Kelli Bakes Cakes: I feel old... very old

You've met Avery before... that's seriously still one of my very favorite cakes. But Avery keeps getting older. How does that happen?! I remember when she was born and now she's in freakin high school!

Avery came out to visit us again last summer right before her birthday and right before she started high school. Avery is a Sting (just like her momma, Gayle)! That's the high school drill team. She'd just made the team and was about to start their preschool camp when she came to visit. So I used a Stingerette theme for the cake. One of the things I most distinctly remembered about Gayle's time as a Sting was the logo:

So I used the logo and school colors (blue and gold) as my inspiration. I also decided to try out a couple techniques that I'd seen. One was fondant ruffles:

I'm not sure how happy i really was with the ruffles. Maybe I'll try it again some time, because when executed well, it's really pretty. The second thing I wanted to try was a zebra cake. And turns out, it's freakishly easy and looks super cool!

I LOVE this shot

But we put it all together:

Cake is my favorite vanilla with almond extract substituted for the vanilla, frosting is this awesome cooked frosting that I'm obsessed with right now again with almond.

We drove back to Texas from here (oh my, three days with Avery as the DJ!) and made a couple of pretty fun stops to see the sights along the way:

Petrified Forest: