Eagles SuperBowl52 Birthday Celebration!

We watched the Superbowl with our family and also celebrated Lilly's 14th Birthday...  The Eagle turned out great! Made a frozen buttercream transfer recipe that was 2 parts butter to 1 part shortening. It was much softer and allowed me to make crisper edges. So proud of the Eagle's and their Superbowl Win!

Video of making the Frozen ButterCream Transfer and making the cake...

Fun Loving 60th Birthday...

To celebrate my Aunt's 60th Birthday I made a VW Love Bus for her birthday cake.  I used a coloring book page line drawing of a VW bus and made the frozen buttercream transfer the size of the round top of the cake so it looked like one piece.

Polar Express Birthday

 This kid still loves the Polar Express Movie and requested a polar express cake again this year.  This time I made a frozen buttercream transfer of the train and tried to make it look like it was plowing through the snow...

Here's video of the making of the Frozen Butter Cream Transfer

Reach the Beach- Slow but Pretty

 

I participated in a 209 mile relay race across New Hampshire in Early October Called Reach the Beach Relay.  It was one of the best running experiences I've had.  My 11 teammates totally rock!  We had a blast.  I was worried about this race for a few months before we left but everything fell into place. Check out the 6 minute video we made of our experience click here. This cake represents more then just a copy of our team logo...Slow But Pretty. I'm not sure an experience like this can be repeated but we are apparently doing it again in Miami in 2012.  We'll see...

Our race shirts...

The turtle was a frozen buttercream transfer of course...

 

Jamie got to cut the cake...

Missing Socrates....

 The girls taking pictures of the boys...

Happy 100th Hazel Ave

The houses on Hazel Avenue in West Philly turn 100 years old this year. To commemorate this special occasion my friend commissioned me to make a cake for the house party.  It was also their one year anniversary and it just so happened to be the hottest day of the summer with temps above 100 degrees- It was a 101 theme all around...  I was up for the challenge of making this cake yet I had no idea how I was going to do it. Should it be 3-D, a frozen buttercream transfer (FBCT), fondant over lays etc... I had much angst.  In the process of researching how to make this cake I made a new cake friend- so exciting! . Thanks Linda for sharing some of your secrets. You can check out Linda's work here.  She is really talented....
I decided to go with a FBCT and tried to make a line drawing from pics that my friend sent me... I'm really NOT good at drawing so I employed the artistic abilities of another friend's dad....  He drew me a beautiful line drawing of the house that I was then able to outline and make into a FBCT for the top of the cake...   Without the help of cake friends I'm not sure this cake design would be possible...  I was really pleased with the way it turned out.... Happy 100th Hazel and Happy One Year Anniversary Reba & Steve!!!

The cake ideas went from this picture

To this drawing

To This FBCT design

To See how I make FBCT's you can see more of assembly of pics here.

Here are more pics of the cake coming together. This is the outline of the design.  I use plastic page protectors, they work perfect to hold the drawing in place and they allow the design to easily release once it comes out of the freezer.

 Adding some colors to the drawing...

The Carnage... The flavor was Strawberry with Raspberry filling... Yummy!

Temple T

My colleague Patrick is moving on to medical school at Temple. I made a Temple T in his honor which was a FBCt and added a few advil's (take two and call me in the morning) as well as a little bandaid which was fondant. My favorite part was the EKG strip going around the outside of the cake. Patrick has a wonderful and unique sense of humor (Which has been appreciated over the years!) and is one of the most even tempered people I know- He is going to make a great doctor! I can say I knew him when...

turning three with lighting mcqueen

My good friend and childhood neighbor Kris came over for a lesson on how to make a FBCT. Her son is turning three and the theme of the party is Lightning McQueen. It was a lot of fun hanging out and making the FBCT. I love when my cake world and my friend world come together...

Here is Kris- Hard at work...



Filling in color


An action shot of filling in color


The Finished back side of the FBCT. She put it on ice, packed it home and drove it safely home....


Kris did all of the work on this cake. Here are some action shots of icing the cake and making the background for lightning...



Line drawings work best to make FBCT (frozen butter cream transfers)






Placing the candle on the cake...


A happy customer!!! He can't wait to eat a letter of his name!

Jim's MBA

Congrats to my friend Jim on obtaining his MBA from St. Joes! Jim's Wife, Kris (my childhood neighbor) threw him a party and asked me to make a cake. Kris and I have reconnected in the last year, talking about cakes and things. She has made some cool cakes for her son's birthday. I think I might have convinced her that she can do a frozen butter cream transfer as well... Can't wait to see what this year's cakes will be...

Kris sent me some picture samples of the hawk. I was going to attempt the block lettering of the HAWK but opted to do the more traditional script writing. After I placed the frozen butter cream transfer of the hawk (not an Eagle- like Jim's dad thought, nor an Arizona Cardinal as my Aunt Kay thought...) on the cake and did the writing I thought it needed more so I made some cluster of stars to fill in the white space. Cake was marble. I could have done a little better on the marbeling- it sort of looked like a chocolate cake on top of a vanilla. Next time I will mix more.

The cake, almost finished. It needed more so I added the red stars.

This is the hawk filled in with icing. Essentially a frozen buttercream transfer is coloring in between the lines with icing. I outline the drawing of a reverse image and then fill in the colors. Freeze it for an hour and the flip over and put it on the cake.

This is the image I used for the cake

That's it. The next cake will be next weekend for Lilly's 5th birthday. It will be my first barbie cake... Can't wait to make it!

Here are some pictures of Kris's handwork:

SuperBryant

We had another going away party at work... I know, it seems like we have a revolving door...

The theme of this party was Superman... Bryant will be missed by many in our office. He is moving on to bigger and better things but we are thankful for the work he has done for us.

My sister Michelle came over last night to help me with my cake making. She did an EXCELLENT job pipping the stars around the cake. She also helped me find the superman logo, which was helpful.

Can you tell what I did wrong with this cake? That's right... I didn't transpose the image when I printed it so it's a backwards "S". Does that mean that Superman's powers would be turned toward evil? Perhaps, but I think we will all survive.

This cake was a red velvet cake with a frozen buttercream transfer of the superman logo.