Follow the Yellow Brick Road!

Our school had a fundraising auction a few weeks ago, and the theme was "Wizard of Oz -- Dreams We Dare to Dream." So, of course, I had to donate a cake!! :-)

This is what I came up with:

I must give credit to Etsy seller CrumbyArt for the design of the toppers. I was searching for ideas on Google and found her listing: http://www.etsy.com/listing/102851434/wizard-of-oz-cake-toppers-wizard-of-oz

I had to make the figures and the 'emerald city' a few days ahead so they would have time to dry--and I learned the hard way that you can't freeze gumpaste/fondant to speed up the hardening process--it sweats and melts as I warms up, what a mess! I also learned that silver petal dust does a wonderful job making things look metallic if you lather enough of it on. I was pretty happy with them in the end:

I also learned how to carve a spiral cake in order to create to yellow brick road. It was all tremendous fun!

Kitty on a Ball of Yarn

There's a wonderful local shelter called MEOW, and our family recently started fostering kittens for them. Fostering kittens is, of course, about as much fun as you can have :-), but apart from the fun, MEOW does a lot of wonderful work with kitties, caring for them and helping place them with a forever family. All this costs money, and so when I heard they were holding their annual fundraising auction, I leapt at the chance to make one for the actual auction. Given they're all about kitties, this is what I delivered:

Unfortunately I don't seem to have taken more than this photo, though I thought there were others. If I find them, I'll add them in. Under the ball of yarn is a square base cake. The kitty is made of modeling chocolate and the rest of the decorations were marshmallow fondant. It was a little nerve-wracking, since the weather was warmer the fondant showed a tendency to melt... It worked out okay in the end, and was delivered safely. And credit should go to the original designer of the cake, UK-based Debbie Brown (I'm a huge fan, she creates amazing novelty cakes and has a few books you can check out if you're interested).

Rainbow Owl Cake.

The daughter of a friend turned two, and I was delighted when they asked me to make a cake for the celebration. Turns out Miss A is very interested in owls, and so an owl cake it was!


I admit, I just had so much fun doing this one! The cake was chocolate, the frosting buttercream and the owls were marshmallow fondant.

I used a leaf-shaped cutter for the body, shaped the head with the base of the cutter (cut out a semi-circle) and a smaller leaf-shaped cutter for the wings. I used the top of a decorators tip to shape the belly feathers.

Wizard's Cake

My son still loves magic and wizards, and so for his 9th birthday celebration he asked for a wizard's cake. He wanted a wooden desk/workbench with wizardly items scattered around, so, with plenty of input from him :-), this is what I came up with:

All the decorations are modeling chocolate. Here we have two potion bottles and a "two-finger ring" (he knew exactly how he wanted this to look, sketched it out for me and everything since I was kind of confused!). You can also see the handle of the wand:

And here we have a rat, a quill-and-inkwell and a spell-book open to an invisibility spell (and the tip of the wand):

 And the finally with the candles all lit:

The top of the workbench is a sheet of marshmallow fondant, scored and painted with food-coloring, and then brushed with cocoa powder to remove the shine.

The Hop-Hop Cake

Good friends of ours have a very cute daughter who turned two in April. I was thrilled to be able to make a cake for her (I got to make the cake for her babyshower and first birthday, so I'm keen to keep up the tradition!), and even better, she knew just what she wanted: a blue hop-hop cake.

I had the best time experimenting with making "hop-hops", and then made flowers and a marshmallow fondant log to set the scene. This was how it turned out:

 The bunnies...I mean, hop-hops :-), and flowers were gumpaste (the one the birthday girl got was buttercream, nice and soft), and the grass and blue frosting were buttercream.

Daisy Cake

I've been dying to try my hand at a daisy cake for some time now, and finally had the opportunity when my daughter's school needed cakes for the Carnival Cake Walk. I kept it pretty simple, using gumpaste for the flowers and buttercream frosting, and was pretty happy with the results. (It was the usual chocolate with raspberry jam filling, I just can't seem to keep away from it!)

Modeling Chocolate!

Wow! I discovered my new favorite cake-decorating thing! Modeling chocolate is wonderful to work with, it holds its shape better than fondant and is more malleable than gumpaste--plus, it doesn't dry out and crack. The only difficulty I ran into was that it got too soft from the warmth of my hands a few times. All I needed to do was run my hands under cold water.

I discovered all this when I was making a birthday cake for my daughter in May. She had requested a woodland cake, and, inspired by some lovely cakes on Cakecentral, I came up with this:

The cake was chocolate, filled with raspberry jam, and covered with marshmallow fondant. The grass was buttercream, and everything else was modeling chocolate.

I think my favorites were the hedgehogs and toadstools :-)

Fondant Flower Cake

It's been so long since I posted here, we're now in the depths of winter! I still have a backlog of yummy baked things to put up, as well as a couple of more recent experiments, so I'll have to make a better effort to post here more often.

A good friend celebrated her birthday during the summer, but as she was visiting family overseas at the time, I had to wait until she returned to present her with this:

I had originally planned on making the flowers much smaller, just tall enough to fit around the side of the cake, but somehow they came out this way, and I liked the effect. It was my first time making the fondant spheres around the base of the cake. I weighed the pieces so they'd be as close to the same as I could get them, and then hand-rolled them. I used marshmallow fondant, which is really easy (though messy!) to make, and much tastier than the store-bought version.