A Beautiful Cake for a 50th Birthday

This cake was for my mom's manager's 50th birthday in March. It didn't have to be special, just really pretty. This cake was a strawberry cake filled with home-made cream cheese icing and covered in chocolate ganache. The piped scrolls (which I know isn't perfect, but it was my first time) was from my buttercream icing, as was the roses' leaves. Finally the blue roses, which KettlePopped made, were fondant. This cake was by far the easiest, and only took about 10.5 hours from baking the scratch cake to putting the roses on. 19 blue roses adorned the cake, which took KettlePopped about 7 hours to make. The dimension of this cake were 9" and 6".

This is KettlePopped smoothing out the chocolate ganache on the bottom tier.

Top tier added with borders and scrolls piped on.

Side view of the scrolls.

I have to admit, for my first time doing scrolls, and doing them vertically, I think I did a good job =]

My dad and I took it to my mom's work (KettlePopped was working as well) and everyone thought it was beautiful. I received hugs and pictures were taken. Later my mom told me everyone thought it was delicious and not too sweet. I'm proud of this cake; it's so simple, yet so pretty. <3

How I Spent My 21st....

First off I'm happy to say I didn't have to make my own cake. Second, I'm happy to say I had cinnamon rolls instead of cake. Third, my birthday was horrible. =[

On my actual birthday I had class from 5:30pm to 9:10 pm, so we decided to celebrate my birthday on that Friday instead. However, I had to make a cake for another kid's birthday also. The cake was for one of KettlePopped's coworker's grandson who loves Bakugan. We later dicovered his favorite color was green, and so we decided to create a green dragon Bakugan cake. 

This was a yellow cake with a home-made chocolate icing, covered in a chocolate fondant (which is why this cake ranks #1 as biggest pain in butt), complete with the Bakugan in its ball form and the actual creature which adorned the top.The ball, and what was supposed to be the Bakugan sunburst were made from my home-made fondant, and the dragon was modeling chocolate with sugar sheet wings.

The chocolate fondant was pretty much made of fondant and modeling chocolate and put together, but the problem was it hardened like a rock once we let it set. I was finished with everything on my part, but KettlePopped had spent hours fixing the fondant before we could even move on. 

Once we delivered it though, the kids and parents loved it. The parents thought the dragon on top was a toy, but in fact KettlePopped had modeled that all by himself. As soon as the cake came in the kids sat the table ready to dig in. Later, KettlePopped's coworker told him it tasted as good as it looked.

What made this birthday suck, was right after we delivered the cake and walked out to my car to go home, change, and go out to dinner with my family, my car wouldn't start. Somehow from the time we went in the house (for about 5 minutes) and came out my car had died. No lights were left on and I had about half a tank of gas. So we had to wait for my dad to come over and jump my car. What made things worse was at the restaurant, I got bits of metal shishkabob sticks jammed into my gums. It pretty much ruined my night, because it hurt and scared the crap out of me. Oh well, better luck next year.

My Brother's 16th Prestige

Haha, I know, I know, a 16th prestige isn't possible, according to the game that is (MW3). In my brother's case, however, it did in fact happen. January 14, 2012 was my brother's 16th birthday, and I figured since 16 is considered a big birthday that I would create a cake for him. Originally my plan was to go Ghost Adventures with this, because it's his favorite TV show and we bond over it. But what he asked for was a Call of Duty cake, and I was not about to disappoint a birthday boy.

Let me first say this cake was a pain in the butt. Not the biggest one, but second biggest.The cake is devil's food, because my brother loves chocolate cakes, covered in the same home-made icing I made for my mom's cake. What made this cake such a pain was because my boyfriend and I tried new things, modeling chocolate being one of them. I must admit though that it was a little dried out because I did not ice over where we cut the face out (oops!). The helmet itself was the biggest problem for this cake because I wanted to try a marshmallow fondant this time. I had read great reviews on it and thought it would be a good shot. My boyfriend feels like it was the biggest lie ever and never wants to even hear the name "marshmallow fondant" again. Just to be clear, I followed the instructions exactly, and it came out horrible and was a bear to work with. We have no clue why.

From what you can see in the picture, the only thing actually cake was the soldier's head. The accessories on the helmet and around the head were cereal treats (home-made) covered in modeling chocolate (also home-made). I, myself, had created everything except for the pistol and the goggles worn by the soldier.

So, I started off by baking two cakes (from the pan you'd use to make a doll dress from). Then my boyfriend (we'll call him KettlePopped) leveled both cakes and started shaping the face.

While I worked on the grenade, flashlight, headset, battery pack, C4 package, and random helmet gadget (pictured in front), KettlePopped worked solely on the pistol and goggles. He wanted the pistol to be as detailed as possible, knowing my dad is a veteran and would have been looking for such details.

I made sure to add extra details to the soldier's helmet, such as number of kills, patches, and blood.

I decorated the kitchen in BDU cups, plates, napkins, and also had little planes and helicopters hanging from the ceiling. My brother loved his cake, and didn't want to cut into his either. Just as my mom does, to this day he compares every cake I make to his, thinking his was best. Silly boy.

Note: This cake took from January 12th-14th. Also, it took 19.5 hours of non-stop work and no sleep.

Mom's 49th Birthday (The Cake that Started it All)

Happy birthday, Mom! Well, actually this picture was taken back when it really was her birthday, as shown in the picture above. My brother and I had been planning her cake early in 2011, because she pointed out to us that on her birthday the year prior (2010) we forgot to get her a cake. So last year we wanted to go all out. Honestly though, we forgot all about it until Veteran's Day, a couple weeks before her birthday. I knew I wanted a koi pond cake, because my mom has two koi ponds with a total of 28 fish (all Japanese koi except for one comet). And yes, each has its own unique name.

 This is the pond in our back yard next to the deck. When you step outside it's its own tranquil paradise with a waterfall and beautiful koi. Some of them are even tame enough to eat out of your hand!

Here are the koi from our front yard pond. The larger black and white fish on the right is Domino, the largest in the pond. He and is sibling, Jewel, are the tamest in which you can actually reach your hand in and pet them. They are scaleless, which may feel weird, but they are very fun. They will even give you fish kisses!

Anyway, back to the cake. My mom loves her koi and her ponds, so I wanted that to portray into her cake. Sadly, I don't have the "making of" the cake pictures, because they were on my Samsung Impression, which fell in the toilet.... sad day. The cake, though, was a white cake and consisted of 7 cakes. Yes, 7. I made my own icing and filled each layer and wrapped it all in a thin layer so the cake itself would not dry out. Then the piping began, first with the water feature, then the grass. While I was doing this, my boyfriend created the water lilies, koi, and foliage.All of these were created from fondant, which I had made myself (none of that Wilton ready-made fondant I read so many bad reviews of).

The flagstone and random rocks that decorated the edges of our pond were created by my brother and myself earlier in the project. I created the marbled stone, and he created some of the grey stones and all of the baked beans looking ones, haha. Those too were made from my home-made fondant.

To make sure this was a surprise to our mom, my brother and I didn't text or call her all day on her birthday. We didn't say anything to her period until after we delivered the cake to my parents' house (my mom was away with a friend who was in on the whole thing), my dad had come home and we all left for the restaurant. She was irritated with us, but we knew we'd be forgiven later. My dad, brother, boyfriend, and I beat my mom home and set up the cake with candles (we decorated the kitchen in Hello Kitty before we left). My mom came in yelling at my dad about something but stopped dead in her tracks when she saw her cake.
"Where did you guys get this?!!?" she first exclaimed.
"Buy it? We MADE it!" I said.
She loved it even more. She didn't even want to cut into it. While we all sat and ate cake, everyone told me how delicious it was. There was so much cake though (remember it took 7 cakes to make this), my dad had actually take majority of it to work with him (truck driver). When he came home he said everyone had devoured it and said it was great.
So, all in all I think my first theme cake was a success. Everyone loved my icing and said my cake was very moist, and everyone said it was beautiful. To this day, whenever I create a cake, my mom compares it to this one, most of the time saying hers was best. =]

Note: This cake took from approximately November 17th-20th to create.