Baby Ava's Cake

Now is the perfect time to post about the baby shower cake I made for my sister-in-law...because she just had her baby!!! That's right, baby Ava is here and we are all so excited (which I'm sure you'll figure out with all the exclamation points in this post)! She came a week early, but both mom and daughter are doing great! She was born last night, weighing in at 7 pounds, 2 ounces and 20" long! Sounds like a perfect baby to me! I can't wait to make it down there to see and hold her!!!

Okay, on to the cake...

Cristina had shown me a picture of a cake that she liked with pastel green, pink and yellow polka dots, a bow, and some baby booties on top. She also wanted Ava's name on it, so I took it as inspiration and put my own ideas to work.

I started by making the baby mary janes so that they had time to dry for a few days. I used a template found on Cake Central from member PDXSweetTreats. Pretty simple to make and they look so cute!

Here is the whole finished cake! I was actually happy with how (most of) this came out!

The top tier was chocolate cake with whipped ganache filling, covered in ganache. The bottom tier was white cake with strawberries and cream filling, iced with buttercream. Then the whole cake was covered in a pale pastel green fondant. I added all the dots and decorations and the ribbon borders and was done. I'm thrilled to say the Mom-to-be loved it! Look at her glow!

CONGRATULATIONS CRISTINA AND JOHN!

CAN'T WAIT TO SEE YOUR NEW BUNDLE OF JOY!!!

The Cake is on F-I-R-E!

Well, it really wasn't, but there were "flames" on it. I was asked by my sister to make a cake for her friend that works in the Fire Department. I had seen two awesome cakes on Cake Central, (where else, right? LOL) one by CC member cassiescakes and another by myKzooKid.

There were also a lot of cakes with fire hydrants on them, but I just took a picture of a real fire hydrant and tried to get it as close as I could. Here is my first, all edible, fire hydrant...

For the flames, I made my own template, then used it to cut out gumpaste "flames". They were all white to begin with, but I sprayed them with Wilton's Color Mist in orange and yellow. One day I will have an airbrush for better, more precise results!

Then I made the fire hose out of fondant, spelling "happy" with it, then attached it to the hydrant. With tinted piping gel, I made the word "birthday" and a couple splashes of "water". I thought this was such a cute idea! And I liked how it turned out.

Here's to you, Frankie! Hope you enjoyed it!

Makin' Whoopie!

Where should I start? I guess where I left off...Back in December, my daughter wanted to take some snacks for her Christmas Party at school (not to mention I had a cake club meeting coming up). My girls had recently asked to buy the "Whoopie Pies" book, so I figured it was time to try it out!

I made the "Classic Chocolate Whoopie", filled with the "Classic Marshmallow" filling.


I have to say I thought they were delicious, which was obvious to my family when I ate all the leftover ones! However, they were kind of a pain to make in large quantities. I baked almost 100 halves to make the 4 dozen whoopies! And you can only mix enough batter for 2 dozen at a time. On top of that, I also had to make the filling. It was a lot of mixing and cleaning and mixing and cleaning. And if you're like me, that is not my idea of fun. I learned my lesson...I don't think I will make that many at one time again!

But back to the yumminess! For my daughter's class, I rolled the whoopie pies in festive sprinkles to add a little color and texture.


And for the ones for my cake club, I added a mint drizzle to the top.

Either way, they tasted scrumptious!

Like the back of the book says,

" Is it a cake? Is it a cookie? Who cares!"

If you haven't yet, try some out for yourself!

Where Have I Been?!

Well, I have missed posting for over 2 months!!! So sorry about that! After my last post I was rather busy with working, birthdays, holidays, a baby shower, a cake challenge and a drawn-out illness! Right before Christmas, my whole family (my husband, our 2 daughters, not to mention a large number of other family members) came down with walking pneumonia. It was not pretty...we were sick and sleeping about 16 hours out of the day. That lasted for about a month, well into the new year. SO, I know it's late, but I hope you all have had a great new year so far! Also, hope your Valentine's Day went lovingly! Am I missing any holidays?

I know for me there has also been many birthdays, 6 to be exact, including my own. And today is my Mother-in-law's birthday! Happy Birthday, America! Hope you had fun in Colorado!Hopefully *soon* I will be posting a bunch of pictures of cakes I've made for some of those birthdays.

I also have pictures to share from my sister-in-law's baby shower, a cute baby I made for display at a cake challenge, and some of my daughter's party pics from last weekend...which was a blast!

But for now, I have some housework that needs to be done and also I have to get ready for work! Thanks for waiting so patiently for me to return to the blogging world! I am back and ready to GO!