T-Rex Volcano Cake *RAWR!*

Dinosaur says, "RAWR!!"

Made this T-Rex Volcano cake for a little boy turning 30 today! :-)
This is the first time I tried making a huge 3-D figure, and WOW what a learning curve! Holy Prehistoric Lizard, Batman!!!!!!

I think he turned out pretty darn cute, though....

The cake is a 14-inch round of Wilton white wedding cake and the icing on the cake was a new recipe of chocolate.... I've been searching for a new one, one that tastes better than the Wilton chocolate buttercream or the Hershey recipe on the back of the cocoa can. This one I found on All Recipes, and it is a cooked icing -- melting butter, brown sugar, and all the other goodies together before adding the powdered sugar. Left thick, it's a ganache, or thin it out and it's pourable but quickly hardens. It's basically fudge and I will be using this one more!!


The icing on the volcano is the Wilton buttercream chocolate, which is not my favorite for taste, which is why I used it on the Rice Krispie Treat volcano. After it dried a bit, I smoothed it with the back of the spoon and a Viva paper towel. *HOOT!*

Mr. T-Rex was also made from RKT. In several pieces. And then sort of stuck together with bamboo skewers and a lot of cussing.


OH NO!! he says DEATH TO THE HUMAN WHO PUT ME BACK IN THE COLD STORAGE BOX OF DARKNESS!!!!!!

But this gives you an idea of scale -- he was big. I was fighting gravity trying to get his parts made and then put together. Oh my gosh. I was stressin' last night and up until 3 a.m. because there wasn't a good stopping point until then. This morning I finished the grass, painted his eye, made the rocks, and patched a hole on his thigh. Oh, and made his arms.

He's a cutie!!!

Spring Flower Garden Cake with Butterflies

I was cruising through my blogs this weekend and realized I hadn't added Emily Rose's birthday cake to my cake blog! OMG
But now that is fixed....

Here it is, ready for the party -- she wanted a "Spring Flower Garden Cake with Butterflies" and that is what she got:

I made the rainbow in advance so it would have time to dry and harden... then I made the butterflies.
The flowers came next...and then they were dusted with shimmery powder (that you can eat, don't worry!) to create a garden fairies would love to visit:


The finished cake:
She loved it!
I can't believe my little baby is 8. *mommy sad face*

Doggone Dog Bone Cake!!!

Even stuffed animals need parties, so I didn't even blink when my friend Shannon asked me to make a cake in the shape of a dog bone for her son Brady's puppy...toy puppy, that is.

I baked three rectangles in my bread pans... and cut four huge circles out of two of the rectangles for the ends. I cut wedges out of the circles so the piece would fit together, and then those wedges were sliced in half and arranged on top of the ends with a layer of buttercream between. This let me build up the ends of the bone nice and round with icing:

It was at this point I realized how incredibly easy it would be to make a booby cake. LOL

Next came marshmallow fondant on top so it would be nice and smooth:

I added puppy prints and some writing with icing I had thinned WAY too much. (It was running out of the tip! GAH!) And since the blue icing was way too thin, I just used white around the bottom. Pretty!

Bow wow!!!

My Little Pony Carousel Cake

Our daughter Mary Pearl turned 6 and what did she want? A My Little Pony Carousel cake, of course! She LOVES carousels, and she LOVES My Little Ponies...and so there you go.

:-)

The bottom is three layers of chocolate fudge cake, with ganache filling, and then decorated with marshmallow fondant. The top was constructed of Rice Krispie Treats then covered in ganache and marshmallow fondant decorations.

Mary Pearl's favorite ponies got to ride on top after a quick trip to the horsey mane stylist, of course. I built it on my turntable so everyone could make the carousel twirl, but I should have thought of a way to add music. LOL

HOLY CHOCOLATE CAKE, BATMAN!!

Brady, the Birthday Boy turning 6 on Christmas Eve, wanted a Batman cake!

* * * BOOM! POW! BAM! * * *

A ROYAL (BLUE) WEDDING and a BAKUGAN CAKE!

Gorgeous little cake for a wonderful couple who got married here in Astoria on the 13th:

The bottom tier is fudge chocolate with Kahlua creme mousse filling, and the top tier is a poppyseed cake with strawberry filling.
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And this weekend was Nathan's birthday, and my son is big into Bakugan.... so what else could I make but a giant Bakugan ball cake?
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Working on the dome:

I filled in the spaces between the levels with excess pieces from trimming the top:

When I finished this part, I couldn't believe how much it looked like a giant truffle! And there's the inspirational tiny Bakugan ball below... I don't really know what the point of them is, but Nathan likes them, so it's all good. :-)

I had *planned* on making a blue ball...but I was out of blue gel coloring. Unreal. So I went with red. I had to add so much red, the marshmallow fondant started crumbling on me. Nothing I did brought it back...frustrating! So I took the rest of my already-prepared fondant and tried yellow. Didn't have to use hardly any color, but same results -- totally dry and crumbling apart in my hands!! This had never happened before... so I thought, "Oh, I'll just make a new batch and go with that." Except ---- I was nearly out of powdered sugar. And it was 11 o'clock at night the night before the party. Eeeeegads.....

I needed eight cups of powdered sugar, so I measured. I had four. So I went for it... made half a batch of yellow, and rolled it out and slapped it on the cake. But even going as quickly as I was, it still began drying and crumbling. It didn't make any sense AT ALL. I have used marshmallow fondant a million times before without these results! What was going on???

That's when I finally sat down to upload the cake photos to Facebook and realized how chilly it was. I checked the thermometer and discovered it was only 64 degrees in the house!!! OMG!!!

Holy frozen fondant, Batman!!!!

But I got it... it's a Bouncing Baby Bakugan cake!!!

Peace and Cake,

Cynthia

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!!!!

I love how my super-adorable Jack-O-Lantern cake turned out! BOO!!!!

The layers... chocolate cake, buttercream icing.

Stacking it up...I totally cheated and didn't insert a cardboard half-way down the cake. I'm sure they will be able to figure out how to not cut an 8-inch-high slice of cake. LOL

Anatomy of a Jack-O-Lantern:

The son wanted spiders, so I tucked some in at the last minute....

Have a safe and happy Halloween!!!!!

'66 MUSTANG

My favorite car ever. Can I make one out of sugar? Oh boy....
The trick with sculpting out of fondant is there is no trick - it's just heavy and starts to crack if you handle it too much. So you have to work fast. This car didn't have to be huge, because this is only a 6-inch cake, but I think it turned out adorable!

The front end...

The rear -- I have always loved those Mustang lights. :-)

This is a Happy Birthday to a Grandpa cake: chocolate cake, chocolate icing and marshmallow fondant covering and decorations.

CHARCEY'S WEDDING CAKE

The bride wanted simple, elegant, white, and roses.

Chocolate cake (lovely to eat, but very hard to deal with in stacked cakes... I will have to re-think this in the future and/or discover new chocolate cake recipes to try), buttercream frosting, marshmallow fondant and marshmallow roses.

Also, I noticed from this angle the flowers look a bit wonky, but their placement makes sense in person, I swear. :-)

EMILY ROSE'S ROSE CAKE

Emily's adoption day (#6!!) was August 10, and she wanted a heart-shaped, cherry cake with roses. And she got it...

This is me learning a new, larger rose method, which I totally LOVE. No cookie cutters, just forming the fondant as I go. Awesome. And the roses can be as big as you want. SWEET!
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The pinks are NOT showing up well in this photo... and I can't figure out why. They did look closer in color than this in real life! I swear!!!
But how cool are these giant roses? So cool...

Our sweet baby...

S'MORES = SUMMER and KUNG FU DIEGO

Oh my goodness.... the one thing that truly screams, "IT'S SUMMER!!!" are big, giant s'mores!!! So what else could you want for your birthday but a Giant S'Mores Cake if you are my husband who was born on August 3 and just happens to LOVE s'mores???
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Ready?
Here I am shaping the marshmallow... never did this before.... slapped some icing on it and didn't really let it sit like I would have for a client, but it worked out just fine!

See? The kids screamed when I got it put together. They wanted to have some that minute, but they were heading for bed. Boo!

The two graham cracker layers and the chocolate layer are all chocolate cake. The graham cracker layers have light brown buttercream and real crushed graham crackers on them, while the chocolate bar layer has chocolate icing covered with a layer of melted chocolate chips. The marshmallow layer is yellow cake with white buttercream, covered in what else -- marshmallow fondant. :-)

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KUNG FU DIEGO

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Now here is a July cake for a littel buddy who was turning 7! He loves Diego, and this was James's first birthday in America (he just came home from China in January!) and so I did a Kung Fu Diego!!

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But buttercream drives me cuckoo -- it always seems to be wanting to melt on me, and looks so shiny in photos. I need to work with it more, obviously!

BUZZ LIGHTYEAR

TO INFINITY AND BEYOND!!!!!!!!!
Buzz is the MAN!!!!
14" double-layer chocolate fudge cake with buttercream icing under bright blue marshmallow fondant. Buzz is 100% marshmallow fondant, too!

He cracks me up with his right leg looking longer than his left. It wasn't that much longer, I swear! haha
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BUILDING BUZZ:
It was at this point I realized how easily I could be making a Star Wars cake.

Building Buzz's head:

On the cake:

No! That's NOT a toy laying on the cake!! haha