Jacob's 30th B-Day Cake

Explination:

The cake base: Replicated concrete floors that Jacob did in our home.

The Lumber: Jacob's new passion is making things out of wood. ie: tables, toy chests, anything.

Business Card: Replica of Jacob's new business card (thanks, Heather!). He just got his contractor's licence at the end of last year.

Snowy Mountain & Snowboarder: Jacob loves to snowboard! (And yes, I realize that the fondant snow-boarder is way to big for the mountain - because I made him before I made the cake - but I just didn't feel like re-making him nor did I have the time!)

X-Box Controller: Jacob LOVES his X-Box. He built an entire basement just for it! I made him an X-Box console last year so I had to do something different with the X-Box theme this year.

"Happy Birthday" letters: Made those to look like scrabble pieces. Jacob's FAVORITE game is Scrabble. He's really good at it too!

The base is a piece of MDF that I just had cut at Home Depot when I bought it.

I screwed a "floor joint" to the middle of the board (it's galvinized steel so I covered in in tin foil) then just screwed a piece of PVC pipe (that is actually a sprinkler pipe) into it then covered everything in foil. I put a thin layer of piping gel on top of the foil for the fondant squares to stick to.

For the base, I to replicate the concrete floors, I cut out a bunch of tan fondant squares with my cutter and layed them onto the foil-covered base then took brown royal icing and splattered it on randomly then took my "trowl" aka: pastry cutter/icer and scraped it off.

The "Lumber" was just a 11x15 cake cut into 3 1/2 inch blocks then covered in tan fondant and painted with brown food coloring/vodka mixture. It would have looked MUCH better had I marbled the fondant to have a "wood grain" then layed it on but I had too many blocks to do and re-mixing fondant would have made the marble effect dissapear. The second stack of lumber is baked from a 12x12 pan and also cut into 3 1/2 rectangles.

The X-Box controller is carved out of pound cake and is just sitting on top of the top of the PVC pipe. There is cardboard underneath and it just sat there perfectly.

Jacob's business card: cut out of gumpaste/fondant mix and dried overnight. Painted with food coloring/vodka mix and piped.

for amelie

The inspiration

The result

Baby Shower cake for my best friend April. I used the baby's monogram for the front.

Pink Gift Box Cake

This is the one we did last weekend. I was super fun to make. The flowers, tissue, tag, pearls and bow are made out of gumpaste. The rest is fondant. She asked for a pink girly cake with daisies and the execution of the cake was up to us. It was really cute. (Gabby if you have better pictures then u should post them :-) ) Shelley, where are your cakes??

Buttercream gift cake

Not sure why my pictures are so grainy. Oh well. Here is a buttercream gift box cake that I did for my friend who just had a baby boy. It was actually really easy. The accents are gumpaste and royal icing. I used Ednas UTube tutorial for the bow. Its really easy too. You just have to roll it really thin to get the right look. I may have rolled it a little to thin for the bow but oh well. The easiest part was the lid. Viva paper towels rock by the way. Definatlty a mirical worker. Spelling is terrible I know. Its almost midnight. Heres a link to the web artical that I found for the Buttercream gift box instructions.

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.make-fabulous-cakes.com/images/gift-box-cake-1.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.make-fabulous-cakes.com/gift-box-cake-tutorial.html&usg=__CqAaYRdn8G8bxNiBTLBbqnK4FZM=&h=265&w=350&sz=16&hl=en&start=7&tbnid=0t-yHXhqBRccvM:&tbnh=91&tbnw=120&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dbox%2Bcake%2Blid%2Binstructions%26gbv%3D2%26hl%3Den

Edna's Buttercream Video

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This is for Shelley. She talks a lot about the ingredients in the begining, the actual making of the buttercream starts at 3 min and 28 seconds.

1/2 cup solid high ratio shortening
1/2 cup butter or margarine, softened
1 tablespoon of merengue powder
1 teaspoon Clear Vanilla Extract (or extract of choice)
4 cups sifted confectioners' sugar (approx. 1 lb.)
2 tablespoons milk

In large bowl, cream shortening and butter with electric mixer. Add vanilla and milk. Gradually add sugar, one cup at a time, beating on a slow speed. Scrape sides and bottom of bowl often. Keep bowl or covered with a damp cloth until ready to use. Refrigerated in an airtight container, this icing can be stored 2 weeks. Don't overwhip or it will bring air to the icing and is impossible to smooth. If you have a kitchen Aid use white attachment, not whip attachment. You can use coffee creamers for flavorings or combine extracts.
YIELD: Makes about 3 cups.
For thin (spreading) consistency icing, add 2 tablespoons light corn syrup, water or milk.
For Pure White Icing (stiff consistency), omit butter; substitute an additional 1/2 cup shortening for butter and 1/2 teaspoon No-Color Butter Flavor. Add up to 4 tablespoons light corn syrup, water or milk to thin for icing cakes.

If you are using a vegetable shortening withouth the transfats, the consistency
of the icing might change. Use whole milk to bring some fat to the mix. Or try to use a vegetable shortening that has all the transfat. For best results, use high ratio shortening.

Gumpaste daisy

they look better in person

Battle of the Logos

I came up with different logos and I dont know which one I like more. Dave likes the P and Im not liking it so much anymore. I just did the second one today. What do you think? If you have any suggestions please let me know. Its so hard to see little things when your so close to a project.