Happy 93rd Birthday GG

Seriously, how cute is my grandmom?  She just celebrated her 93rd Birthday.  It was great to have the family come together to celebrate.  My niece slept over at my house the night before and she had a chance to help me decorate GG's cake.  She rolled the fondant to make the daisy.  She learned how to cut the flowers out and she even kneeded the fondant to mix the color's needed.  She was a great helper!

 All of the pieces drying ready for assembly

 Picture of back of cake

Catch Up Blog

I made some cakes recently and haven't had a chance to blog...
Happy Birthday to my brother who likes a race car driver in the 51 car... and a hydrangea cake to celebrate mother's day.

 

Easter Cookies

I have the cookie bug... I've been wanting to try cookies but was afraid of baking and royal icing... Neither of them have really worked in the past.  I found some great recipes from -I am Baker (cookies) and Bake at 350 (royal icing).  I'm still trying to figure out how to get the best consistency for flooding the cookies but the more I do it the more I will get the hang of it, hopefully.   I found inspiration for the cookies below from SugarBelle's Blog.  There are so many talented cookie artists out there. I want to try most of everything I see...
Happy Easter everyone!

Here are some pictures of the cookies coming together.  I'm a little messy but I will get the hang of it...

Flooded the cookies and let them dry overnight.

 My dinning room table as my work space...

Guest Blogspot on Frosting for the Cause

 Hi everyone, I'm the guest blogger on Frosting for the Cause today.  Check it out...

http://www.frostingforthecause.com/2011/04/amys-pink-ribbon-sugar-cookies

Cindy turns 40...

My big sister turned 40 this weekend. Like most people, I think my big sister is awesome... But, I'm serious- she really is... She is a great wife and mom, she keeps things running smoothly in her house and balances many different roles in life on very limited sleep (I worry about that, but she already knows that...) I have a lot of love and respect for my sister so I wanted to make her a cake that made her feel special and celebrated her big birthday. Here are pics of the assembly...

 This was my first attempt at Tulips.  Here I am cutting the gum paste

 Forming the flower on th end of the rolling pin...

 

Placed cotton balls around the outside of the flowers to help keep the petals standing straight up to dry...

 Finished drying... Now ready for the inside...

Surprise Goodbye

I'm still smiling and probably will every time I think about my last day at Temple University. My awesome co-workers threw me a surprise "dessert competition" going away party today.  Everyone made a special dessert/treat and I got to be the Judge! There was much creativity on the table.  It meant a lot to me that they would go through so much planning and take the time to makes these great treats. Thanks guys! You are the best!!!

Here are the final products:

I got to make my own categories...

Judge's Favorite went to Naomi's Temple "T" made out of mini cupcakes...

Best Use of Judge's Name went to Alexis: (see my name in the middle row- awesome!)

Looks Delicious went to Alicia's wonderful chocolate bird nests:

Best Effort went to our student Amy:

and last but certainly not least-  Best Try went to Toni and Kim:

Wipeout Birthday

For my niece's 7th birthday she wanted a Wipeout birthday... She loves the show and specifically asked for the cake to have the three big red balls in blue, not muddy, water with happy birthday avah written on the balls... No small order.  She also wanted the cake to be half chocolate and half vanilla but I couldn't figure out how to do that without making it marble so I made the base chocolate and the water and the balls were vanilla. The bridge was graham crackers dipped in blue colored white chocolate.
Here are some pics of the cake coming together..

Used a special pan to make the 1/2 ball shapes and then just icing them and put them together to make the big red balls for the cake...

 Used a stray to keep the balls in place on the cake.

 My messy work space and the covering of the graham crackers:

  

 

 Tried to recreate the logo freehand using buttercream icing... Not that easy but I attempted...

Birthday Celebrations

Here are a few birthday cakes I've made in the past few weeks for some special people in my life.  The inspiration for the purple and black cake came cake central.  The swirly cake came from "I am Baker" which is something that I am not...  I don't claim to bake- I just like to decorate...


Pictures of the Black and Purple cake coming together:

I really don't drink that much, but you can't really tell by this picture, now can you???

My work space:

I went to the Philadelphia Flower Shower and much to my surprise there was a cake made by Buddy from Carlo's Bakery in Hoboken, better known at the Cake Boss.  It was really pretty- had many gum paste flowers on it.  It was a little overdone for my taste but as my sister said- Well- it is for the flower show....  True, very true...