Saturday, September 21, 2013

Dragon Cupcake with Modelling Chocolate

If you've checked out the Craftsy blog, you'll see a lot of interesting cake decorating ideas there.


Check out this step-by-step video tutorial on how to sculpt a dragon cupcake topper with modeling chocolate today!
- See more at: http://www.craftsy.com/blog!

What have you made from Craftsy inspirations?

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Cardinal Cupcake Tree

A friend of ours always invites us over to their house for Christmas Eve for gifts and dinner. I always bring the dessert. This year, I wanted to incorporate raspberries into my dessert, as we grow our own raspberries that both friends enjoy very much.

My decision was chocolate-raspberry cupcakes with vanilla buttercream frosting, topped with chocolate piped branches and molded chocolate cardinals. I also added some white sanding sugar on top of the buttercream to make it look more like snow.



 
Sorry, the photos are horrible because all I had on hand at that time was a cell phone. But I think you can see what it is.

Snowman Present Cake

Here's just a simple cake I did a while back to get you ready for Christmas. Yes, Christmas. Hobby Lobby near me has been selling Christmas items for about a month now.


This was my first (and only, as of now) cake with a fondant bow. For the border, I mixed up the extra blue, yellow, and purple fondant to get a subtle tie-dye effect. I rolled it out and used the fondant ribbon cutter to make it wavy. Finally, I used the shell tool to make the indentations on it. The snowmen were added for an extra detail.


The only gift inside this present was chocolate cake!

I think it's cute, and those colors would work well together for a neutral baby shower cake I think.

Sunday, September 8, 2013

Camouflage Bear Cookie


The other night I wanted to try out my new gnome cookie cutters. I used the gnomes, a tree, a butterfly, chipmunks, and other forest animals to go with the theme. One of those was a bear from Anne Clark.



I only made a batch of butter fondant, which wasn't enough, and the way I separated the colors, I was able to cover only one bear. The colors I had left after all the cookies I could cover were covered were black, green, and brown. I decided to combine the colors just to use up the fondant. This is how the bear I used came out:


I didn't have the idea in mind when I combined the colors, but it came out looking like a camouflage pattern! It's really cute, and tasted good, too!

What do you think this pattern would be good for?

Wednesday, September 4, 2013

Search Feature Added!

Now you can search for cakes! I added a specialized search feature above the blog archive on the right sidebar.

It's so much easier to find what you're looking for! Just  type in what you want to find, and it will tell you which posts have something to do with your search.

Try it out!

Sunday, September 1, 2013

Snowman Face Cake

Everyone loves cute face cakes. And adorable snowmen are no exception. My own snowman cake creation is below.

 
It was constructed entirely of fondant, excluding the eyes and mouth which are chocolate candy melts. They look raised here because I later pushed them in further. I achieved the color of the scarf by blending together the leftover pieces from the red and green hat. The hat was striped using a technique where you 1.) roll out both colors, 2.) cut them into strips, 3.)line up the strips, 4.) roll the strips together and 5.) attach them to the cake.
 
It's a little hard to see in the photos, but I added detail to the hat to make it look woven with lines. He was a little tricky to get into the cake cover with the scarf hanging out like that! That's okay though, this wasn't for a client. He's cute enough for me!

Using Simple Cake Pans Creatively - Strawberry Cake

 
 
The above cake was made with a pan you might not guess right away. But if you look closely, it's pretty obvious. Here are some questions - see how great of a cake guesser you can be!
 
 
1.) What pan did I use?
2.) How was it colored?
3.) What are the "seeds"?
4.) What is the leafy part?
5.) How was that colored?
 
 
Scroll down for the answers!
 
 
 
 
 
 
...
 
 
 
 
..
 
 
 
.
 
 
 
.
 
 
..
 
 
...
 
 
 
Keep going!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
A little farther..!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Here are the answers:
1.) A heart shape
2.) It's airbrushed
3.) White chocolate chips
4.) Fondant
5.) Green food coloring gel was kneaded into the fondant, and the detail was added by airbrushing.
 
 
 
How well did you do?
 
Did you get them all right? Then you're a pretty good cake enthusiast! (You must have been looking at more of my cakes - thanks!)
 
If you didn't do so well, maybe you need to look at some more of my cakes. ;) Have fun!

My First Cake with Piped Roses

Every good cake decorator knows how to pipe a rose. It's something everyone most if not all cake decorators struggle with at first. I got the hang of it after a few tries, and now I can whip out a buttercream (or royal icing ) rose in no time. When you figure out how the tip works, you can make a perfect rose. Below is my first cake with piped roses.

 
 
Of course they're not very good roses as they're my first ones, but I don't think they're that bad. (Okay, maybe they're really bad - at least I can do much better roses now!) I think that shade of pink is a nice baby girl pink. You think so?
 
Tell me about how you learned to pipe a rose! How long did it take until you got the hang of it?

Burger Cake

I love cakes that look like other foods. Like this steak here:

Burgers are always popular to replicate as cakes. Just doing a Google search for "Burger Cakes" retrieves more than twenty-seven million results! Burgers are fairly simple, and great to start out with when replicating other food. Here's how mine came out:

 
Cute, huh? The cheese and lettuce are fondant, and the ketchup is buttercream colored red. And it took a lot of red. A lot. And it was still pink-ish. It's good enough for me though, it wasn't for a client.
 
If you want a burger cake your ketchup will be red!

 
 

Cornelli Lace Cake with Flowers

So I wanted to try my hand at a cornelli lace cake. Lighter pastel colors look nice for a background, so I used a pale light green color marshmallow fondant and white royal icing. Here's how it looked:

 
I like the random yet sophisticated look to it. Plus it's really simple to do. Great cake to make!