Julie and Richard's Wedding Cake

This past weekend was not only Richard and Julie's wedding but it was also my birthday! Here is the wedding cake I made for them. I love the look of different designs on each tier. The flavors: 1st tier - pound cake, 2nd tier - chocolate, 3rd tier- lemon, 4th tier - carrot. It was iced with buttercream, covered in fondant and every other tier was "quilted". I did the details with royal icing because it hardens and always looks so smooth.

For my birthday, Dave gave me a brand new PINK camera!! I am super excited because I take so many cake pictures and now it is a lot easier to do so. This past summer, I lost my pink cannon camera on the way to Uganda. I was so sad beacause some of my best friends bought it for me for my birthday a few years back. Anyways, Dave replaced it and is is 12 MP!! Can you tell the difference in the pics? ;)

I often get the question "how do you deliver wedding cakes?" so here are a few pics of the process. It is not an easy task and I always needs a second set of hands (usually Dave). It is easier to transport them in an SUV, but since we don't have one, we have figured out how to do it in "Haley the Honda" (my Honda Accord). Dave used to do the driving, but since he is from NY and drives like a maniac, we have decided it is best for him to sit with the cake and for me to drive :)



top half in the front of floor board of my car





Me putting the cake together and making some last minute touches at the reception site



The bottom half in the back seat of my car (which weighed about 50 pounds!!)



The finished product!!



Happy Birthday Karoline!

This past Monday was my best friend's birthday. We have been best friends for 20 years!! I can't believe it. On Sunday, Dave and I threw her a birthday party. It was a a special treat that she happened to be home for her birthday because she now lives in the big city of Boston. She is attending Boston College and is getting her M.Ed. Educational Administration. I am so proud of her and can't wait to see what an amazing principal she turns out to be!!

I made her a banana cake with buttercream icing and it turned out super yummy. This was the first time I made a banana cake and everyone loved it. I always think of Kar when I see gingham (maybe it's cause we used to call her "Little Debbie"?) so I bought some gingham napkins from Target and made a little table runner with them (got the idea from Better Homes and Gardens). I was going to attempt to make a gingham pattern with fondant,but decided it might look better to use real ribbon so I just did the monogram out of fondant.

Here are all the guests eating Manicotti before digging into the cake! After the party, Karoline, Abby, Susannah and I spent some time flipping through our old highschool yearbook which brought back lots of memories!! I am so thankful for friendships that have lasted so long.

Monday morning (her actual birthday) I surprised her with a trip to the Tea Room in Wake Forest! When Karoline turned 10 she had a tea party for her birthday so I decided to try to "re-create" it for her. This place even had a dress up box. Soooo we got all dressed up with big hats, gloves and of course, PEARLS! It was so much fun...Happy Birthday Karoline with a K!!

Baby Blocks

This cake was made back in March but I wanted to post it because I recently made another set of block cakes. I made this one for my friend Kristen's baby shower (before she had sweet little baby Noah).

And here are the ones I made last week. They were a little more complicated because I had to treat them as a tiered cake. Also, it was raining, pouring, and storming during the whole process! I say this because the weather can really affect cake decorating. The fondant wasn't as firm and the buttercream was all over the place. Although I was a little worried, I received an update email and heard that it was a hit at the baby shower! Whew...what a relief :)

John Deere

Happy 2nd Birthday Ethan! This was a birthday cake for Ethan. He loves tractors so his mom, Leslie, asked me to make a 3-D tractor cake! Everything is edible - from the bales of hay to the big ole tires. It's so funny, I have made quite a few birthday cakes for little boys lately. I say it's funny because I have always thought having a little girl would be more fun because you get to do all the girly themed parties, clothes, etc. I am starting to change my mind and think boy stuff is just as cute!

Happy Birthday Husband Dave!

This past Friday was Dave's 29th birthday. I can't believe this is his last year of his "20's". He is gettin' up there so I decided to make a cake to bring back his childhood days. Darkwing Duck was Dave's favorite cartoon growing up. He even has quite a few episodes on DVD! Since being married, Dave and I have spend a few Saturday mornings popping in some of those DVDs. You can't watch Saturday morning cartoons without your PJ's, a comfy couch and a bowl of Lucky Charms :)

The cake was a new recipe - triple chocolate! I covered in it buttercream and fondant and had so much fun forming Darkwing. I really like out the little night cityscape turned out! I think it would be really cool to eventually make a whole "city" themed cake.

On Friday night I threw a big birthday party for Dave. 20+ of his closest friends came to help up celebrate! We had so much fun having everyone over. It has been quite a while since we have had any sort of get together cause we have been working non-stop on updating our kitchen. We've noticed how the dynamics of get togethers have started to change. Now we have an assortment of single friends, married without children and married with children. We love that there are kids around now!! It is so much fun to have our "little friends" around. Here is a pic of Dave and Braden. Braden is in Dave's group at Awana and we have become close with the whole Barbour family! We love spending time with them and thank them for letting us share in their kid's lives.
Early that morning I surprised Dave with a "doughnut cake". Dave LOVES Dunkin' Donuts so I have started a birthday tradition for him where I get a dozen doughnuts and stack them up in a big ole tower with candles. This year I didn't have time to snap a pic before he blew out the candles because they started to catch the doughnuts on fire.


Here is this year's pic. What's funny is that he is wearing the same shirt! I just noticed as I posted the pics. Maybe he thinks the shirt makes him look younger?! JK. I sure do love my 29 year old husband, even though he likes Dunkin Donuts better than Krispy Kreme!

Rainy Daze

Yes, I'm in a rainy daze and I love it. I have lots to update on my blog and a rainy day is a perfect time. I'm sitting here at Borders with one of my bestest friends and college roomie, Dianna. She is the one who encouraged me to start decorating cakes and has been cheering me on ever since. Anywho, I am enjoying a cinnamon coffee, a chocolate chip cookie sample and doing a little people watching (another hobby).
Ok, since I have been slack in my recent cake posts, there were be quite a few updates! This was a small cake a made for Kathryn. She has been a BIG supporter of my cake business - thanks Kathryn! She is always giving out my name and it is such a confidence boost to have people recommending me. She ordered this cake for her and her friend's birthday and they brought it to a birthday tailgate right before a concert. So fun! I actually covered this one in just buttercream becuase I knew I would be doing a lot of the decorating with fondant. Yummy :)

J.E.'s Monkey Birthday Bash!!

I have lots to share with you today! Whitey, J.E.'s mom, called me a few months ago to place an order for J.E.'s BIG first birthday. She sent me the invitation (loved it!!) and asked me to base everything on the invite. Here's the invite from http://www.polkadotdesign.com/






Here is the cake for J.E. to eventually smash...it is covered in buttercream and the monkey, stripes and bananas are all fondant. We decided on buttercream so it would be easier for J.E. to smash it.








Whitney also wanted 30 chocolate cupcakes with monkey heads on top. Here is the big army of monkeys:





To go with the whole monkey theme, I made little bananas out of fondant to top another 30 cupcakes. I painted them with brown food coloring to make them look more realistic.



And last but not least, here are some banana-shaped sugar cookies! I have never had an order of cookies before and I really enjoyed making them. I iced them with royal icing so they would harden and I could paint the brown spots on them. They turned out yummy and I had some leftovers for Dave to snack on :)

Hockey

I think the best part of making this cake was getting to see Jasmine! Jasmine is Aaron's wife and we used to work together when I interned with Crusade. We hadn't seen each other in about a year! It was great to catch up with her!
Aaron loves to play hockey and Jasmine surprised him with this cake at the big birthday party she threw him. This cake is covered in fondant and I painted food coloring to make the the wood look real. I am really into painting my cakes recently! I guess it is the artist in me :)

Safari baby shower cake

Here is my latest creation...a Safari themed baby shower cake for a little girl. I loved these little guys!! This was a chocolate (yummy) cake covered in buttercream and fondant. This past weekend my brother -in-law, John, and his wife, Christine, came to visit us. John couldn't resist jumping in one of the pics :) Hey guys!! We miss you a ton already and please come back very soon. Thanks for being some of the few people who read my blog!!

Goodbye Karoline and Happy Birthday Dave!

These two cakes were made for my best friend, Karoline's, goodbye party. I can't believe she moved to Boston over a year ago! She is a big NC State fan and is now attending Boston College. I miss her a ton-o-rama, but I am also really proud of her!!

I made this soccer ball cake for my hubby! In about a month I will be making him another b-day cake.... he is getting soooo old. I also made some sport cupcakes to go with this cake (baseballs and basketballs) but sadly I don't have a picture. Happy 28th Birthday Dave (a year later)!!