Happy 2nd Birthday Emma!

Here is my sweet niece, Emma Grace, who turned 2 this past weekend and celebrated her big day at Chuck E Cheese! She is in love with fairies, princesses, Dora and anything girly. Her new favorite Disney movie is "Tangled" so I made her a Rapunzel birthday cake. In this post I am going to try to give you the "how to" in making a princess cake. I have been really slack on taking pics during the process of making my cakes, but actually took the time to do so with this cake. So here it goes....

I bought a cake pan made for doll cakes and a Rapunzel barbie doll. I usually don't like putting things on my cakes that I have not made/molded from fondant, etc. I want my cakes to be 100% created by me, but in this case I thought it might look cheesy if I made the doll out of fondant. So I set aside my pride and went to Target to buy Rapunzel. I had so much fun browsing the aisles of barbies and baby dolls. Don't get me wrong, I love my little boy, but I do think it would be fun to have a girl one day :) Anywho, I found "Punz" (this is what Emma calls her) and had a lot of fun spending a few days playing with her...

Here she is just hangin' out in the kitchen while I make her dress out of yummy chocolate cake!

Here is the pan that I baked the cake in. I was surprised how even it cooked given the shape.

I iced the cake with buttercream and then started the fun part of creating the dress! Added this lighter shade of purple fondant for the inside part of her dress and.....

I start to make some edible paint by mixing clear vanilla and food coloring. This is one of my fave things to do - painting cakes! Here I am painting away and getting purple fingers in the process.

And here I have added another piece of fondant for the outer layer of the dress. Just need to clean it and trim it up.

This is where I ran into a problem. I have learned through making cakes to allow time for trial and error! At first I though I could leave her legs on and stick her down in the cake...well she ended up being too tall so I decided to break off her legs. I thought they would easily pop back on like they did on my barbies when I was a kid but I was wrong. Apparently, Punz is a much better quality and she didn't like being torn apart. The doll was also part of Emma's present so I hate that I broke her. Sometimes I have to take extreme measures to make a cake look good!  

Do you like how I gave Punz a bathing suit?? Gotta keep the blog family friendly :)

And here she is in her new attire. I added a little "bling" (not edible) and added her bodice. I always use clear vanilla as a glue to stick everything on my cakes. You can do this process with any barbie and you can also buy generic dolls specifically made for this type of cake that come with no legs.

 Gotta run cause my lil guy is hungry! Have a great day.

Monogrammed Wedding Shower Cake

And...we're back! Landon and I have been busy getting to know each other so cake baking has been put to the side for a few weeks. In case you didn't already know, Dave and I are now the proud parents of Landon David Eshleman, born November 28, 2011. Here are a few pics of the little guy helping mommy bake a cake....

He is so precious and I cannot believe God has blessed us with him! Being a mom is definitely challenging, but my little guy makes it all worth it. I love him so very much.

I was so excited that I had someone put in a cake order this week! I have been wanting to get back into baking and decorating, but business slowed down a bit right before Landon was born. I can't wait to get more orders, so please let me know if you are in need of a cake anytime soon. Here is the one that Landon and I worked on together:

This is a vanilla butter cake covered with buttercream and fondant. Of course, the famous quilted look made it very classy! Landon did an excellent job being patient with me as I tried to juggle taking care of him while making the cake. He was such a trooper, especially when we went to WalMart at 7:30am only to discover that they no longer sell Wilton cake products!! Good thing Michael's is just around the corner. I hope you have a fabulous weekend and I hope to be back blogging with more cakes soon :)

Polka Dot Pumpkin

I love Fall. Fall is full of pumkin spice latte's, my birthday, the fair, and those cool evenings when I get to snuggle in the PJ's! Lately, I have been making a ton of clay pumpkins with my 5th grade students and they are turning out so cute. I would loe to start a blog one day with all of their art...they are quite talented kids and always surprise me with their creativity!
Anwyays, I have been in the pumpkin mood lately and my friend Stephanie asked me to make a 1st birthday cake for her little girl. The party was full of little girls dressing up and lots of pink and orange. Steph told me I could come up with anything and I love being able to do that! Anywho, here is the final product. I made the pumpkin shape by baking two bundt cakes, one chocolate and one vanilla. I hope the kiddos enjoyed it! Happy 1st Birthday Emma!

Quilted Pink Gerbera Daisy Wedding Cake (quite a mouthful ;) )

Hello again! Here are some pics of the most recent wedding cake I made. This is the last wedding cake I am making before Baby Esh gets here. If he is on time, we only have about 5 1/2 weeks to go!!

Sweet 16

I recently made this super girly and fun cake for one of my former students. She was in my 8th grade class a couple of years back and I can't believe she is already 16. She is quite a talented artist and I was so honored that she picked me to make her Sweet 16 cake! I am lovin' the girly colors and popular zebra print. Hope the party was so much fun!

Happy 30th Birthday Dave!

I can't believe my hubby is now the BIG 3-0! We celebrated last weekend with a few traditions and completed it with a surprise party to end his special day.

We started the day off with a dozen donuts from Dunkin'! For the past 3 years I have surprised Dave with a "donut tree" complete with candles. Usually, there are so many candles it gets pretty smoky so I settled for the number candles this year. Dave, please don't get mad at me for posting this pic...I know you have some major "bed head" ;) You're still pretty handsome to me!

Did I mention Dave had a "Saturday birthday" this year? Weekend b-days are the best ever! Anywho, Rebekah and I bought Dave this way cool remote control helicopter. He loves it, but Daisy sure doesn't. She gets so scared when we are flying it around the kitchen and runs to hide. Poor thing, it's kinda funny to watch though.

Next, we treated ourselves to Macaroni Grill! I wrote "Happy Birthday Dave" on the table to see if we would get anything free (even though we had cake back home) and they brought us a yummy molten cake. We love some free birthday treats. I had to sneak Dave out of the house so my good friend Abby could get everything ready for Dave's surprise party. We killed some time walking around the mall and headed home....

And SURPRISE! We ended the night with a surprise party at our house. Somehow I kept the cake and everything a secret....so I think it was a success. I have always wanted to make a "topsy turvy" cake and decided it might be fun for this year. I must admit, it was quite a challenge! I thought I could just cut the pieces diagonal and stick them on top of each other. Hmmm...reality check. Despite taking it apart, re-assembling it, and a few tears I got it to somehow work out and look "topsy turvy". I also tried a new flavor - cookies n' cream!

Happy 30th to my wonderful, sweet and handsome baby daddy! I love you!

Spa Birthday Cake

Rachel is our sweet neighbor who we met because our dogs became best friends!  She moved here with her family all the way from California and we quickley became friends with her family. We are sad to not have them as neighbors soon, but are sure we will stay in touch! Daisy won't be able to live without having regular playdates with Cosmo :)

Rachel has also been planning her Spa Birthday party for a while. She had a sleepover complete with facial masks and nailpolish. Oh to be 11 again!

Everything was edible and made out of fondant. The inside was a butter cake with chocolate buttercream icing. I have to say that this kind of cake is my favorite to make - 3D and girly.


Rachel's Spa Birthday Cake! Super girly and fun to make!



Rachel's monogrammed spa slippers

Happy Fall Ya'll!

Owl Cupcakes

The owl family...mamma, pappa, little girl and baby boy

So I finally have some time to catch up on some blogging! I am at Emerald Isle this weekeend and and so thankful for this time away to relax with some girlfriends before little Baby Esh gets here :)

These cupcakes were made for one my 5th grade students. She has been planning her birthday ever since the beginning of the school year (back in July) and knew exactly what she wanted.  She is quite the party planner! She brought in these cute owl stickers which inspired the little owls that I made out of fondant. The cupcakes were butter cake with buttercream icing. I heard the pool/owl party was super fun!

Matt and Liz's Wedding Cake

I love summer and this cake screams "summer" to me. Maybe it's cause of the beautiful sunflower on top. I made this cake for our friend's Matt and Liz. It was my first "ruffle cake" and reminded me of "Ruffle Tuesdays" at work. Tracy (one of my BFF's at work) always wears ruffles on Tuesdays and I try to remember to as well. It has become a weekly tradtion.

 Anywho, I made these ruffles our of gumpaste and covered the cake with fondant. The ruffles were pretty time consuming. I basically rolled out strips and pushed down harder on one side when I rolled them out. You can also make gumpaste flowers that way. Maybe if I took some pics of the process it would make more sense :)

One more side note on this cake, my hubby took these super duper creative photos. I was really proud of him! I am really not the best photographer (I like way tooooo many other forms of art to start photography) and was excited to see him grab my camera and go to town. I didn't know he had it in him. He was even on the floor at one point. I think he has graduated from delivery boy to photographer.  

Have a fabulous weekend and stay out of Hurricane Irene!