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!

Tools of the Trade...

It is my Brother in Laws 50th birthday.  He's an overall handy guys so I thought a theme of tools would be appropriate for his 50th birthday celebration... I took my mom and my grandmom out to lunch last week and we made a run to foose cookie cutters in fleetwood, Pa. If you ever need cookie cutters, and are in or near PA, this is where you need to go. They also have an on-line store. I  LOVE this store.  I bought the 4 tools you see on the cake. I also picked up some bugs and butterflies so you will see them on future cakes.
The cake itself is a white cake with a fresh strawberry puree added. The filling is a blackberry Jam. Yummy... The tools are made of a 50/50 mix of gum paste and fondant. I made the original cut first then added the handles to give them some depth.  After I added the tools I felt like the cake needed a bit more so I made a tape measure and added the measurement of 50 all the way around...  This cake was inspired by many I saw on cake central.  Thanks ladies for the many ideas. I dabbled in taking a video while I worked on this cake as well.  I'm working on how to shorten it into a 3 minute clip and will hopefully post in the near future.  Enjoy!
My messy work area...

 The tools are on... Just needs a little something else...

 A tape measure... Here it is cut...

Added to the cake...

I added a few nails and screws and the cake is complete...

 The carnage...

This Marks 100...

This is my 100th Blog entry...   Crazy how time flies. I feel like I'm still just a beginner but I guess I can't keep thinking this way now that I'm in the triple digits... Since I added a counter to my blog on 6/14/2008 I've had 5,914 site visitors. That is even crazier...

This entry is about my non-traditional 4th of July cupcakes... I bought a new cupcake book called "What's New Cupcake?"  It has some super cute and easy to make cupcakes.  I fell in love with the Chinese food cupcakes so I decided to make them for the two 4th of July picnic's I attended this year.  Isn't Chinese food symbolic of that which is American cuisine anyway?  We are a melting pot...  I thought the pies were cute as well and "borrowed" the M&M's from my mom to make these...

Here are some pics of the assembly...

Cutting the starburst's into carrots and flattening yellow starburst's to look like egg...

Cutting the licorice to look like green onions..

I had help from my snuffy again with cutting and assembly... He did a great job, here he is placing the "peas" onto the fried rice...

all ready to go...

Assembling the pies...

Pies are cooling...

A sampling of the finished product...

In honor of my 100th blog I found what I believe is my very first cake creation... I made this cake in 1999 for father's day.

I didn't start to seriously indulge my urge to be creative with cakes until 2007 when I decided to take a Wilton cake decorating class at JoAnne Fabrics in Springfield. My creative spirit comes from my mom. Growing up she and both of my grandmother's were always trying to come up with the next latest and greatest craft to sell at the Christmas bazaars. My mom has an entire room of what I consider to be her "raw materials" to her latest and greatest creation. She is a great recycler...She can make most anything into a craft...  I played around with crafting growing up. I painted using the "One Stroke" technique and made glass vases, flower pots, magazine racks etc... I didn't like having all of these leftover supplies and creations hanging around my apartments. I didn't have much space and certainly didn't have a dedicated room for my supplies. I decided I need another approach.  I tried scrap booking but just couldn't seem to get myself organized enough to stick with it.  Then I realized that Cake would be the greatest craft.  I could have an outlet for my creativity yet, the end product wouldn't stick around and collect dust and take up space... It would be eaten and then I would get to make it all over again...  Perfect!   My main goal when I started was to make my three nieces a special birthday cake, a cake of their choosing (when they were old enough to decide).  It has since grown to making cakes for my siblings, parents, family and friends.  I don't sell cakes, I'm not  interested in starting a business. It is a lot of work to make these cakes and right now it is a labor of love... I don't want that love to go away...

Here is where I believe the love started... Mom had the 1977 Wilton catalog and it lived under the end table closest to the T.V.  My "spot" in the living room, when we would all would watch T.V. as a family at night, would be to curl up on the floor next to this T.V. stand.  I would page through this catalog endlessly.

I always wanted someone to make me the cake of the girl smiling.  I loved the cheeks and I think it was also because she had freckles... Perhaps this will be the cake I make for myself this birthday... We'll see... I have so many cakes I want to make...

Graduation Hats

Made these adorable graduation hats that were inspired by the amazing Bakerella. It took me a few trips to a few different grocery stores to find the right "hat" tops to the peanut butter cups. I ultimately settled on the Hershey's special dark chocolate bar.  There is probably grocery store video of me inappropriately feeling the packages of chocolate bars to make sure they were the right size... The ghirardelli squares were too big and weren't flat, others were too small, too big, had too much of an imprint of decoration etc...  I wasn't able to make it to a Godiva store to pick up the recommended squares, so I improvise.  I think they worked out nicely... The 95 degree heat and an hour and a half drive in my car caused a few casualties but overall most of them survived the trip...
Here are the pics of the assembly:

The materials

Wrappers are removed...

Getting Ready for Assembly

The tassels are done and "glued" down with chocolate, now it is time to insert the lollipop sticks.  Had to make sure they were room temperature so they didn't crack

Now I just have to glue them together with chocolate.

Finished

All done

The final product

Grandmom's 92nd Birthday

My sweet grand mom (GG is short for great grandmom, which is what my nieces call her) turned 92 years young this week and the family gathered to celebrate her birthday. My Aunt and Uncle threw a BBQ and most everyone was able to make it.  I paused for a minute at one point in the afternoon and took in the familiar and comfortable site of most of our family sitting under the huge Oak tree in the back yard just hanging out and talking.  I'm hopeful we get many more chances to do that...
I made Gram a special cake- vanilla with strawberry rhubarb filling. The cake was inspired by this one 
on cake central. I had some help making this cake from a special snufalufagus who was invaluable in helping me push the fondant through the clay gun to make the "rope" that was arranged into the flower shapes.
The only problem that happened was the delivery of this cake was not so smooth... I should have used straws through the middle of the top cake to secure it in place.  I didn't do that, for some reason, and as I was exiting the turnpike the top cake flipped off... It was still edible but certainly didn't look as pretty as I wanted it too.  Lesson learned about layered cakes and transporting...

Here are some pics of the process...
The cake filled...

 Me spreading the strawberry rhubarb filling:

We experimented with a test run of some iphone video of some of the cake action.  Once I figure out how to insert it into the blog I will post...


Snuffy's Hands at work :)

 The Carnage... 

 

 On another note, my awesome brother in law gave me two rose bushes from his yard.  The roses bush pictured below is from my Grand mom. She planted it in her yard many many years ago (it is probably over 60 years old.)  It is a  Frau Karl Druschki Rose bush.  My grandmom loves flowers and it makes me so happy to have a piece of her yard in my yard...  These are the first two flowers from the plant this year... Very exciting!!!(thanks to my sister for clarifying the history of this rose bush for me...)

A Princess Castle

This cake was made for my friend Jen's Twins- Emily and Madison.  They are big fan's of the Cake Boss and Jen wanted a special birthday cake for them, I was happy to supply. Jen gave me creative freedom and this is what came of it... It is buttercream with fondant accents. The turrets are ice cream cones covered in buttercream and the top are covered in purple sprinkles or jimmies... 

The water in the front is colored piping gel. I used an impression mat to make the brick imprint on the buttercream. This was a fun cake to make. Perhaps someone else will want a castle cake so I can make another one... 

Here are pictures of the cake coming together... The top ball is a little off center... oops... 

Lining up the cones

Covering the cones in buttercream, then sprinkles

The cones decorated...

More accents...