The cake and little lamb fondant topper was easy enough to make, I even had an egg shaped cake pan! A spin on the cake stand and a spray of gold completed the cake.

It was the cookies that gave me a headache! I couldn't get the right vodka to gold luster dust ratio, so it was either too liquid-y which started to dissolve the royal icing, or not enough, and it got clumpy. In the end, I had to remember "it's just cookies" and everything turned out alright. :)

How do I even start talking about this? It was for a Friday the 13th party! So of course, Jason was invited, and the Mummy Boy was the Guest of Honor. -- According to my planning sketch below, I thought the mummy head and the mask would be much smaller, but I calculated it wrong, and i didn't have a smaller baking bowl. However, all the elements were still there. I made the mask with fondant, drew in the red with food coloring markers, and then airbrushed the mask until it looked dingy and yucky (but awesome)! I fondant covered the cake -- again with the stacking! -- and lightly airbrushed it with black that made it look more dingy and yucky (but awesome)... then instead of using corn syrup for the blood, i used a mix of strawberry and boysenberry syrup with some strawberry jam to thicken it up a bit. It was the perfect consistency to make it look dingy and yucky (but awesome)! I didn't want to use corn syrup, cuz it would have just been sweet, and i felt like that wouldn't have taste well with the cake -- red velvet cake with vanilla buttercream... it was fun making the blood drips, and messing up the Mummy Head with my hands and finger prints and "blood" spatters, making this possibly one of my "easier" cakes! Oh, and there was the knife in the background as well, dripping blood, adding to the cake being dingy and yucky - BUT AWESOME!

It's never a good idea for me to free hand Hello Kitty. I'm sure there are some other people that can do it, but I, for one, cannot do it for the life of me. She always looks warped, or the eyes and nose are in the wrong place and it ends up just looking blah...

So for this order for Hello Kitty Baby Shower Favors, I ended up printing out a template, cutting it out, and airbrushing around it, to get the shape of the head. Then I outlined them with black, and filled them in with white. I made the bows previously, so i can place them on top of the white icing before it had a chance to dry -- once dried, it sticks! After the whole cookie dried for a day, I went in and drew in the eyes, nose and whiskers with black icing. I used the template again to make sure everything was spaced correctly!

I love everything about this cake, particularly because of the previous caketastrophe! After the fiasco of a horrible delivery, this cake was my redemption! From baking the cakes to carving the shape, to the fondant details and the Chinese script writing on the waving fondant banner with food color, the airbrushed color of the cake, and the little fondant peaches in front. Redemption feels gooooood!

Enjoy the photos!

I love fondant. The medium lends itself to so many uses. Like recreating a 1.5" medallion into a 8" cake topper for DJ and her spiritual group!!! I so enjoyed this challenge. I ended up rolling out a piece of fondant quite thick and etching the design into the fondant, then airbrushing it with food coloring and sheen to give it a metallic look. DJ took a photo of the medallion early on and I enlarged it to make sure I got the right details. When I went to deliver the cake, I saw the medallion in real life and it was SO SMALL!!! I had been looking at an enlarged photo of it for so long, that when I saw the medallion in real life, it was tiny in comparison :)

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!

Happy 9th Birthday A!

I received this order from my neighbor, Rachel. It was the easiest delivery ever - walked across the street and knocked on the door. The hardest part was the car that drove past as I was trying to cross the street, though I did have visions of somehow tripping on the stairs and falling and the cake splattering to pieces on my driveway.

In her order, Rachel said she wanted an owl cake, but a very specific type of owl for her daughter's 9th birthday cake. In my mind, I said, "uh oh." Not because I thought she was going to be hard to work with, or she was going to give me hard time. I was getting nervous that her "specific type of owl" was a specific species of owl, like a Canadian Tawny, or an Alaskan Brown Snowy Owl (I just made those up, since everything I know about owls come from watching and reading Harry Potter).

I can understand how children at that age can get stuck on a "thing," so truthfully, I was nervous! But then Rachel texted me photos of these awesome cutie pies! I was quite relieved, "I can TOTALLY do that!" The design was originally going to be a buttercream transfer, but then I thought it would be way better suited to a fondant design. So I ended up with a buttercream frosting with fondant design. She is totally cute!

Used my ribbon cutter to make the stripes and placed it on the cake. measured one inch from the circumference, and cut the ribbons, for a nice open surface for our little friend. I'm really happy with the way it turned out!