Cakes!!

It's been entirely too long since I have written a new post.  Somewhere between school, work, cake decorating and trying to have some time with my husband I got so busy I just had no time for anything else.  I'm happy to say that I have been doing a lot of baking and I've even had quite a few cake orders lately (most of them for the same week)!  I'm so excited to be able to make the cakes that are served up at such important events.  So to catch up with a lot of what I have been doing the last month this post is all about cakes.  I hope you all enjoy them as much as I enjoyed making them.

The first cake I made was my first ever dog birthday cake.  A friend from high school contacted me through facebook to ask if I could make a cake to celebrate her puppy Carl turning one.  I couldn't turn down that opportunity.  I did a little digging online to find a cake that would be good for both dogs and people and found that carrot cake would be a good option.  I also found that dogs shouldn't have too much sugar and since frosting is almost all sugar I found a recipe that used splenda instead.  I dyed the frosting brown to look like chocolate tried a new technique for the first time, using modeling chocolate.
Modeling chocolate is my new favorite thing!  It's basically like chocolate play-doh and breaks all the rules about playing with your food.  It's super easy to make and can be made in any color you can think of. 

Modeling Chocolate:
1/2 pound of candy melts (you can use any color or flavor but white it the best to start with since you can add food coloring to make it any color you want.)
1/4 cup corn syrup
melt the candy melts over a double boiler or in the microwave.  If microwaving make sure to use no higher than 70% power and only for a minute at a time until melted.  Add the corn syrup and stir until combined.  Pour onto a sheet of plastic wrap, wrap up and put into the fridge for a couple of hours.  Take the modeling chocolate out about a half hour before using.  Kneed the chocolate until pliable and add food coloring at this point if you plan to color it.  The more you play with it the more sticky it will get.  You can always put it back into the fridge to harden up if it gets too sticky to work with.

The next cake I made was for a bridal shower for a friend of a friend.  This was a super fun cake to make as it used my favorite color combo of hot pink and lime green.  This was a three layered marble cake done with a topsy turvy effect.  I love the way it turned out!

Then I started a crazy week of cake making.  Two of my nephews turned six, I had two ordered from ladies that I worked with at UHC and one from a lady I worked with at Coach.

My nephew Deklan's birthday was on May 10 and the weekend after he had a party with his friends.  The party was at Artworks in Suamico so he wanted an art cake.  He initially asked for a cake with an artist painting a picture but since that was a little outside of my ability I went with a box of crayons.  Deklan asked for a red and blue cake so the inside was a layer of blue and a layer of red velvet.  The crayons are more modeling chocolate.

My other nephew Jack turned six on the 15 and he asked for a Mario cake.  Jack wanted a yellow cake and I went with a strawberry buttercream frosting.  I decided that a full size Mario cake would be a little too difficult so I went with a mushroom shaped cake with a modeling chocolate Mario to go along with it.  The cake was pretty easy to assemble and actually the Mario wasn't as difficult as I thought it was going to be.  Watch out Charm City Cakes!

Margo, who I worked with at UHC had contacted me a while ago to ask if I could make a first birthday cake for her little girl Macey.  This was a pretty simple yellow cake with a raspberry buttercream.   I added some modeling chocolate polka dots and I made a small smash cake just for the birthday girl.

The last cake was for another UHC coworker, Susan and her oldest daughter's first communion.  This one was super fun because I wasn't given much direction other than she liked bright colors, chocolate cake and something non-traditional.  I went with three layers of chocolate cake with a strawberry buttercream filling and frosting.  I stacked the cakes off centered and added some cross cut outs.

This past weekend I got to make my favorite cake ever.  My best friend Steph asked if I could make a cake for a customer that she has come to know very well over the past few years.  This family has been through a lot and they were having a party to celebrate their daughter finally being cancer free.  The story was that she could never have a gumball from a machine while she was going through treatments so Steph asked for a gumball machine cake for the party.  I tweaked a red velvet cake recipe and made it orange velvet instead since orange is the color for leukemia awareness ribbons.  The cake was covered in a vanilla and strawberry buttercream and decorated with gumballs.  I even arranged some orange gumballs to add an awareness ribbon.  I love the way this cake turned out and I love meaning behind it.  I was so excited to be able to make this cake for such a special little girl.