wires was hot pink!

fondantballs

Using beads is a great way to incorporate a color without having to use dark-colored icings. Here, I use both hot pink and black (with a little silver thrown in for kicks) to make the hanging pendants.

beads

Not only was the cousin surprised by the party itself, she absolutely loved her cake, as it was unlike anything she’d ever seen at the bakery. :)

wirecake

Category: Designer Cakes / Tags: , ,
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