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 :-)