Cookies & Cake For Valentine's Day

I made this cake for a Valentine's Day Tea Party and the cookies were for my granddaughter to give away at school. For the cookies, I first piped around the edges, then filled each cookie with the glaze. We then drew the designs using a toothpick and different colors of glaze. It was a lot of fun! I'll definitely be doing more of these.

School Teacher Cookie Bouquet

This is another project I did a couple years back and didn't know I had a picture of. I made this cookie bouquet for a school teacher friend at the end of the school year. She loved it! In fact, I don't think she ever ate it - she asked me if there was something she could spray on it to make it last longer!

This was only my first or second bouquet. Notice how thick the cookies are! I was afraid that the sticks wouldn't stay in if I made them any thinner. I now make them thinner and if I feel the stick needs to be sturdier, I use royal icing to cement it in place.

I later added ribbon to the front to finish this bouquet off (not shown).

Fondant Shower Cake

I made this shower cake about three years back when I first started doing cakes, but just recently found a picture! It's a 6" and 10" square covered in fondant and decorated with fondant hearts and satin ribbon. It had four decorative silver hearts, but one is missing in this picture.
I've learned a lot since this cake and it's been a fun journey!

Train Cake For Thomas The Train Party

I made this train cake a for a one year old's birthday Thomas The Train party. It's out of one of the Wilton fondant books (same one as the dump truck from a previous post). Everything on this cake is made of fondant. A very simple cake to make.

This pic was taken at home before I delivered and set it up. Once it was set up, I added large marshmellows for steam.

Dump Truck Cake

Here's a dump truck cake I made for my great-nephew a few months back. Its' out of the Wilton fondant book, only I changed the colors up a little. I tried to show each step with pictures. It was fairly easy to do - just took a little more time than most of the other cakes I've made. And this one was completely edible - no crafting foam!

One change I will make when I do it again: the wheels look like they belong on a motor cycle instead of a truck! I should have made the tires wider with smaller hubs.

Decorated Cookies

I made these cookies for my sister's 40th birthday party. It's not a great picture - I forgot to take one and got this one from someone else. These are sugar cookies covered in a glaze icing. The shapes are: a dress, a hat and a purse. I will make the recipes available in a later post.

Strawberry Shortcake Cake Minus The Green!

I did this cake for a first birthday party this weekend. The party theme was Strawberry Shortcake. My customer said there wasn't any green in the decorations she was using, so she wanted me to leave it out on the cake. Strawberry Shortcake without green??? So I did what she wanted, only to find out when I got there that she just thought there wasn't any green!! In my opinion, it would have been much cuter had it included green dots and stripes. Oh, well.

Once again, due to my flight being cancelled because of the ice storm in our part of the world, I lost a day in my week and that was the one day I had to do my fondant. So, I had to improvise. The dots, stripes and letters are made from craft foam. The curlies around the bottom and on top are curled ribbon. The customer provided the candle.

Simple Groom Cake

I also made this Groom Cake for my daughter's wedding. It was very simple. I made a two layer cake using 14" pans which I covered it with buttercream as well as a single layer 6" cake. I used a sheet of black foam to make the tuxedo. I cut each top edge to make the "V" when it was put on the cake. I then attached it with buttercream, added black fondant buttons and a bow.

I cringe when I look at the top of the cake! I do a much better job of smoothing the icing now. This cake and the wedding cake in the previous cake were made just a few months after I completed the Wilton cake decorating course.

Sparkly Blue & Silver Wedding Cake

This cake was made for my daughter's wedding by my sister-in-law and myself. It was my first attempt at a wedding cake and I was overwhelmed!! I would not recommend the mother of the bride doing the wedding cake if she is also coordinating the wedding! I had previously arranged for help if I needed it and I did! I baked the cake, made the decorative arrangements, and iced the bottom two layers. My sister-in-law then took over and iced the rest of the cake, put it together and added the arrangements and ribbon. A real joint effort!

The bottom layer was a home-made marble cake recipe that wanted to fall apart. The other layers were made from box cake mixes, and all were frozen beforehand. The wedding was blue and silver and we had some trouble getting the right shade of blue but it turned out pretty close. The arrangements were made out of floral picks which I picked up on chearance at Michael's and Hobby Lobby after Christmas. I made these well ahead of time.

I used 16", 14", 12" and6" inch pans. I had intended to use smaller plates for the two top layers so they wouldn't show, but I failed to explain what I wanted to do to my sister-in-law, so the plates were showing. However, using smaller plates may have created a balance problem, so that may be the only way it would work.

As I said, I was overwhelmed by this experience, and it scared me off making any more wedding cakes - until now, two and a half years later! I'll let you know how my next experience goes.

Simple Flower Cake

Here's another cake I made for another granddaughter's birthday this summer!

With this party, there was no theme other than bright-colored napkins and plates with a vibrant balloon design. I had a short amount of time to decorate, so I went to the store with an open mind. These vibrant flowers jumped out at me so I bought them on impulse thinking I could incorporate them somehow with the table decorations. This is what I came up with instead.

With a cake like this, you could use several different colors of plates and napkins separately or mixed together.

This cake was made using a ten inch cake for the bottom and a six inch cake for the top. I used the push-in type pillars for the top layer. Both cakes were iced with standard white buttercream icing. I put a shell border around the bottom of both cakes, though you couldn't see it after I added the flowers. I used ribbon in coordinating colors on each layer to finish it off.

This is just another idea of a simple cake a beginner decorator can put together rather quickly.