The most wonderful thing about Tiggers...

I had a friend-of-a-friend request a birthday cake. Her only requests were Tigger and flowers, so I made it happen. Don't remember the cake flavor, but filling is (freshly made) pineapple curd and frosting is cream cheese. 

Check out the details on Tigger:

I had a blast making all the flower and leaves! And they cover up a multitude of sins created in the name of fussy cream cheese.

Yankee Doodle Dandy

This will be a quick one. My folks came out for the Fourth of July and I made cupcakes! Red velvet (my secret weapon when I take over the world) with blue cream cheese frosting. Isn't my
 tiny cupcake stand adorbs?!

We even had a special guest, Camden!

Well that got my mother off my back for a while...

While we're on the topic of Avery, she got herself a baby brother! And I got to go home for the baby shower. The theme was sports (just like the nursery) with an emphasis on soccer. So I wanted to figure out how to work this into the cake for the shower. 

Unfortunately, there are limitations to what I can do if I have to travel. When I've flown in for the cake, I shipped as much as I could beforehand because I figure fondant looks remarkably similar to C4 and my gigantic rolling pin is considered a weapon. When I've driven, I've just packed everything along with me. This one was driving in, but the last leg of the drive through New Mexico with Avery. So taking much cake stuff wasn't an option. Plus, we were arriving the day before the shower without a lot of prep time for me. I usually get at least two working days before the cake needs to be finished. So cupcakes it was. 

I made fondant sports balls weeks ahead of time:

Seriously, check out the textures on those bad boys! The baseball was the easiest, circle cutter and food color pen. I used a small tip to dimple the basketball (like I've done before) then drew in the lines. The football and soccer ball are tied for which was the biggest pain in my rear. I used one of my clay tools to make all the lines on the soccer ball by tracing over a printed ball, but such a pain! And I cut out fondant for the stripes and the laces on the football. I think the laces were the worse cause they were tiny!

I had this grand scheme to use a grass tip for the frosting, but July shower in Texas plus fussy cream cheese frosting added up to just making a swirl.  And oh green tongues!

Cake is red velvet (my secret weapon) and frosting is the afore-mentioned cream cheese.

And Mr. Cade showed up not too long after this:

 Check out his awesome onsie someone got him:

 

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:

The Standard Diner

  

 Mama's Minerals

Carlsbad Caverns

White Sands

Carizozo Lava Flow

Rockhounding in Roswell

 

 

Puppy dog Tails

We had to say goodbye to a special doggy recently. It was hard, but she lived quite a life. I picked Mackenzie out from a photo- we were working at Wal-Mart and a coworker just ended up with puppies. We'd just moved out into our house and were looking for a dog. When Mary showed us the pictures of all the puppies, I fell in love with a little one that was pure white except for a big spot over her eye. I declared that she looked like Spuds Mackenzie (don't judge, I was a child of the 80s) and the name stuck.

 

 (see, totally sorta)

When we went to pick her up, a fat little puppy sat himself under the hubbin and we figured that two dogs would keep each other company when we weren't home, so we brought Buford home too. The hubbin picked out his name and he couldn't have done it better. And these two were inseparable for over 11 years. Buford took such good care of her.

I always joked that Mackenzie was more cat than dog because she obviously came with nine lives. I can't tell you how many times she just nearly died (hit by car, drowning, hanging, and flying roofs), but even those nine lives have to run out sometime. 

We have an amazing vet that saw Mackenzie through the last two years. When Kenzie was sick, it was nice to have someone who knew her crazy history and understood where we stood in terms of treatments. And she was there with us through the very end. 

I had to bring Buford in just two days later, so I wanted a way to thank the vet and her staff who have treated Mackenzie so well and so kindly this whole time. So of course, I had to make cupcakes.

M...I...C.... See ya real soon

While Disney still holds the heart of many kids, I've one one friend who's little guy has gone totally old school and loves Mickey! I think that's pretty cool. So when he had a birthday, a Disney theme was in order.

I mentioned in the last post how I've had kiddos that I've made all sorts of cakes for and Grayson is no exception: baby shower and first birthday. So making his second birthday cake was a blast for me! With special dietary needs, I had to get creative with the cake. And Mom likes BRIGHT, colorful cakes! Which was cool with me. I've done a Mickey cake before, but I needed a little different angle on this one. And when I think Mikey Mouse, I think ears.

I'll be honest, it's been so long I don't remember what frosting recipe I used. But I was apparently pretty proud of how nice and smooth I got it. I'll be honest, that's quite a feat because I'm not great with buttercream, which is why I love fondant. Fondant covers up a multitude of cake sins.

And the finished product! I especially love the Disney font for his name.

 Birthday boy and his awesome momma dancing while we sang Happy Birthday. (I realize these shots are blurry, who knows?) After the candles were blown out, he asked to do it again!

 Th birthday boy digging in:

 Aren't those baby blues and dimples just too much?

The filling is cookies and cream (totes yummy!)

Kinda Like "Tuh-mater"... but without the "tuh" Mater

I've got friends with all sorts of kids. And those kids have birthdays and those birthdays need CAKE! A few of these little guys I've known forever (or at least for them). And I've got to make cakes for all the important milestones. 

For instance, there's Camden. I did a baby shower cake, a first birthday cake and now a second birthday cake! [cough..cough...there's a third coming up soon Mom!] I love that I can be a part of the lives of these kiddos in such a special way.

As any kid does, this little guy has all sorts of favorites depending on the week, but this particular week, his favorite was Cars. And I LOVE Cars, especially all those Arizona scenes in the movies. So when Melinda mentioned wanting a Cars theme, I BEGGED (no joke) to do Mater. 

 

"Ain't no need to watch where I'm goin'; just need to know where I've been."

 You see, I have this wish list of cakes that I want to do:

• sparkly pink princess castle (still haven't talked Melinda into this one!)
• dinosaur volcano
• guitar  (DONE!)
• Mater

So you see, it HAD to be done!  No matter what she was actually wanting. Good thing I'm pretty aggressive in getting my way. And actually, this turned out to be a surprisingly easy cake. 

First step: carving the cake!

I printed out a picture of Mater at the size I wanted and just sort of went to town on it.

Step 2: decorate (we'll get to the finished photos here in a bit)

Step 3: transport the cake! 

 

I took this picture from the back seat where I got stuck because the cake was in the front seat where the A/C could hit it. It was August y'all! It's hot here!

And the final product:

I was super happy with how this cake turned out! AND I covered that whole thing with a single sheet of fondant. That's skillz, I tell ya. Then the details were hand-painted on. Including a little personalization for the birthday boy.

 
Step 4: Eat it! I'm getting better at this processes, plus I always make Melinda do all the cutting anyway. I can't do it myself.

The aftermath: You know I love this part, but tell me the last show doesn't look awesome! That's FIVE layers of beautiful, flat layers!

Cake is my awesome chocolate, peanut butter filling, chocolate ganache frosting.

Apparently, I lost a year...

I was telling someone about this blog the other day and I realized that it is almost a year out of date! What happened? oh wait, I know. I got myself a real job and ran out of time. It's not like I haven't been baking, it's just that I put a pic on Facebook and keep moving. So my goal is to get caught up some.

We'll start with something fun: FOOTBALL! Now I've got pretty strong opinions about sports. Baseball is horribly boring, I don't understand basketball and all the squeaking is horrible, hockey is awesome but only live, this is America we don't do soccer, but I'm cool with football. Short plays keep my attention and games are only really on Sundays for the most part so I don't have to keep up with a whole bunch of games.

And even people who don't like football watch the Super Bowl. But seriously, the commercials aren't that good so I don't watch for them. We got invited to a Super Bowl party and I wanted to bring something along. Now I've done a Super Bowl cake before. And I didn't want a repeat. And since it was a party, I thought that cupcakes would be easiest for everyone. 

So this is what we got:

My favorite vanilla recipe and almond flavored buttercream on top.

You're my cuppy cake,gumdrop,shyummkums pure

You're my hunny bun, sugar plum, pumpy upmy upmy
upmkin.
You're my sweetie pie.

You're my cuppy cake,gumdrop,shyummkums
pure,
The apple of my eye!

And I love you so, and I want you to know
that i'll always be right here.

And I love to sing this song to you

Because you are so dear!

 

******************************************************

 

It's that time of the year and strawberries are on sale. Yeah, so I made some strawberry cupcakes. Martha Stewart Strawberry Cupcakes. I didn't use the strawberry SMBC from her book because I was low on eggs, but I should have went with it. Seriously, I love SMBC and the strawberries are so good in it. But alas, I went with an ABC and carefully added fresh strawberry puree because it makes the frosting flaccid. Yes, I know, but that really is the only word to describe this process. And you can't recover from it because the only option is more powdered sugar. I'm not a huge fan of ABC in the first place, but it's so easy.

 

So when I went to frost the cupcakes, the frosting wasn't as pretty as normal since it was so soft. And then the bits in the puree clogged the tip and did weird things. Did I mention I overfilled the liners and they spread like crazy? Sprinkles make ugly cupcakes better.

 

(No fancy photos, just a cell phone pick in the carrier this time)

 

The good news is that even ugly cupcakes can taste awesome. I can't tell you how many complements I got on these things. I had two people use the word "heavenly" and two others admit to eating at least three a piece. This is why I bring in three dozen cupcakes to work.

Chocolate or poop?! Chocolate or poop?!

When using chocolate frosting, you should ALWAYS remember, there is a fine line between looking like chocolate and looking like poop. Cake Wrecks has told us this again, and again, and again, and again... the number of results when you search for poop on the site is astounding.



I tell you that to tell you this, I made chocolate chip cupcakes with chocolate frosting to take to work. Baked the night before, frosting the morning of, I was bringing the treats as a thank you for some folks helping me out. Since I was in a hurry to get to work, I mixed dark chocolate ganache with leftover ABC and threw it all in a piping bag without a tip and did my thing. Covered 'em all and wiped my hands.



Then I looked at em.



Dang, poo everywhere!



Seriously, I grabbed by offset spatula and beat the little piles of poo into submission, cussing myself for not grabbing the 1M tip that makes all cupcakes adorable. Sigh. So then it looked like smashed poo. What does one do now? SPRINKLES! At least the poo had sprinkles. :)

Didn't I mention that I tried out some cupcake wrappers that didn't need a muffin tin? Just throw em on a baking sheet, fill em up, and go. Apparently, they spread... a lot... so these were weird and warped poo cupcakes. 





 They all were eaten by the end of the day. Apparently my coworkers are undaunted by poo.

Two by Two

"The most important time of Mormon
Kid's life
Is his mission.
A chance to go out
And help heal the world,
That's my mission.
Soon I'll be off in a different place,
Helping the whole human race.
I know my mission will be
Something incredible!"



So I promise to keep quotes to a minimum here (but like The Book of Mormon on Facebook and you can listen to the entire cast recording! [So freakin excited to see the show, not much longer to wait now]).



I got a request for cakes for some special real-life Mormon missionaries. And who can't help but jump at this? These young men are far from home and cut off from their friends and families, these boys need cake on their birthday! And the halfway mark of the mission! And seriously, they could have been sent anywhere around the world (like Uganda or Orlando) and they got sent to West Phoenix. They needed cake. I was making the fire extinguisher cake for the same friend needing these. You saw my excitement about the extinguisher, just imagine what these cakes did for me.



So here's what they got:

These things make me exceptionally happy. I'd never covered a square cake before and I was happy with how well it went, very few tears. Which was good since there's chocolate frosting under that white fondant.



Wasn't super happy with the writing, but dang those name tags were tiny. The cardboards the cakes sit on are 6" (ande covered with the Taylor Swift contact paper too!), so the tags were just over 1" wide and I was writing with a toothpick dipped in white food coloring.

The collars were super easy. strip of fondant, pointy ends, fold in half (hot dog style), stick on cake. Easy-peasy. Tie? Strip of black fondant plus a triangle. Each of these took no time to make.



And look how sweet they look all boxed up. Since they were gifts and super cute and tiny, I grabbed some boxes to put them in. Sweet.

 Happy Birthday and Congratulations gentlemen!

Some Catchin Up to Do

I've been baking, but not posting about it. The last couple of months have been crazy. But I've got a few cakes to show you. Let's start with this one:

My friend's mother-in-law was celebrating a birthday and a fire themed cake was requested. Here is how the conversation went:

Friend-"Can you put a fire extinguisher on top?"

Me- "¡¿WHAT IF I MAKE THE CAKE ITSELF INTO A FIRE EXTINGUISHER?!"

Yes, honestly, that's probably exactly what it sounded like. I get over excited sometimes.



I thought about doing a jelly roll to get the cylindar shape like I'd done before. But I wasn't super happy with how that worked out. So carving it was going to be. The request was for chocolate cake and fluffy chocolate frosting, so no ganache :(. I was doing a couple of cakes this weekend so I mixed up a double batch of my favorite chocolate cake recipe and threw a bunch of cocoa poweder into a simple american buttercream. Wasn't super happy with the buttercream, but I find that is the issue with me and ABC quite a bit here lately. I've been spoiled on ganache and SMBC I suppose.



You know I don't take many action shots while baking and decorating, but I couldn't pass up this shot of perfectly creamed butter and sugar. It's a thing of beauty, almost spiritual I tell you. Colors look weird, one shot with the flash, one without.

Eventually, this is what came out of the kitchen (Notice that I used the Taylor Swift contact paper again to cover the boards. Love that stuff. Need more designs though.):

Covering up the bad fondant edges. Sneaky, aren't I?

We had talked about making it actually spray, like whipped cream or something, but alas it did not.

But how cute is that caution tape? Love my food color markers.

Handle and gauge, I saw the meter in a couple of pictures I'd found online and loved it, so it had to be added.