birthdays shouldn't be lame.

but kelly's birthday on nbc's "the office" definitely was. this cake was modeled after the episode where the guys on the show throw their co-worker a birthday party--completely with brown deflated balloons and a sign that read, "it is your birthday." the recipient of the cake is a huge fan of the show, and his girlfriend (my adorable cousin andrea) planned this as a surprise!
glad the guys from "the office" didn't plan my birthday party!

behind on posts...

so i've been a little lazy on my posting lately. but hey, i've moved, been to tennessee and back in the last month, and did i mention my husband is opening his own chiropractic practice too? eek!
but i have managed to do a few cakes. here are pictures of two of them, and as soon as i locate my camera, i'll upload a picture of the cake i did over the weekend.
the first is a birthday cake for a sweet girl named kate, who worked in the office my husband used to work in as well:


this one was a baby shower cake for our good friends patty and craig--they live in tennessee, and i haven't posted for so long that the baby is here now!! :) well welcome to the world, Robert Ford, and here's your baby shower cake:

the best day for a cake person--EVER.

So on Tuesday, I was showing my website to a friend who wanted to see my cakes. And if you haven't noticed, on the right side of my page is a short list of blogs that I like (see here---->). Included on that list is the wonderful Confetti Cakes blog. So as I glance at my page, the update for Confetti Cakes says "going to pittsburgh."
That's right, Elisa Strauss did a demo today in Pittsburgh! I was so stoked because she is like my cake-design idol! She was so nice and she demoed one of her spring cakes. I learned a couple of tricks that I'm sure will make my cakes look way better! I took her a print out of my first page of my blog...so if she's reading this, i'm a bit embarrassed because I was a little bit starstruck :/ oh, and i got my fav cookbooks signed by her!
I can't wait to make a new cake now; you all need to order cakes!! her work is what makes me want to do this all the time, and it was truly an honor to meet her.
Here's a pic from my cell phone. I forget my camera at the worst times.

Keaton's 1st Birthday

The finished design:



The cake before I added the sugar palm trees:



Some decorations that I made:



This weekend I attempted my coolest and most detailed design yet for my son's 1st birthday party. His party centered around zoo animals, and in addition to the cake I made decorations and all of the food. I'm way too obsessed with party planning.
I got the idea for the cake from a picture frame that I saw--then I added some sugar decorations and also Little People zoo animals from a gift that Keaton got for Christmas.
This is absolutely my favorite cake that I've done so far. I'm not sure if it's just because it was for my little man, but it really doesn't matter. I love it.
This cake was obviously 3 tiers (all with vanilla buttercream and fondant covering)--the bottom was red velvet, the middle vanilla, and the top tier was chocolate.

This cake is headed to space.

At least my space on blogspot. Ha. This birthday cake is for my pseduo-brother, who is a science teacher. Since his party is today--the first day of spring/the vernal equinox--I wanted to do something that kind of had to do with that. At first I was going to have a flower going from seed to full bloom but I'm not going to lie, it was a little girlie. After my trip to Houston and the Johnson Space Center in February, I've had NASA and astronauts on the brain. Hopefully he likes this flask gone NASA as much as I do.
It's a white cake layered with vanilla swiss buttercream, then covered with white fondant. I think there are 9 layers total. Oh, AND it's my first sculpted cake. I have to admit, it took a little longer than I expected.

mmm, chocolate...

i had some leftover chocolate cake batter from the palette cake below, so i decided to practice making chocolate ganache (YUM!) to fill and ice a smaller cake. i did that and then dusted it with cocoa powder. you might be wondering why i wrote "...love..." on the top. well, for 2 reasons actually. first, i love chocolate. more than a lot of other things. second, i made it for my husband because the entire time i was decorating it, our two kids were screaming because they didn't want to go to bed--and he was dealing with them. that's why i love him. :)

a palette of a cake.

I made this cake for my younger cousin's birthday...she is preparing to go to college to study art. She had to take her SATs today, and as far as I am concerned, there's nothing better than an overdose of sugar to combat post-test stress. Well...I'd probably prefer a large bottle of something else, but hey, she's only going to be 17. This cake is just 2 layers--one dark chocolate and one vanilla. It's filled with buttercream and covered with white fondant. The paint is just colored icing that I applied with a paintbrush and mixed around to make it look like paint. Yummy paint, but paint.