CASTLES IN THE AIR

Emily Rose's Princess Castle for birthday #4: the flowers are all made out of sugar cookie dough. This was still back in the day where I was not making my own icing. In addition to being expensive, you have no real control over the texture and it would melt rather quickly in the decorator bags. Solved that by making my own and using a stiffer recipe.
.
But back in the day, no one knew the difference! *yum*


Our little neighbor girl, Glori, had a birthday in the summer of 2009 and I made a Princess Castle cake for her, too. The good news is, by this time I was beginning to play with fondant, so all of her decorations are made from that. The bad news is, this is fondant I tried to make myself, and it was just not as smooth and pliable as the ready-made fondant from Wilton. It was still incredibly fun to make this cake, though!

The same pan can be used to make sandcastles... my favorite things. :-)

.

For James's 1st birthday, he got a sandcastle cake, complete with these adorable little ocean doo-dads I found in a random Mexican store in Hillsboro. (??) I still think it's weird I've only seen this set of decorations there. Ever.

The "sand" is actually light brown sugar patted lightly onto sand-colored icing. And it's okay if I never see that ocean set of decorations again, because now I use fondant to make the decorations!!

.

This is Daddy's birthday cake he took to work in August of 2009:

The homemade fondant was bugging me here when I made the seaweed... it just wasn't coming out smooth. It was drying out so fast! But I was extremely happy with the way the sea stars and sand dollars came out. But the pearls wouldn't come out round -- THAT is how weird the homemade fondant was!