I've always wanted to decorate cakes. It comes from my mother, who has been making perfect icing roses for as long as I can remember. So, in the last few years, I've started trying to pick it up on my own.
I have to say, I love Wilton products. I have quite a few of their pan sets, and tier sets, and they make it way easy to make beautiful cakes. As time and scanner permit, I'll throw up a few pictures of my better works.
It's also very nice to have a hobby that my husband fully supports. After all, his philosophy is: "If it turns out well, I get to eat it. If it turns out badly, I get to eat it." He's also trying to encourage me to eventually pursuing this at least semi-professionally, and possibly going back to school to become a pastry chef. I don't know about that one...
Some good cake links:
Pictures of my cakes:
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This was a friend's birthday cake, and the second tiered cake I had ever made. This was lots of fun, but kind of a challenge. I was told "no flowers," which left me wondering what to do on a woman's birthday cake without flowers. The design was laid out using the Wilton pattern presses, which worked nicely. |
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This cake is the best one I've made to date, I think. I made it after reading all sorts of tips and tricks on the message board at Sugarcraft. The cake was iced, then gone over with a paper towel to make it smooth. Then I added some roses I had make in white royal icing and airbrushed blue (the picture doesn't show it well), and airbrushed the hearts on the side. Yay airbrushing! :) |
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Here is the infamous Elmo cake. A friend's son (and my day-to-day babysitting charge) is a HUGE fan of Sesame Street's Elmo. On a request, I made an Elmo cake (Wilton makes the preshaped pan) as Daniel's birthday present. After about an hour piping red stringy fur, I swore I'd never do another character cake again. But Elmo was appreciated, so all was well, warm, and fuzzy. |
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Detail of Elmo's face. The balloons are plastic. I used premade Wilton icing (comes in plastic tubes) for the orange and black sections of the cake. I wasn't happy with the texture. The red icing I made up about 3 days in advance to let it darken (red is a very hard color to get). I also used a whole jar of tasteless red icing color. |
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When my husband Michael got a job at Microsoft, it seemed only fitting that I make a cake. Of course, my former college roommate Adrianne and I got the wacky idea to try to make it a surprise party. The cake, at least, was a surprise, but it was too hard to get everyone together for a "party," so the cake was delivered to Mike during a football gathering at a friend's house. The floppy disk and mouse are made of lemon-flavored white chocolate (flavored with Lorann oils, which rule). The letter is awful due to premade (again, in little white tubes) piping gel, which ran out of the tubes. :I |
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Sometimes cakes aren't for any special reason. I wanted chocolate cake, and to practice ruffles. I still need practice, as you can see. |
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Another infamous cake, if you speak with me on occasion. Here is the Oh-My-God-It's-Lemon cake Michael requested. The cake is Lemon Supreme with Dream Whip and Lemon pudding added, filled with lemon cake filling from my local cake shop. The icing is lemon, made with the flavored lemon sugar from Domino, and the hearts on top are lemon white chocolate, similar to the computer accessories above. It was a request from my husband, Michael, who later claimed it wasn't lemony enough! |
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Occasionally, when people request a cake from me, they actually have an idea of what they want. This cake was a lot of fun to make. A friend likes to joke with another friend about her past hobby of playing with My Little Ponies, so her birthday cake had to be Pony-related. Someone had offered to actually buy a Pony to put on top of the cake, but I wanted to actually make the pony. The pony here is made out of gum paste, and held together with toothpicks. I bought two Ponies for myself (I had wanted an excuse for some time) to use as models, and hand-sculpted the pony while watching TV. The pony was then dried and iced in royal icing to patch up the cracks where pony parts intersected, and to give the pony an all-over "furry" feel. After the royal dried, I air-brushed it pink and piped on the mane and tail. The cake itself was iced smooth, and then "grass" was piped on top. As I said, lots of fun. Really. :) In later news, the pony was quickly decapitated at the party by the guest of honor. |
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In the same weekend as the My Little Pony cake, Mike's father and sister had birthdays. It was the first weekend I had ever done two cakes, and it was rather stressful, as I couldn't do a lot of forward preparation. As a result, I cheated horribly with this cake. It is iced with (gasp) canned chocolate icing, which I consider a sin in decorating (and a mess - it melts in your bag as you try to pipe it - ugh) and covered in Wilton's boxed chocolate fondant. It was the first fondant cake I've ever made, and I did have some problems. The butterflies were a later design addition, in an attempt to cover some holes in the fondant drape. Yes, I'm clever when I'm in a bind. While I wasn't at the party, I was told that the cake was excellent. :) |
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I finally got off my butt and took Wilton's Cake I class. The picture at left is my
graduation cake. WooSpif! (Note: the thing that's probably bothering you is the perspective on the cake. Picture was taken upside down [Thanks, Mike!] and photo was reversed.) |
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Detail of the above cake. First roses I've done that I didn't absolutely hate. |
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Okay, for those of you who heard me whine and whine about the Fish Cake, here it is. My sister in law really wanted a groom's cake for her wedding, and her groom REALLY liked fishing, so they wanted a fish. It was the first large cake I had done, and so it was a huge learning experience. I think I'll take a long rest before doing another of these. Of course, I had a lot of things going on that week.. Cake is chocolate, iced in buttercream (due to time factors, I did break down and buy the 9 pound bucket from the local cake shop). Fish was made in the Pantastic pan. To get the detail of the scales, I made a white chocolate mold of the pan and placed it on top of the iced cake. The mold was removed prior to cutting. |
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I've been playing around with gumpaste lately. Here is my most recent effort. I think I'm getting better! |
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Barby and Aaron's wedding cake - my first! |
