memorial day/anniversary cake

after making brittany & josh's wedding cake, brittany's sister asked me if I could make a 2 tier memorial day/anniversary party cake! i of course was ecstatic to make another cake!

the design was similar to the wedding cake actually. it was chocolate cake with cream cheese frosting, covered in white fondant and decorated with red, white and blue fondant stars, stripes, and ball border. i forgot to take pictures during the baking/decorating process, but i remembered to take some once i was finished...

this cake was really fun to make!!

brittany & josh’s wedding cake

a co-worker asked me if i could make her wedding cake! of course my first thought was wow, that will be a lot of work. but after thinking about it, i decided i could do it! her request seemed pretty easy...

she asked me if i could make a cake like this one she found online...

it was going to be a vanilla cake with cream cheese frosting in the layers and on the cake. then, covered in pink fondant and decorated with white fondant stripes, bow, and polka dots! i started out baking lots of cake! i was going to be making a 3 tier cake to serve about 11o guests. i think i times the recipe by about 9! next was stacking the layers with the cream cheese frosting in between. since the icing was cream cheese, i had to keep everything in the fridge when I wasn't using it...top 2 tiers...

next i covered all of the tiers with cream cheese frosting...bottom 2 tiers...

then i covered all of the tiers in fondant that I colored pink...all 3 tiers... next was the decorating!
steve even helped me out with the pink balls for the border...

next i added a polka-dots to the top tier, a solid white stripe around the middle tier and vertical stripes on the bottom tier. i also had pre-assembled a bow for the middle tier...

saturday morning we headed to greenville to deliver the cake! it took up my whole back seat...

once we arrived at the reception hall i finished assembling the cake, added the pink balls around the border, the bow on the middle tier, and the cake topper!...

the finished product...

me with the cake...

as long as this project took, i was really glad i decided to do it. it was a great learning experience and i really enjoyed every minute of it! although my feet and back were aching the next day from all of the standing, it was worth it. i was also able to make a beautiful cake for a friend's wedding!

aunt erin's 50th birthday cake

i really loved making this cake! it was for aunt erin's 50th birthday party! the colors used were red (of course), pink & brown because the party was at jim edmond's 15.

all of the girlies!

another shot

a big cake

i made this cake for a work event. it was 7 cake mixes! i used butter cream icing and lots of sprinkles. it was a hit!

oil versus apple sauce

lately i've been baking more often with apple sauce rather than oil. i wasn't sure if it would be best to use all apple sauce instead of oil, or half and half, so i decided to do a test with cupcakes. i made one batch with 100% oil, another with 100% just apple sauce, and a last with 50/50 oil & apple sauce.

here are the results--

100% oil--fluffy, but a bit oily

100% apple sauce--still tastes good, but very flat

50% oil and 50% apple sauce--rises well and still tastes great

overall, i do think that baking 50/50 with oil and apple sauce is best. it lowers the fat and the taste and look is still good.

a wedding cake

our next cake in the class was a 2-tier fondant covered cake with gum paste roses. this cake was fun to make, and while the roses were very time consuming, they look really great. i added white polka dots, and a butter cream border.

big brown bow

this cake was a new challenge...covering a cake in fondant :) turns out, fondant is kind of a pain, but it looks really great...it just doesn't taste the greatest! i made this cake during the fall of 2007, so i made it an autumn theme. there are red, orange & yellow leaves, and a big brown bow!