My brother got married back in March, but they had a small ceremony.  On Friday, they had a reception for all the friends and family that couldn't be at the wedding.  My brother requested a cake with a red fish jumping out of water.


The bottom tier is red velvet and the top tier is chocolate.  The fish is made of rice krispie treats covered in marshmallow fondant.

These were for a little boy's second birthday party.  The party had the cutest theme: transportation.  The little boy is in love with all things that move and have wheels...whether it's buses, fire trucks, tractors, or his daddy's pick up truck!  My inspiration for these cookies came from SweetDreams83's Etsy shop.

Whoa...what a job!  In order to finish the cakes in time I started waking up at 5 am the week of the delivery date.  The temperature's been getting up to 100 degrees everyday.  The only way to beat the heat is to get up before the heat starts:)

Here are the final products.  Come back later for a step-by-step on the logo and the dragon!

Take 1


Next Thursday I have my largest order ever.  (Bet you can't guess how big!?!?!?)


Six full sheet cakes and 270 cupcakes to be exact. Ya know, just in case you missed it.


I thought I'd let you come along for the journey.  More for my sake than for yours.  Someone to go through the ups and downs, share in my successes and failures set backs.  


Last Tuesday I started baking the sheet cakes.  


(There's no way I could bake all the cakes and frost them and decorate them and transport them in a short amount of time.  So, I decided to bake everything ahead of time and freeze it.)  


I started out excited to start the journey, especially to use my new baking stuff!


Then came the first blip.


My first cake turned out great, but because I had only purchased ONE large cooling rack, when I tried to flip the cake using two smaller cooling racks, the cake fell apart. Major thumbs down.


I managed to save the cake, but it didn't exactly spur me on to greatness.


My second cake turned out great.  However, my third and fourth cake were anything but great. 


I couldn't figure out what was wrong; the cakes weren't rising and they were really sponge-y.  Then I tasted them.  Bleh, no sugar.  After retracing my steps, I figured out that I forgot to double the sugar in each of my last cakes.  


Second blip.


You would think that these blips might have occurred due to a lack of caffeine...


Then I went back to look at my first and second cake, only to realize that the cakes were too short, less than an inch high. 


Third blip.  


Before I poured batter into the cake pans, I took out two cups of batter to start making cupcakes.  By taking out this small huge amount of batter, my cakes were too short.


At this point, I have no cakes whatsoever to use.  I called my husband and asked him what I should do.  We decided that I should call it a day and he would show up with reinforcements to start again tomorrow.


And by reinforcements I mean two more large cooling racks and two more hands to help.  


The next day we baked four half sheet cakes, or two full sheet cakes.  


Lesson learned:
Always check to make sure you have doubled your sugar!

This is my first cake ever made for a non-friend customer.  

This is my teacher cake/blackboard cake/graduation cake!  I made it for a fellow classmate of mine.  My intentions were to to duplicate the cake for my own graduation party but I ran out of steam and time.  


Eh.  Better luck next time.


Better yet...better time management next time ;)


I also tried a new recipe this time, Vanilla Almond Cake (from CUPYCAKESMURF at allrecipes.com), by request of the client.  This cake is very moist, but a touch to sweet for my blood.  Enjoy!

I am by no means a sugar cookie guru.  However, I hope to be there someday!  Here is my latest:

I am officially done with student teaching!


"And what does that mean for me," you ask?


I get to make cakes again!  If you recall, my husband kindly put a stop to my cake baking at the beginning of the semester. One week into the semester my head was spinning after making a small cake for a friend.  I went along with it because it was in my best interest and it gave me more time to devote to my kiddos.  (By kiddos I mean my students.  After teaching, they become your kids.  If you are a teacher, you understand.)


This weekend I made a My Little Pony Cake.  Altogether I think it turned out pretty well and I learned a couple of new techniques including Color Flow.  The party was held outside with wind gusts up to 30 mph!  I had to leave before anything broke off the cake.  Here's to hoping nothing happened after I left!

Every time I read through the baking blogs I follow (i am baker and sweetopia just to name a few), I am swept away by their amazing sugar cookies.  They have mad skills.  


Their cookies make me want to make cookies.  Good cookies, too.  Now, I know that sugar cookie skills don't happen over night.  So I thought I had better get started if I wanted my cookies to be fabulous any time soon.


In pops a need for sugar cookies.  


My dear friend's son recently had surgery and I thought I would make his day with some sweets.  


Well, technically I left a facebook comment asking my friends for a reason to bake cookies.  But who's keeping track of these minor details?


I didn't know much about my friend's son, other than his name and his age.  I did some research, combing through my friend's facebook photos.  Low and behold, I come across a picture of her son wearing a Star Wars shirt.  So I went with it.


Let's hope he's still into Star Wars.  


(Crossing Fingers)

Friday I had the honor of making wedding cakes for my brother and sister-in-law to-be.  I didn't have the usual amount of time to put into decorating the cakes, so I opted for a buttercream icing look, instead of the usual fondant look.  


The bride's cake was italian creme cake (see recipe here) with buttercream icing and a strawberry filling.  Bree is definitely a bling kind of girl, so I added some blue crystals to match her blue hydrangeas, as well as some clear crystals.  I don't think they showed up very well but it was worth a try.


The groom's cake was of course chocolate.  I was especially excited about making this cake as it was a surprise to Kyle and Bree!  The frosting is a chocolate buttercream.  I also used a chocolate moose filling and a chocolate glaze with yummy chambord=)  Mmmmm.  The longhorn was made using a mold.  I tried a couple different ways to make the longhorn, one with white chocolate, the other with gumpaste.  I used the gumpaste longhorn because it held it's shape better.


I am still partial to the white cake, but the chocolate cake was pretty darn good too!  I tried a new technique on these cakes, and although they didn't turn out perfectly, I am still satisfied with what I was able to accomplish while student teaching this semester. 

Here is my most reliable, go-to cake recipe.  Whenever I have a request for a white cake, this is what I whip up. This cake will turn out so incredibly moist, every time.  Hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

I have been dreaming of great cakes lately.  You see, I'm student teaching this semester.  Which really means that I pretty much have a full time job.  I been clocking about 10 hours a day.


As a result of all this...my wonderful hubby has created a rule that I'm not allowed to bake any more cakes this semester.  He's really been doing me a favor.  Cakes usually consume me.  It's all to keep me sane really.  


But my sister-in-law's birthday was this weekend, and well, I had to make her a cake.  My hubby and I made a deal.  So I used a frozen cake I had made about a month ago.  I decided not to go the fondant route because that would take a lot of extra time.  Instead, I got to try a new technique I saw on i am baker.  And here are the results: