Elmo on the brain

I had so many grand ideas for my daughters 2nd Birthday. I think I'd watched one too many episodes of Super Sweet Sixteen. Anyway I knew Elmo would be the theme of the party. That was the easy part. I wanted to do a cupcake tower, Elmo cookies, and Elmo Cake Pops(curse you bakerella.com) Needless to say I had to cut it down. Sheet cake, cookies, and cake pops. You might say, "Cakepops? I don't see any cakepops." I got all the stuff assembled. I knew how this was going to go since I made a test cake pop a few weeks prior just to get a feel for it. But I guess I got a little too cocky and I don't know what happened but if I had served them to the little kiddies there would have been more tears than smiles. Trust me. The only other mishap that I suffered through was with the elmo cake. I ended up running out of red frosting in the middle of filling Elmo in. So I made more red frosting and continued to fill in Elmo but once the cake set for a few hours there was a clear difference in the two frostings. One was much darker than the other and Elmo looked like he had sunburn. But hey lesson learned. Still delicious. I think I'll be dreaming about Elmo for awhile though.

Sugar cookies with royal icing.

My very first cake order! Triple Chocolate Cake with Vanilla Buttercream all covered in fondant.
I was even given complete control over this cake. I was just told that it was for a man and to use the colors blue and yellow. I added the fondant curly cues and it was a huge hit.

Yellow Cake with Chocolate Frosting. I wanted to try this mosaic tile design and it was a pain in the you know what.

1/2 Sheet Cake. One side Triple Chocolate Cake and the other Butter Cake. All covered in Cream Cheese Frosting. Fondant Flower decorations.

Six inch cake and cupcakes for my Grandmother's 81st B'day. So when I was young, my grandmother was known for her Caramel cake recipe. So to pay homage, I found a delicious Caramel buttercream recipe. It was so good. This one was Butter Cake but now I'm imagining Triple Chocolate Cake with this Caramel icing. Makes me want a Snickers.

Flowers for the Lady.

This cake is not one of my favorites, but everyone that sees it, loves it. I wanted it to look more organic and natural. You know. Like an actual pot of flowers. Anyway. I baked the cake in a six inch round pan and the leftover batter in an oven proof bowl. I attached the two with skewers and carved the cake down a bit with a sharp knife. But the top of the cake was still a little too full so I continued to carve and the top came out way too flat. The cake is pretty angular and the flowers are generic but delicious non the less. Yellow cake with Chocolate Buttercream.

Spongebob Squarepants!

My first character cake. Pretty darn cute.

Just Because

I was going for Tiffany Blue but I went too far. Still cute. Butter cake with vanilla buttercream and a raspberry filling. Yummy!

Cake Wrecks

These cakes would definitely qualify as Cake Wrecks. But in my defense, it was my first time trying certain techniques such as Fondant, Frosting a cake smoothly, etc. I know that Jen over at http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/ would have something hilariously funny to say about my cakes ( I love her!) But hey, practice makes perfect.

Sweet Beginnings

About 5 or 6 years back I tried my hand at baking. I went to the store and purchased a cake pan and all the ingredients. I came home and fired up my Mom's twenty+ year old Sunbeam Mix Master. After measuring, and sifting and finally filling the pan with batter, I was overjoyed when I took a peek at my cake in the middle of its cooking time. It had risen higher than the cake pan and I knew this had to be a good sign. I carefully closed the oven door and waited patiently for the timer to ding. When it did, I opened my oven to find a beautiful, golden brown pound cake. I placed it on the counter to cool for ten minutes before inverting and slathering with a lovely lemon glaze. When I went back to the cake it had deflated. It was flat and lifeless and definitely worthy of its name. It was so heavy when I tried to separate it from the pan. I tried to salvage it with the glaze but it was no use. I still put the sad looking thing under the cake plate for all to see. After a couple of days my Mom finally said, "Why don't you put that heavy ass cake in the trash?" And I did. As the cake hit the can with a thud, I knew right then baking wasn't for me. I would just leave it to the pros. That is until I became a mother. I decided that I would make all of my daughters food from scratch. And though I felt a certain sense of pride in making my baby's food, baking still hadn't entered my mind. That is until she was turning one. I knew I was just going to have a very small get together, and I could have easily just picked up a cake from the supermarket, but I wanted it to be special. I wanted there to be some type of tradition behind the homemade birthday cake. I figured maybe I could do this for her birthday every year. So I got online and researched and was very shocked to find that there is a whole "Caking" community. So I finally decided on a design and armed with my piping bags, a round tip and a star tip this is the cake I came up with. And here is where my obsession began.