Skull & Crossbones pull-apart cake

Last weekend was also my baby brother's birthday. I shouldn't say baby brother since he was turning 26 but you get the idea :)

He was throwing a joint birthday party with Vanessa who is just like family and I made them a cake for the celebration! Well actually I made them cupcakes!

I placed a bunch of cupcakes on a platter really close together like this....




Then I smoothed on some frosting. My brother requested purple frosting for Vanessa. I love how it was shaped sort of like a flower. I decided to leave the edges "rough" instead of piping a border... I liked the look of it better for this cake.



Next I transferred on the pattern using piping gel. My brother is a bit obsessed with skulls... he has a bunch of them tattooed on his body so I figured I should put one on his cake.



After the pattern was transferred I "colored it in" by piping stars. I used glitter black gel for the eyes and mouth.

Lastly using the black gel, I wrote out the Birthday message and wha-la.....









The best part of this cake was that when it was ready to be served people could just pull out a cupcake... no cutting necessary which worked out perfect for this outdoor party. I can't wait to make another one of these types of cakes.... So fun!

Well I hope everyone enjoys their Day and has a good week next week as well! Let's all cross our fingers for some better weather!

Reid's 1st Birthday Cake

The Family I nanny for asked me to make a Cake and Cupcakes for their daughter's first birthday! They decided to go with a Lady Bug theme for her cake and I seriously had so much fun making it!

The flavors were simple... Chocolate and Vanilla with Vanilla buttercream.... the adventure was in the design.

The cupcakes were frosted with Pink and Green frosting and topped with some different fondant pieces.

On the green frosted cupcakes I had these cute little pink ladybugs!



The pink frosted cupcakes were topped with black "ladybug" dots!



For the cake it was frosted in pink and covered in black "ladybug" dots. I also wrapped it with a green ribbon. For the top of the cake I made a number 1 out of fondant and also some little flowers to stick out of the cake on wire.



For the Birthday message I cut out a flower shape from white fondant and piped on the message.

Overall I thought this was the cutest cake I have made yet and from the pictures I saw Reid enjoyed it as well!!!









I hope everyone stays dry during these rainy days and stay tuned this weekend for the 3rd cake I made this past weekend!!

Graduation Cupcake Tower

So last week I made a graduation cake for Dominique and her family to enjoy on her actual graduation... Yesterday was her AWESOME graduation party and I was privileged enough to make a cupcake tower for the occasion.

I stuck with the school colors for this cake too. The cupcakes were vanilla and chocolate. I colored the vanilla cupcakes orange and frosted the cupcakes with buttercream.

I topped the vanilla cupcakes with black stars cut from fondant and dusted with edible silver shimmer. The chocolate cupcakes were frosted in orange.



For the top of the tower I made a 6inch cake. I wanted the cake to look like a graduation cap. To do this I took a square cake board and covered it in black fondant. I made an orange tassel out of fondant and added some wording to the top of the cap. The actual cake was frosted in white buttercream and I tried coloring it black using Wilton's Color Mist spray. It didn't come out as black as I hoped but it was was serviceable.



Here is the final product all set-up at the party...








CONGRATULATIONS DOMINIQUE!!!!!!!!

Keep checking back this week for posts about 2 other cakes I made this weekend!

Graduation Cake

I had a lot of fun making this cake!
The graduate was graduating from Newton North High School and Since I am a graduate of NNHS I was happy to make a cake in the school colors.

I started with 2 10inch vanilla cakes filled with a Dulce de Leche buttercream. YUM!

The cake is frosted in a bright white buttercream and instead of piping a border I decided to use a bling-tastic ribbon around the cake to dress it up.



For the other decorations I used fondant. I cut out all of the lettering and made some accent decorations using a star cookie cutter.



My fav part were the stars "floating" above the cake. I did this by cutting out the stars and pushing thin jewelery wire through the stars and letting them dry out. I then attached the letters using just a little bit of water. I just love the dimension it adds to the cake.

Here is the final product!!!!







I hope everyone has a fabulous week and that this rain lets way to some sunshine for all of us!

2 Tier Cirlce Cake

Tonight is Newton North High School's Senior Prom and one of my favorite clients requested a cake for the occasion.

She gave me creative liberty to do whatever I wanted for the cake, she just requested the cake be in colors that coordinated with her daughter's dress.

I started with 2 cakes. An 8inch and a 6inch, both chocolate cake with peanut butter filling.
I frosted each cake with a pink Buttercream and then stacked them into 2 tiers. This is the first tiered cake I have ever made.... not too bad for my first attempt I think.



After the cake was stacked I got to working on the decorations. I colored some pink and purple fondant and cut out a couple of different sized circles. I also cut out some letters from the purple fondant to say "NNHS Prom 2011"

I strategically placed the circles, piped a white border on each tier and placed the lettering on the top of the cake. As a final touch I topped the cake off with some hot pink and brown accent feathers.

I hope all kids enjoy the cake after they dance the night away!

It's A Boy!!!! Diaper Cake!

Last week, close friends of ours welcomed their 2nd child into the world. Since I am the one who is known to bring cakes or cupcakes for any sort of gathering I decided to try and make a non-edible Diaper cake as a gift for the new baby.

I have seen these Diaper cakes before at many baby showers so I thought I would give it a go and make one myself!

I bought some cute monkey themed items at Carters including a hat, stuffed rattle, binki clip and a super soft plush monkey to adorn the "cake"

After some research on how to assemble the cake I got to work and have to say I am very happy with the finished product!









Our friends loved the cake and of course appreciated the diapers since you can never have enough diapers around!

I hope everyone has a happy Memorial Day Weekend!

Individual Boston Cream Pie

This past Friday evening the Hubz and I attended a very yummy dinner party with his cousins. One of the guests brought these cute and delectable desserts and after taking one bite I knew I had to make them myself!!!!

Saturday morning rolled around and after a quick trip to the grocery store I got to baking!

The person who made these on Friday said she used muffin pans and cut each muffin in half before filling. I decided to use whoopie Pie Pans instead. The cake is just a basic vanilla cake.



The filling is instant vanilla pudding mixed with 1/2 cup of cool whip. Very simple. I did make a small mistake with the filling..... I followed the recipe on the box for the instant pudding which called for 2 cups of cold milk. When making the filling only 1 cup of cold milk should be used to create a firmer filling. Once the pudding has set you can mix in the 1/2 cup of cool whip.

Each individual cream pie used about 1 1/2 tablespoons of filling.





So far this is probably one of the easiest recipes I have ever made and it continues to be easy.
For the chocolate topping, microwave 1 cup of cool whip with 1/3 cup of milk chocolate morsels. I microwaved in 30 second increments stirring in between to combine the melting chocolate with the cool whip. After combined let stand 15 minutes so the mixture can thicken before spreading about 2 teaspoons on top of each pie and WHA-LA!!!


DELICIOUS SIMPLE INDIVIDUAL BOSTON CREAM PIES!!!!!





p.s. These are also the perfect treats to keep away all these rainy day blues :)