Final Week of 2011 Cakes

On this, New Year's Eve 2011, I thought I'd post pictures of cakes I did during the final days of 2011.  What a great year it's been!  Now it's time to get ready for 2012 cakes but here's a final look at 2011!!!

  Birthday Cake for a sweet little girl who wanted this cake to have brown hair just like her!!

Christmas Italian Cream Cake--YUM!!

Final Wedding Cake of 2011 and one of my favorites!

Kayla's Baby Shower Cake--I've known this mommy-to-be since she was in the 4th grade!!  How  has time gone this fast?!?!?

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

These Are A Few Of My Favorite......................WEDDING CAKES!!!

I've had the chance to make some really amazing wedding cakes over the last few years so I thought I'd put together a little walk down memory lane featuring a few of my favorite wedding cakes!!

The one that started it all!

This is the very first wedding cake that my friend Linda convinced me that I should make for her daughter's wedding.  I had, after all, taken all three of the Wilton cake classes at our local hobby store!  It took some pretty major convincing from her to assure me that I could, indeed make a wedding cake, but at last I agreed--I found out later that her first, second, and perhaps third choice cake bakers were already booked and she was quite desperate by the time she talked me into what would turn out to be the beginning of a new career for me!

The Zebra Cake

Now this was a display cake I did for my very first bridal fair--It was enormous and quite an eye catcher, landing Cakes by Diane on the front page of the local newspaper!

The Luttrell

I have made this cake in about a dozen different variations--it was first ordered by the wonderful Luttrell family and so it has been christened by me as "The Luttrell."

Abby's Random Ribbon Wraps

I loved this cake so much that it adorned my first Cakes by Diane brochures and pamphlets.

The Snyder Cake

After I'd finished this cake I felt sure that I was finally a cake decorator!  The amazing photography of Dawn Muncy made the cake look even more grand!!

Kelly's monogrammed polka dots.

I loved this cake because it was so cute and colorful!

I love, love, love all of the beautiful flowers on this cake!!  

Pink and Bling

This cake was all pink and blingy and was really the centerpiece of the affair!!  I worked closely with wedding planner Amanda Sikich of Planned 2 Perfection to create this cake!!  

Natalie's Wedding Cake

This cake was so much fun to plan and make.  I spoke with bride-to-be Natalie for nearly 2 hours at our local Starbuck's to get all of the details just right for her peacock-themed wedding cake.

Black Damask

I had finally perfected the art of stenciling buttercream on buttercream when I finished this pretty cake!

Anne's Wedding Cake

My idea of the classic wedding cake--and the inside was so yummy too--vanilla/almond cake with almond pastry cream filling!!

I love working with all of the wonderful families who choose me to be their wedding cake designer.  It's because of them that I get to do something I truly love every single day!!

Sugar Cookies

It really is fun to make decorated sugar cookies---it does take some time and a steady hand, but they look so cute and taste so good that it's really worth the effort.  The cookies above were made for a bridal shower and so each kitty cookie had a little silver crown with a purple bow and flower on it to mix with the bridal shower's colors of purple and black.  Here's a brief explanation of how to decorate sugar cookies with royal icing.

Recipe:

You can use any of your favorite rolled sugar cookie recipes but the one that I prefer to work with is called the NFSC recipe (NFSC stands for Never Fail Sugar Cookies) and I found the recipe on a cake decorating website called Cake Central.  If you google the recipe you'll find it all over the internet, but here's one link to it:  https://cakecentral.com/recipe/no-fail-sugar-cookies

After you've baked your cookies and they come out of the oven, they'll look a bit plain like this:

Plain little kitty cookie.

But don't fear!  It's time to make some royal icing to make your cookies look FABULOUS!!  I prefer to use this recipe:  http://cakecentral.com/recipe/antonia74-royal-icing  It really does work well!

The first step is to outline your cookies with royal icing.  I use the icing just as it is-add whatever gel color to the icing that you prefer (black in this instance), and pipe onto cookies using a number 3 tip.  I find that the above recipe is just the perfect consistency for this step.

All outlined!

It's easier to just outline all of the cookies at once and let the outline set up a little bit before filling in the cookies with white icing.

To fill in the kitty face, you need to thin down some of the white royal icing with a little bit of water--I add water, just a small amount at a time, until I achieve a consistency that allows the icing to fill the cookie easily, not too thin, but not thick either--Then color some of the icing whatever color you'd like the bow to be and fill in that area as well.

You can see that I filled in all of the bows first and then went back and filled in the white faces of the kitties last.  If you plan to stack the cookies or put them in plastic bags it's best to let the cookies set for at least 24-48 hours to make sure the icing is thoroughly dry.  You don't want to mess up your pretty cookie art!!  Enjoy!!!

Drum Cake

I had the fun opportunity to make a stacked drum cake for my nephew Cameron's graduation party and thought I would share a bit of the process with you!

Naked cakes!!  The first stage of cake building--these tiers have been filled and are just resting and settling before they get iced in preparation of being covered in fondant.

The tiers are then iced smoothly with buttercream icing.

I kneaded several different colors of fondant together to get this tie-dyed effect for the drum sides.  I cut out strips that measured 4"in height plus the measurement of the circumference of each tier and wrapped them around the cake tiers.

I love how the fondant was so colorful and varied!  I placed supports and plates in the two bottom tiers in preparation for stacking the tiers on top of each other.  I love the SPS system by Bakery Crafts.  

I stacked the tiers on top of each other and got ready to add the finishing touches.

I cut strips of gray fondant and wrapped them around the cake tiers to emulate the metal strips on real drums.

I painted the gray fondant with silver luster dust mixed with Everclear to make everything nice and shiny.  We then loaded the cake into the back end of our Tahoe and traveled 6 hours to attend my nephew's graduation.

And the cake made it intact!!  My nephew added his drumsticks and the drum cake was complete!

Except for some drumming by Cameron, my enormously talented nephew!

Happy Graduation Cameron!!