So... I've been pretty quiet lately, and thought I'd post a couple of pictures! My brother just celebrated his 27th birthday and in his honour, I baked cupcakes and invited him and his gf and her adorable daughter over.
These were delicious! I baked frozen mini Reese peanut butter cups in the center of chocolate cupcakes. I iced them with peanut butter icing and topped them with either mini Reese peanut butter cups or a combo of Reese's Pieces ( I had to hide them or hubby would have eaten them before I had a chance to use them!)
Three days later, it was my son's 12th birthday. I had been looking for ideas online for a couple of weeks and thought I had settled on a Scout's cake for him, but they looked pretty boring, so I checked out some ideas for camping and blew his mind!
I saw an idea online that involved a candle as a campfire.. and I thought it was ingenious! That was the cake for Tyler, for sure!
I baked a white cake the night before. I really should have done more the first night because the night of was busy, with us getting our taxes filed and ordering out for dinner (something we rarely do but I was starving and it was getting late, plus it would be a nice treat for his birthday!). At any rate... I set my husband on mixing and forming rocks out of dark gray fondant, while I took care of filling, canvassing, trimming and decorating the cake.
I took a sugar cone and did green drop flowers all over it, and placed it as a pine tree. I mixed piping gel with blue colourant to create a river and had my husband line it with fondant rocks. I coated two graham crackers with yellow icing and placed them like a tent in the background. My husband made a log out of brown and white fondant, and I put two mini marshmallows on pretzel sticks. He placed the fondant rocks around the tea light and we finished it with writing and rocks on the front.
Once the cake was baked, it took about an hour to finish it, between the two of us, and although it was a little late in the evening by the time we got to present it to him, the reaction was well worth it!
The birthday boy was delighted, the cake was delicious and I am still getting the "Wow!"s from people I show the picture to. I was so happy that we made his day that special, and once again, thankful that I took the courses necessary to learn to do this! (And for the record, his actual gift was a bow and arrow set that he will be learning to use at Scouts!)
So, for anyone who thinks they might be interested in taking cake decorating classes.. it is worth it. Every birthday and special event just brings so much more joy to your heart, because you have helped to make someone happy!!! :)
I have a busy time coming up... a cake on May 24 weekend... and two cakes in June... one I am especially nervous about, because it involves cake flavours I have never done before and the pressure is on because it's for an actual venue. If there is anything to ever make you doubt your skills, it's something like that! However.. this is a repeat customer, and we're doing a cake tasting evening, and I know she trusts me... otherwise I'd be a lot more nervous! The other order is a Mermaid Barbie cake I've been wanting to do for over a year... and I am SO excited to do both of these cakes! Thankfully it's before the summer heat sets in, so that's even better! :)
That's it for me for now!
Stay sweet!
Denise
