Blue

 
I had the honor of making my mothers 80th birthday cake. There was a cake that I saw on Gesina's blog called  "The Lovers, The Dreamers and Me". I was going to make it for my daughters college graduation party but just did not have the time because of my kitchen remodel. I finally got to try it out for this occasion. I did it a little differently though. I used regular butter cream instead of italian meringue butter cream, I used vanilla extract in place of lemon extract and finally, I used a different color scheme. Blue is my mothers favorite color so I thought I would make different shades of blue. I was surprised when some of my colors were kinda green, then I realized this was because the cake batter was yellow. It was still incredibly pretty, not to mention delicious! Everyone said it was the best cake they ever had! 
The flowers on top are made from blossom fondant. The centers of the flowers are corn syrup with the most amazing sugar sprinkles that I almost didn't buy.
As you can see, I had a hard time squaring it off. I frosted it at my parents house and did not have enough butter cream to make it properly square, but that's okay, we all enjoyed it, especially the birthday girl!

Happy 1st Birthday Cousins

My neighbor's sons are now grown men with children of their own. Beautiful children that look so much like them. The sons of two of the sons were born twelve hours apart. A joint celebration was planned for their 1st birthday and I was asked to make the cake. Yay! It was a "Winnie the Pooh" themed party. I took a napkin and made butter cream to match the colors in it. I also brought in some of the design, by making honey pots and bees out of fondant which were painted with vanilla and food coloring. The lettering is also fondant. I have little alphabet cookie cutters that I just love. This has become my preferred method of writing on cake, so neat and consistent. I still have trouble piping letters so i try to avoid it. I am looking for script alphabet cutters. How great would that be!
Tutu and The General?? One of the babies is named Desmond and the other is Lucas, who they say looks like Dwight Eisenhower, hence the nicknames lovingly bestowed on them by their uncles, the brothers, my neighbors sons, awesome dads!
It was a really lovely cake it and I got so much pleasure from making it.

Butter Cream Roses

I usually make my flowers out of royal icing. Two reasons: they are so much easier to place on the cake and sometime I like to paint them. I have been shying away from butter cream roses, I find them so temperamental. Sometimes they fall over before I get to finish them, sometimes they are too soft and just lose their shape and lastly, they are hard to place on the cake(for me anyway). Tonight I figured out that if I put them in the refrigerator for a little while they are much easier to handle. Maybe I've gotten over my fear of them. I also kind of suck at lettering. (That may be a little harsh, perhaps I should say that I struggle with it) I can do beautiful lettering on paper, but with frosting; my hand shakes. I guess I am afraid of making a mistake and it is a very hard mistake to fix. I'll have to practice until I get over it.
Anyway, this cake is an 8" yellow layer cake with.....butter cream frosting. It was made for a woman who wanted to surprise her husband at work. Donald will be bringing it in for me tomorrow. I hope they love it!