I love it when clients give me free reign on designing their cake. It also helps when clients have a VERY CLEAR idea of their design, as is the case with this next cake from my favorite cake family from across the street. B is turning 6 years old, here is her drawing she did with mom:

It couldn't be any clearer! Orange ribbon-like squiggles, green diamonds clustered at the bottom and a few throughout, pink and purple little hearts, with a base color of pink fondant. So, here's the cake, how did I do?

A friend found it rare that such a young person could be so clear in her instructions. Being an educator of young children myself, I think the only limit these little humans have is us adults telling them that it can't be done, or telling them how to do it, and not giving them the space to explore! I can confidently say this is the awesomest original design of a cake that I've ever made!

On another note, it was also MY birthday! I turned 34 (does that mean mid-30's?), and Buu made ME a cake! (Talk about giving the space for people to explore) He ended up making just half a box of cake mix, so here I am on Chu On Cakes presenting the first ever, open-faced cake:

It's FEBRUARY!!!! My favorite month of the year. Why? Because there are at least 2 days of Holiday so I don't have to work (though that might change soon), and because it's MY BIRTHDAY MONTH! It is turning out it's also the month I seem to get a bunch of orders. my first one was the football cake from the previous post. And just last week, i received a "last minute" order for a hair salon cake. She sent me a photo of what she was looking for and i decided to take on the challenge.

I made the smaller pieces directly out of fondant, and the blow dryer i made out of rice cereal - otherwise, it would be too heavy and actually really hard to shape! Then i wrapped it in fondant and set it up to dry on all sides. I couldn't lay it down, or one side would squish, so I figured out how to stand it up, so it could dry properly.

The text was made by poking holes in the fondant from a print out, kinda like how you do a pumpkin carving! I melted some of the blue fondant and mixed it with just a tiny bit of water to make it just liquidy enough to be able to paint it on using a brush. The holes i poked ended up picking up more of the color, but after a 2nd and 3rd go-over, the text looks pretty even throughout...

It was my first time using Duff brand fondant, which I found out is Fondarific re-branded (hmmmm...). It is SUPER SOFT. Like the article said, not so great for accents, but thankfully worked out for what i needed it for. And finished the turquoise pieces with some luster dust in vodka.

I also make some lemon cake pops for her event. I baked one too many cakes for the number of cake pops she ordered, so with the left over cake and left over fondant, I made dumplings! *more on those later! ;)*

Oh my goodness, it's been quite a month, and I can finally update in February. There have been some changes like getting a new job and reorganizing my priorities, so cakes have been a nice consistent thing, although I have been doing some experiments!

On MLK weekend, as I have for the past three years, I attended the Winter Fancy Food Show. How lucky and fortunate I am to live so close to San Francisco! Most of it is more savory foods, and ready to sell confections, and is a place to be inspired, and get ideas. I discovered several brands of gluten free flour, fruit and veggie purees to flavor and color cakes, and got samples of two kinds of vanilla. I am really rediscovering the different complexities of vanilla!

The BF's birthday is on Superbowl weekend, so I went ahead and made him a football cake. I meant to do one last year, but he was "just a friend" then, plus I had some other orders... lol! It was also really nice because i got to experiment with my airbrush! A friend had bought me an airbrush years ago, and I let another friend borrow it, and got it back just recently. It was an amazing experience. I ended up running late to another party, because i literally took the whole airgun apart to clean it out, and put it back together again. there was a lot of youtube searching to figure it out! Although I did have and old friend help me out with the basics. :) There was a point when I was transferring the cake from the airbrush board to the "field" board when I "fumbled" the ball--- I mean, cake. So you can see in the picture near the laces where it looks a little burnt. Also figured out why some people where masks when airbrushing - my boogies came out the same color as the football! blehck, lol... :) I saw in a youtube video about airbrushing to use coloring books to practice, such a great idea, I will definitely use that!