Happy 10th Birthday Becca! It's a joy to make another cake for your birthday!

Last year I made over 900 cake pops to raise money for the Lavender Pen Tour. I decided not to sell cake pops this year, although I have a friend that remembered I did 1,000 cake pops, and wanted to purchase a couple dozen from me. So I said, "ok, fine" and did it! Hold on to your butts, I'm selling these next year!~ 

Happy 2nd birthday to my niece Sierra! YiMa loves you!!!

This was the first time I ever made Minnie Ears (or Mickey Ears) and the first time I ever made a fondant bow! All these years, and you'd think a bow would come up fairly regularly, right? Not for me - this was the first time I had to make a bow. And not just ANY bow, MINNIE'S BOW - which has a little more plump to it than a normal bow! I hope it did it justice :)

I did the best I could using the proper font for the words on the cake - I ended up free handing it onto the cake. That's always the most nerve wracking!

Ele-FUN-FUN-FUN... she is so cute!!! This is the first time I made a fondant animal, and it was actually pretty do-able. I made a time-lapse video, but the angle is not so great. I'll post it anyway, once I can get it off my phone... somehow. It is such a darling cake, with the punches of dark pink flowers on a light dusty rose pink ruffle buttercream over a strawberry cake, and a sweet blushing baby elephant, sitting right on top. I hope you like it as much as I do!

APRIL 21, 2015 UPDATE: Here is the video as promised! :) The angle is not so great, but you get the idea. 
MUSIC: Saint-Saëns: Mon cœur s'ouvre à ta voix - Instrumental Version

I don't think I've ever done three cake projects in a whole weekend! And for such different events!

A baby shower cake:

Wedding cake pops!

Graduation Cake

That's a lot of newness and happiness to celebrate! Congratulations to the new parents to be, the newlyweds, and the new graduate! 

My good friend, Geneva, and her husband Carlo are the owners of Savor Oakland Food Tours. Not only do you get some good food on their tours, you get some of the rich history Oakland, California has to offer.

I love Oakland -- I love its diversity, I love its people (yes, even the crazies)! I love that Oakland has its own culture and vibe, and most of all, I love the sense of community - many people at the party were folks they met on their journey building their business!

Not only is Carlo a business owner, he's also an avid photographer! So Geneva asked if I could make a cake with a lomography camera. I thought it would also be great to include some of his photos, as well as some throwback photos of Carlo and his family.

I whipped out that wafer paper idea again, and had the pictures Geneva sent me printed onto wafer paper. I pressed them into fondant and cut out the pictures. The cake was a vanilla cake with lemon curd buttercream  filling covered in gray fondant (which unfortunately was more than a little bit too thick). The camera was shaped out of rice cereal treats and covered with fondant with some of the details printed onto wafer paper as well. With this and the previous project using wafer paper, I may be in the market for my own food color ink printer!

Now THAT'S a Chu On Cakes Order! A friend of mine ordered a cake to celebrate a new nursing graduate! She also ordered snickerdoodles and brownies too, which I was happy to do for her. She had helped me grow so much in my professional life, which in turn helped me to be a better communicator in my personal life!

It was really fun seeing the different elements of the cake all come together. the red stripe at the bottom was created using the clay extruder -- 29 inches all the way around. My favorite part of the cake was the Rx bottle and the bandages! you can even see the texture in the gauze part of the bandage. And the pills look so real! Check out the close up pictures below: