August Birthday's

There are a few Virgo's in my family... Including me!  We had a picnic to celebrate our birthdays and I attempted a cake I've been wanting to try for a while.  I got to use my new extruder which was 1,000 x's easier to use then my old one. Happy Birthday to everyone!

Here are some action shots... I cut the long strands into stem pieces to place around the outside. 

 Used different shades of green...

 Made some leaves and roses for the top...

 We had help blowing out the candles...

Katie T's Baby

 
You know when you meet someone and after talking to them you feel like they have been your friend for a while... We'll that's Katie T for me... Although we don't see each other that often I feel like we have been friends forever because number one- she's super nice and number two- my friend Leigh gives me updates of what's going on in life.  Kate posted a picture of a cinnamon bun in a toaster oven as her profile picture to announce that she was pregnant.  Genius.   I used some inspiration from the invitation and recreated the baby bump. The cake was chocolate with buttercream icing with fondant accents. Here are some pics...

You may notice some alcohol behind the cake... Don't worry I didn't drink all of that while I was making the cake... I waited until after I was finished... :)

I used the image from the invitation to make cut outs in fondant.

Then I moved her to the cake...

Added some fun circles... and a brown boarder and she was good to go...

Here's the invite.  I loved the colors.

Birthday Adventure

I've been wanting to make a cake with a dramatic flower... So for my birthday I decided that is what I would make. I found a flower cake (this one) that used heart shaped cookie cutters to form the flower leaves.  I thought simple enough... "I can do that" so I tried it...  Below is the result.   Happy Birthday to me :)

This is 2- 6 x 3" chocolate cakes with buttercream.  Flower is Fondant & Gum paste.

For my birthday I took a trip to the cake mecca that is New York City...  We visited NY Cakes where I bought myself the newest clay gun/ extruder- it is awesome as well as a few other toys including my first copy of cakecentral magazine.  Here is my loot:

We also visited three cupcake stores- Sugar Sweet Sunshine, Cupcake Land and Crumbs.  All three were good but the winner in my book between these three was cupcake land. A close second was sugar sweet sunshine, if not just for the name, but the cupcakes were really tasty as well.  Of course everything in my book is compared to Magnolia bakery and no one has yet to surpass them...

Here are some shots of the cupcakes...
Beautiful cupcakes at crumbs....

I had a peanut butter candy cupcake and it just didn't have enough peanut butter flavor.  The cake itself was o.k. but wasn't really that chocolaty... It was o.k. but definitely looked better then it tasted.

The counter at cupcake land in Brooklyn...  I had a peanut butter cupcake here.  It was awesome. The icing tasted like real peanut butter and the cake was light and fluffy...

Sugar Sweet Sunshine cupcakes.  They were the cheapest of them all- only $1.50 each and they tasted really good.  Much better then the almost $4 crumbs cupcakes. 

Randomly found this place called Economy Candy... I have never been in one store with this much candy in one place in my entire life.  It was great!

Another really fun store was Fishs Eddy- if you need plates- This is where you need to go.  It was a GREAT store... I'm glad I don't live closer because I could get into serious trouble..