AllieGATORS

I made some super cute Alligators for my niece for her birthday cupcakes. I have called her Alliegator for a long time and I have now shortened it to just Gator. Since I made her sister some Crab cupcakes for her birthday since, as you guessed, I call her Crabbie I had to do something for Gator too!

Strawberry Shortcake

First cake with filling............DISASTER!!!!!!!!! I was DEVASTATED.

The filling on the strawberry house leaked out and the buttercream started coming off. I wish I had a picture of the carnage.

Before the great flood the cake was BEAUTIFUL!

Arrrrrr get away from my booty

Open Treasure Chest....SURE!

Couple fun things with this cake. Obviously the load of candy oozing out the front but also the treasure chest is a 1/4 sheet cake cut in half. I used half Chocolate and half Yellow cake. I had NEVER made 2 different cakes in one pan like that. I was super impressed with myself.

I covered the outside in brown fondant and while it looked 'good' I wasn't 100% convinced it was done. So my favorite element of this cake was the 'wood grain' I added to give the chest a realistic look.

As a compliment to the cake, Pirates on cupcakes :o)

It's La la Loopsy :o)

Loopsy is fun! Loopsy is BRIGHT and has little details. I love all the cakes I make and love doing them for everyone but this one was EXTRA special. This little girl has been very sick this last year, she has fought an uphill battle with all her might. Even with everything she has gone through, she is bright and cheery and loving but most of all appreciative!!!

This project also marked a first for me. Everything to date has gone very smoothly. I made cakes, cupcakes and themed cakepops. I was LOVING myself and my work, I couldn't wait to see the smile on her face. I package it all up and head to bed, ready for my delivery the next day.......

I get up, I walk into the kitchen and there it sits.....ALL MY POPS WERE LOST!!! The temperature in the house rose to close to 80 overnight and all the chocolate softened and melted. GONE, ALL GONE. Days worth of hard work. I WAS DEVASTATED. My client was so kind and so understanding but I was mad at myself. I had a lot of take away from this and learned things about chocolate that I never knew.

Here are pictures of the cakes and what the pops should have been.

From others come great ideas

This past weekend my grandmother watched my kids while I went to my final cake class and she showed me a super cool new treat I could make, hamburger cookies. Well I immediately said “that could be a Krabby Pattie, I have to make a SpongeBob cake now”

Guess who has a birthday coming up, THE HUBS, guess who is getting a SpongeBob cake! He hates SpongeBob but that’s Ok, he likes to oblige me :o) He said as long as it is chocolate cake inside he doesn’t care what the outside looks like.

I decided that the design of the cake would be the ocean with the small island, SpongeBob, Patrick and the palm trees.

I purchased the SpongeBob toys rather then making them. I did watch some you tube videos on how to make them but making figures scare me. I tried it once and came out horrible, I will stick to animals for now :o) I did however see them make striped towels and that’s where I got the idea to make the towels that went with them from fondant.

The Palm Trees……Oh boy! No I know full well that for any that has to ‘suspend’ or hold a rigid shape you need to mix/make it with gum paste. I tried to just make them with fondant…..FAIL! I couldn’t get them to hold together let alone attach to the ‘trunk’ (pretzel). In theory they were a super cute project if I had done it the way I know it should have been done.

I personally don’t think that gum paste tastes all that good and that’s why I try to avoid using it. For some reason I have this hang up that all things need to be edible on a cake and while gum paste is (it’s VERY hard depending on the ratio to fondant) to me it tastes like dish soap.

Here's the cake.....

Practice makes perfect....

I love playing in the kitchen, as we have determined, more so then that I want my client to get a product that makes them go 'WOW'. For the Eagle cake I decided that I wanted the feathers to be '3D' so I will be using fondant and lilly petal cutters and flower veiners to make them. You can't really see the detail in the picture so I will need to find a way to accentuate that but here's my first feather.

For the Minnie party we had been going back and forth about a cupcake topper and this is a prototype I came up with.

The last set of pictures is just a party of the party, cakepops! I love things on a stick....I truly do! All edible, it's chocolate and fondant!

Today was a fantastic day!

Accomplished

Today I completed the last class of course 4 of Wilton Method decorating classes and their Tall Cakes classes. I felt that take the classes and having some formal training would help me along the way. I have learned quite a bit along the way and added to my network, I met 2 phenomenal talent ladies along the way.

Here's to continued learning!