Happy Birthday Wesley!!

So clearly I would do anything for my little man... aka my nephew Wesley.  My special birthday surprise to him was to make him a cake.  When I called the week before to see what he was interested in, it turned out he was having a Transformers/Iron Man cake and he requested it to look like Bumblebee.  He specially requested chocolate so I used my creative genius to turn it into a S'Mores cake.  I used the same triple chocolate cake recipe but as my middle layer I crushed up graham crackers and used a big old tub of fluff in the middle.  It was oozy sweet and delicious how the flavors all played in together.  When it came to the decorations I went with just his face.  I covered the whole thing with a layer of yellow fondant.  Over half of that I covered it with additional grey fondant.  All of the accent pieces were made using rice krispies treats that I cut and molded to fit my needs.  His ears, eyes, nose, mouth and helmet piece were all rice krispies treats.  For the logo on the front, I sketched out the Transformers logo and used a food writer pen to finalize the drawings.  Of course the little man loved it and there were enough rice krispies treats add ons for all the kids there to have one... with Wesley keeping the ultimate logo for later :)  Just for added sugar rush factor I used the leftover chocolate cake mix I had to make Peanut Butter Cup Cupcakes.  I filled each cup about half full and placed an unwrapped pb cup in the middle.  It didn't fully melt but created a great gooey center.  All the desserts were big hits!!  SO HAPPY 6TH BIRTHDAY WESLEY!!

Happy Birthday Greg!

Toni asked me to make a cake for Greg for his birthday... and Greg loves his basketball.  He's always talking about playing it all the time so it's the perfect way to celebrate his day!!  I used a triple chocolate recipe with extra chocolate chips and a whipped cream frosting.  Light and delicious!!  The icing was definitely a find and I'll be using it way more often!!  I used half of my ball pan to create a topper for the round cake.  I iced the bottom using the whipped cream frosting and covered the half basketball with orange fondant.  After long debates with Patrick about what the lines should look like on a basketball, I took control and winged it!!  And turns out... my design was correct!!  He was trying to overlap all sorts of crazy lines but it ended up looking great :)  So Happy Birthday Greg!  This was one of the few cakes that made it into work and out without being cut so I hope your family enjoyed!!

Fox Racing Cake

So after I brought my Harley Davidson cake to work, Leigh asked me to make her son a Fox Racing cake.  His birthday was actually a few months ago, but she couldn't find anyone to make it for her then... so SURPRISE!!  You get a bonus cake!!  I can't imagine a better surprise then a second birthday cake... especially since I'm one of the biggest birthday princesses ever!!  So anyway, I made this cake with just a simple yellow cake mix and chocolate frosting.  I then just used pictures of the logo as a base to cut out my fondant decoration.  I cut out the base of the fox face using blue... then another overlay in black.  On top of that I added some more blue accents to give the logo some life!  It came out just the way I had hoped and apparently Leigh had to coerce Jeffrey into eating the logo rather than trying to save it on his bulletin board :)  Might as well enjoy the sugar while it's good!!  Take a look and enjoy!!

More Boss' Day Cakes!!

So working with a billion people, there were plenty of opportunities to take advantage of Boss' Day!  Lauren asked me to make a cake for Andrew (or Phil as I like to call his mean alter ego).  There was a lot of debate about what to put on top, but the final decision was for a squirrel!!  Long story about chasing people is like chasing squirrels... running up trees and whatnot... but here it is!!  I printed out pictures of real squirrels and character art of squirrels and freehanded my way through it!!  I cut the base of the squirrel out of fondant and added brown buttercream icing to make his fluffly tail extra fluffy.  Some additional fondant and buttercream accents finished him off (and his trusty acorn) and I was once again proud!  I'm not going to lie, looking at the squirrels outside my apartment the next day, I was impressed!!  Take a look and let me know what you think of my Squirrelio!!

LiveStrong

For Boss' Day, Toni asked me to make anything related to our boss' favorite... Livestrong.  This same person also speaks like Bruce Willis so ideas were tossed around of LiveStrong and Die Hard... but I decided to play it safe!!  I just freehanded a big fist and gave it the classic yellow LiveStrong bracelet.  Next time I would definitely cut the individual letters out of fondant... I just squeezed it on using regular buttercream icing this time but I would have preferred a cleaner look.  Anyway, simple cake and still delicious!!  Happy Boss' Day Kevin!!

Happy Birthday Leigh

The more cakes you bring to work, the more you get solicited to bake!!  This was the case with Leigh's birthday cake.  Toni asked me to make her a "cowboy country" themed cake so the options were endless!  I know Leigh's favorite country singer is Trace Adkins, but I had no idea how to incorporate that into a cake.  Not quite as easy as a Hannah Montana Cake!!  I decided to make it a little bit more simple and stick with a cowboy hat and some paisley finishing to make it look sort of like a bandana.  This is definitely my favorite cake I've made so far.  It came out greater than I could have planned!!  It was a simple lemon cake with plain vanilla icing and it was perfect!!  I decided to go with a pretty teal color and covered the whole cake with a thin layer of that fondant.  Around the bottom I used brown fondant, made two thin strips and twisted them up to look like rope.  I used the same brown color for the hat.  Now this is where things get fancy!!  I stacked 2 Rice Krispies treats and molded them into a hat shape... rounding the corners and making an indent on the top.  I covered that and made a brim and VOILA!!  COWBOY HAT!!  The last step was taking some plain icing and freehanding the paisley decorations on the side.  I'm so glad everyone loved this cake because I was definitely a huge fan (even though I'm not a big country fan... just don't tell Leigh!!)

Hannah Montana Cake

I'm not going to lie to you... yes I have watched Hannah Montana and yes I somewhat enjoyed it.  And yes my middle name sounds like Miley (as in Cyrus) but it's spelled better (Meyle) and I had it first!  So needless to say, I was pretty excited when Lina asked me to make a cake for her daughter Mayra's birthday.  I was definitely not going to attempt drawing a likeness of Hannah Montana so I went with the next best option... a guitar.  I found a billion pictures of her purple guitar so that's what I went with.  I then cut out "Happy Birthdya Mayra" in the same text format as the logo and i was veeeeery happy with the way it turned out.  And from the look on Mayra's face when I dropped it off, she was happy too!  I made a strawberry cake and filled the inside with a strawberry icing with lots of chopped fresh strawberries.  Check out the cake recipe and the pictures!!

Strawberry Cake
1 box vanilla cake mix
1 3oz box strawberry gelatin
15 oz frozen strawberries, thawed and pureed
4 eggs
1/2 c vegetable oil
1/4 c water

Combine all ingredients and mix well.  (Make sure strawberries are completely thawed prior to pureeing them to avoid issues).  Bake in 2 round pans at 350 degrees for approximately 20-25 minutes.  The layer I put in the middle was just a vanilla icing with lots of chopped fresh strawberries.