Dusting off the cobwebs and updating my blog

I took a little 10 month hiatus from my blog since finding out that I was going to have another baby. Probably the most exciting thing that has happened for my family this year is this little guy:

This is Daniel.

The second most exciting thing that happened is getting to celebrate my sweet Hawea's second birthday. I decided to take it up a notch this year and went with a mini dessert bar. I made a colored-layer white cake with vanilla frosting, cake pops to fit the bubbles and balloon theme and mini strawberry creme cupcakes. 

I will be posting more cake recaps over the next couple of days so stay tuned...

A Season of First Birthdays

This past October my daughter turned a year old. Shortly after her first birthday were a stream of first birthdays for all of her baby friends. I had the great pleasure of making cupcakes and smash cakes for all the little babies. Here's a quick pic of my baby girl at her tea party birthday. I did vanilla cupcakes with strawberry mousse frosting and banana cupcakes with peanut butter frosting. Watching her eat cake wasn't as exciting as it is for most parents because she has reaped the benefits of having a mother for a baker at much too early age:)

       

In November we celebrated the birthday of Hawea's dear friend Finley whose mama writes the blog Tiny Green Elephants. This cake was a treat to make because it contained no processed sugar. I was a little worried at first as I had never made a sugar-free cake but I was able to find a delicious recipe that contained apples, cinnamon, and unsweetened apple juice. What I now realize is that this delicious cake could also be made for diabetics too! 

I can proudly admit that this may have been one of the happiest customers I've had to date.

    

Then in December we celebrated two birthdays. In the beginning of the month was dear little Adelyn's birthday. We went with vanilla cupcakes and the sprinkles recipe for strawberry frosting. The cupcakes were topped with fresh strawberry slices and the birthday girl's cupcake had a white ribbon made of gumpaste.

Little Adelyn also dug right in and loved her very first taste at the sweet life.

 In late December we flew to the midwest for Christmas and for our 4th niece's first birthday. I was so excited to create these cupcakes and smash cake inspired by one of my favorite children's author's Eric Carle. For those of you who have been out of the children's book loop lately, he's authored The Very Hungry Caterpillar, The Very Busy Spider, and Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See, to name a few. The smash cake and cupcakes were vanilla injected with raspberry sauce, topped with two kinds of raspberry frosting-one a light whipping and the other a traditional frosting. The butterfly on the smash cake was made from gumpaste as well as the butterfly and caterpillar cupcake toppers.

 

Classy Yellow Engagement Cake

Yellow and white have had quite a historical love affair over these past centuries. In the earliest of times they were paired textures of brocade and lace or in damask wallpaper.

Later in the mid-century modern era we found yellow and white in Eames furniture and Wasily Kandinski paintings.

Today it reappears in fabric prints, clothing, furniture decor, and of course cakes.

This week's cake was a lemon coconut cake with french vanilla cream frosting. The outer adornment was festooned in canary yellow fondant, white gumpaste flowers and ribbons. 

Bows are fun to make and they add a nice elegant touch to any cake. I recently learned that while most bows are made from fondant, its best to use gumpaste if using other adornments in the same white color to color match. The flowers are white tiger tulips with yellow stamens, and each bloom was cut using flower cutters and their shape and detail created from a flower veiner and dried on large soup spoons. 

High Tea in the Chaparral

There is no better way to practice doing something then to sign up for a contest. In April (I know its been awhile since I blogged) I enrolled in my local cake design school's spring cake show. The theme of this year's contest was, "Flowers in Springtime." I decided to create a cake for spring high tea in the chaparral. The cake itself was a dummy on the inside (nothing more than styrofoam) rolled in fondant with gumpaste flowers. The layers of fondant was inspired by another artist named Maggie Austen. My inspiration, aside from Maggie Austen's pristine design was the rock face cliffs of the north county San Diego area where I live. The warm taupes and mauves juxtaposed against the cracked and tapered lines of rock formed a sense of symmetry in this cake. The flowers are native Matija poppy and monkey flower. Gumpaste flowers are not as easy to make as one may think. Modeling and forming is a fairly simple process, but drying and more importantly arranging can be a bit more challenging. Usually when one puts a bouquet of flowers together the petals have no problem keeping its shape while squished alongside other flowers. Gumpaste flowers on the other hand, dry hard, and will break when handled to rough. Rule of thumb is to always make extra flower petals and extra flowers (in case one breaks when adding them to the cake) are made.

This was a challenging experience that really pushed me to develop my skill in cake design. I'd love to end this blog with me parading my 1st place ribbon, but such is not the case. I did however come out knowing a little bit more about cake and a whole lot more about making flowers.