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!!! 

Beauty & Andi Part II

It was one of my first blog posts last year - Beauty & Andi!  My cousin Andi turned 4 this year- and as usual I made her cake.  I was hoping to make her something different this year, maybe a castle or a different Disney Princess.  BUT - what did she want?  Belle, from Beauty and the Beast.  The exact same cake I made her last year!

I made a few modifications this year - I used a different doll (barely!) and I also used a different icing tip to give her dress a different finish.  Last year her dress had this rippling effect and this year, I did little stars.  The one element that stayed the same - were the sparkles! I love making my princesses sparkle, it adds such a magical touch to the cake.  The only downfall...is I end up with sparkles all over me and my kitchen!  Oh well..sparkles never hurt anyone.  Which one do you prefer?  This years or last years cake?!  BAKE ON :)

Taste Test!

This week I experimented with yet another flavor of cupcake! (by the way - the bride and groom LOVED the cookies n cream cupcakes!) But this week - I went with my mom's favorite- lemon and raspberry.  She loves lemon cake  - and she also loves raspberry martinis!  I found this great recipe online that used Chambord in the cupcake and the icing - and knowing that we had some left over Chambord, I figured why not!

The cupcakes came out nice and light - and had a great lemon taste thanks to fresh lemon juice and lemon zest.  The icing was super sweet but it balanced out the cupcake perfectly.  My mom loved them and I brought some over to a friends house for a party and they were a huge hit!  I think next time I would change up the icing to make it a little less sweet!  But check out the recipe I followed here, from Bakedbree.com.  Soo yummy!  Bake on!

From Scratch...

Knowing that today was going to be a gross day out (and it was...pouring rain all day!) I knew it was a perfect day to check out some new recipes.  And I had the perfect excuse to practice - one of my brother's friends is getting married next weekend - so I am making cupcakes for their rehearsal dinner!

I wanted to make something new and from scratch - just to test out some new recipes.  I was debating between vanilla bean and lemon, but nothing seemed to catch my eye.  UNTIL - I saw this amazing cookies and cream recipe (check out the recipe here from Annie's Eats blog!)  They came out delicious - I had my family taste test them for my trial run.  I will definitely try and tweak the recipe in the future to put my own little spin on it, but it is an amazing recipe!  The cupcakes look super cute, and are moist and yummy!  I can't wait to try batch number 2 and make them even prettier for the rehearsal!

Congrats!  And I am looking forward to more experiments - so stay tuned and BAKE ON!

Hook 'em!

This past weekend I travelled up to a small town on the border of New York and Vermont to visit one of my best friends from college. She is moving to Texas to go to grad school, and she was throwing a good-bye celebration. She asked me if I could help her with a cake - and of course I said yes.  How could I not make her a going away cake? 

At first, she wanted the state flag of Texas on a sheet cake - but once I was up there, we decided to do the Texas logo, the Longhorns.  It was a basic sheet cake, that I iced and then piped the Longhorn logo (free hand) and then piped along the edges of the cake to polish it off.  Everyone enjoyed the cake, and Marie was quite impressed!  So best of luck best friend, and hook 'em!

Bake on!