Pretty Lilies

This cake was for a close friend of my sister who is celebrating her upcoming nuptials. The invitations were covered in lilies so it seemed appropriate to cover a cake with lilies... I haven't made lilies before so I looked to my Wilton resources and found instructions in my gum paste book. I only had one style of cutter. If I make them in the future it would be nice to have different sized flowers to give some variance to the design.  I played around with my powder food colorings which was fun.  Because there was some distance and travel associated with the delivery of this cake, my sister added the flowers when she got to the shower. This way they stayed fresh and didn't flatten from the storage of the cake in the refrigerator.   Here are some pictures of the assembly.

From this cutting of gum paste the lilies are born...

 The lilies are stretched, smoothed and wrapped around to make the basic flower.  They are drying upside down to give them some structure.

The flowers are ready for their highlights.

 Ready for Transport...

 

This little cutie enjoyed the flowers and couldn't believe that they were edible. Too cute! 

Ashley's Graduation

My beautiful cousin graduated from High School this year. She is off to cosmetology school to start to build her empire...  We had a picnic this weekend to help her celebrate with friends and family.  The nail accessories on the cake are made out of chocolate.  The graduation hat and diploma are fondant.  The cookies were sugar cookies decorated in school colors.  I'll be posting more pictures from the party soon...


More cookies...

 The start of the cake...

 The chocolate and fondant accents drying...

 The cookies are drying...

 Everything is packed up ready to go....

Fabulous Four Turn 40

Four of my fabulous friends turn 40 this year so we had a celebration for everyone at our annual Fourth of July Picnic.  Each friend was represented in their own fondant likeness... Although I took some creative liberties I think they turned out pretty darn close to their likeness :)

The one in the upper left corner was an extra... She didn't turn out as cute so she got thrown in the trash...

The pieces of the cake drying

Held the faces on with royal icing. The toothpicks helped while drying and during transport to make sure they didn't fall off...

Fourth of July Cookies

This was my attempt at being festive for our annual fourth of July Picnic.  I experimented with sugar cookies again. This time the recipe I used had a little too much butter, my cookies never hardened and essentially crumbed on the way to the picnic.  I didn't get a picture of them nicely displayed in the tray because they essentially broke apart.  Surprisingly or maybe not so surprisingly they vanished in about 30 minutes of being displayed...  Guess it doesn't matter what they look like, as long as they taste good...:)