Tag Archive for Designer Cakes

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: , , ,

An Eating Rainbow

January 8, 2010 / Abbi / 2 comments

“Butterfly in the skyyyyyy…I can fly twice as hiiiiiiiigh.
When I bake, I make a cake….an eating rainbowwww”

Okay, so it’s a Reading Rainbow, not an Eating Rainbow, but I couldn’t resist…I had to get your attention somehow! ;)

This is one of the first cakes I made in my Wilton decorating class. The pattern was cheesy, but we all had to do the rainbow, and man, did we get GOOD at making stars!

Rainbow

I also like the zig-zag technique we used for making the clouds. I’m still waiting for a chance to use that technique again! I knew I would be giving this cake away after class, so I put my friend’s name on it in case she would try to re-gift it. Ha! It was also a good opportunity to practice writing in dots (writing with icing is still one area where I’d like to get more practice.)

This was also before I learned the importance of photographing your cakes from all different angles. Live and learn, right?

Category: Designer Cakes / Tags: , ,

Neapolitan Cake

December 24, 2009 / Abbi / No comments

Do you ever lie awake at night, trying to fall asleep, but instead are bombarded with ideas for new projects, solutions, experiments to try? That happens to me often. (Or at least it did before I became pregnant a couple months ago. Now, the second my head hits the pillow, I’m pretty much out.)

The following cake was created from a crazy idea I came up with while trying to fall asleep one night. I wanted to do something different…a dessert that would focus more on the cake than the icing. So I created the Neapolitan Cake!

Most everyone is familiar with the famous “Neapolitan” combo: Strawberry, Vanilla, Chocolate, but I’d never seen it done as a cake.

I made each tier a different flavor and covered the edges with buttercream rosettes.

tiers2

I didn’t frost the sides because I wanted to reveal the flavor of each layer rather than masking it with icing.

tiers

I love the top-view of this cake…looks “wooly”…and sugary sweet. :)

wooly

I do love me some rosettes. They are such a simple yet elegant addition to any cake.

rosette

Category: Designer Cakes / 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: , , , ,

University of Oklahoma Groom’s Cake

December 11, 2009 / Abbi / 5 comments

Before football season even began this year, OU was on my mind. As you can imagine, just thinking of OU is a disturbing idea in our household, as I am from Nebraska (Go Huskers!) and my hubby is a huge OSU fan. But sometimes you make sacrifices to help a friend, and since my buddy Nick was getting married and wanted an OU groom’s cake, think of OU I did.

I’m more of a golfer than a footballer, so I found this sweet photo online that I could use to get the proportions of the design fairly accurate.

football

After baking two chocolate layers and stacking them, I carved them into a football shape using my trusty bread knife and set to the task of icing the whole thing.

working

Here’s a glimpse of the base coat.

basecoat

I used homemade marshmallow fondant to construct the laces. I was really pleased with how well they turned out. I also used strips of fondant for the stripes on either end of the ball (not shown, see below).

stitches

Next, I used piped stars to create the OU logo (while simultaneously attempting not to feel like a traitor to the real Big Red back in NE. :) )

ou logo

To finish off the edges of the cake, I added some green ‘grass’.

grass

I was really pleased with the final result. I later found out that Nick and Mary received lots of compliments on this cake at the wedding reception–the main one being that it was even better than their professionally-made wedding cake. Wow! I was flattered to hear that!

footballcake

Nick and Mary, thank you for allowing me to be a special part of your big day. All of God’s blessings and happiness to you both!

–Abbi

Category: Challenges, 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: , ,

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: , , ,

Baby Dax’s Cake

November 19, 2009 / Abbi / One comment

I was asked to make a baby shower cake for Lyndi and her soon-to-arrive son, Dax.

The invitation was a mint green with brown and white polka dots, so I used that design as the inspiration for my cake. I made a two-tier cake (top tier vanilla, bottom tier chocolate) with classic buttercream icing tinted pale green.

I’d been wanting to try my hand at using fabric ribbon on a cake, so I did some research as to what I would need to do to make it food-safe. Once I gathered that info, the next trick was to decide how to disguise the ribbon’s seam.

ribbons

I wanted to make some sort of plaque with Dax’s name on it, so I used Candy Melts! I used my computer to print out the perfect letters, then placed wax paper over the top and traced the letters using melted white chocolate. While the letters set, I poured milk chocolate into shallow rectangular molds. Before the chocolate bars set completely, I arranged the white letters.

chocbars

The little chocolate bars covered the seams perfectly!

babybar

Even better, I’d discovered a new way to ‘write’ on a cake!

cover

The final product:

cake

Congratulations, Thompsons!

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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