Are You A Belieber?

This was a fun cake!  It was for my boss' daughter - she was turning 11 years old, and what else would an 11 year old girl want for her birthday cake?  JUSTIN BEIBER!  (When I was 11...I got *NSYNC).  I sent her some options from ideas I found on the internet - and she chose a rectangle, zebra printed cake with a giant photo of Justin Beiber at the top.

With multiple layers of chocolate and vanilla cake, and chocolate and vanilla buttercream, this was a MASSIVE cake!  But it was fun and easy - as the cakes were in the oven, I prepped the purple fondant starts and balls for the exterior. And covering the cake was surprisingly easy, it definitely is true, practice makes perfect.  I added some purple sparkles, some metal swirls, and then Justin!  I ordered an edible photo and made a stand out of graham crackers, and mounted that on cardboard to be sturdy.

The hardest part was delivery - the cake was beyond heavy!  But I made it up the elevator and to the bowling alley and Sami loved the cake!  It is by far my favorite cake of the year, what do you think?  Bake on!

Gum Paste Flowers!

Today was an adventure!  I bought a living social deal to try a cake decorating class on how to make sugar flowers from The Sugar Flower Cake Shop in NYC!  I signed up and showed up to this awesome studio bakery in the fashion district!

Once the class got started, after thoroughly washing our hands (sing Happy Birthday 2x) we stood at our tables and started to learn how to make orchid petals out of gum paste.  We learned the difference between gum paste and fondant (which I never knew before!) and got started.  It was definitely something different, and you had to be very delicate.  The gum paste takes about 24 hours to dry, so we used some pre-prepared petals to assemble, and our samples will be used for future classes.

We had to carefully assemble the flowers, piece by piece and then we assembled a butterfly.  I learned some tips on how to better use a piping bag to pipe a cake with buttercream - we made 4in. cakes to bring home.  After everything was assembled separately (and our cakes but in the refrigerator to harden),we used edible colored dust to make our flowers even more colorful and then placed together for our basket of flowers.  Take a look at my cake basket and let me know your thoughts...I'm looking forward to making some more flowers, so stay tuned and BAKE ON!

A Quarter of A Century Weekend!

This cake was for an amazing celebration, a 25th wedding anniversary for the parents of one of my friends!  Wow, 25 years - isn't that amazing?!  My friend planned a fabulous outdoor surprise party for her parents, including a custom cake by me!  Using silver and white, I created this red velvet (ooooh yeah, from scratch!) tiered cake with hand-piped designs and silver and white pearls!

To make sure her parents would like red velvet, I sneakily gave them my cupcakes to "taste-test" after a failed attempt at red velvet, I finally nailed the recipe, and the cake was a huge success!  The party was a complete surprise and they loved the cake!  Check out pics below! (This weekend was also my cousin's 25th birthday, he loves oreos - so I made him my cookies 'n' cream cupcakes from a few weeks ago, yummy!)

Now I'm off to taste test some new cupcakes...stay tuned and remember to bake on!!!