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Jungle Baby Shower Cake: Made for a jungle themed baby shower for friends. Multiple parts of this one aren’t edible. The animal figures were bought at JoAnn and D&G Occasions. I had most of the trees from an earlier purchase at Sugarcraft but I got a few more at D&G as well. The rocks are actually Candy Store Milk Chocolate Rocks found at Walmart. The cake is made from two 11x15 layers, one chocolate and one yellow. I just cut it up and did a little trimming/sculpturing to create the rock formation. And because it’s for a large shower (40+ people), I used my leftover cake mix to make the extra cupcakes.
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Balloon & Gift Birthday Cake: Made for a celebration of our December birthdays at the office. Design idea came from what I did with the Garden Girl cake. I didn’t have a lot of time for this one but didn’t want it to be just a two-layer yellow cake with a boring birthday design on the top. So I to cut around a design on the side to give it a little extra dimension. I did a quick Google search and found a clipart image that matched what I was thinking (balloon attached to a gift box) and blew it up in Photoshop so I could print it and use it as a guide while cutting. Once I had it cut, it all came together nicely.
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Fancy Snowmen Cake: For @modernmami’s daughter’s Christmas-y birthday party and modeled after this cake they found online. It’s a 8 inch 2-layer vanilla cake with cream cheese frosting. The snowmen are made from gumpaste. The eyes are chocolate tootsie rolls and the noses are orange flavored rolls. The “boa” scarves are puffy pipe-cleaners, the one non-edible item on the cake due to some uncooperative cotton candy. The trees are all molded chocolate with light green and white chocolate accents. The trim includes medium sized pink candy pearls and the “fancy” hats are made from flavored tootsie rolls (I used hat cake toppers to mold them). Finally, I brushed the snowmen and trees with candy pearl dust over to give them a little bit of a “snow” shine.
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Guitar Cake: This one was for a “Rock Star” themed birthday party. Made with a Wilton guitar-shaped pan. Since the pan called for a little more cake batter than your typical pan, I doubled the batter and used the left-over to make cupcakes. I then used the cupcakes to add a little color to the cake. Knobs, etc., on the guitar are made from silver M&Ms.
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Bumblebee Cake: Made for a friend’s son’s birthday. Bumblebee is pretty popular so it was impossible to find cake appropriate toys I could use to build a scene. Instead I made the car based on the toy seen pictured here. My car carving skills need work so I’m not a huge fan of the final product. However, the kids loved it and that’s really all that matters.
This was carved from an 11x17 layer and 9x13 layer. I used the left over pieces of cake to raise the car up off the board with some extra Oreos used to support additional areas under the car. The wheels are Oreos. The lights are a combination of flavored Tootsie Rolls and fruit roll-ups. I printed out the Autobot logo and used that as a guide when drawing it on the front of the car. It’s not the best but it’s recognizable. Then I taped the printout to the top of the box for delivery.
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Apple Bundt Cake, Caramel Frosting: No novel designs here, just yummy homemade Apple Bundt cake with homemade caramel frosting. It was good but, in the future, I’d serve it warm so that the frosting is still a little warm and the apples are nice and mushy. (Made for my friend’s birthday.)
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Garden Girl Birthday: Based on the Garden Girl Party theme available at party stores, specifically the invitation. We went with both a 2-layer, 13x9 cake and 24 cupcakes to make sure there’d be enough cake to feed everyone. I used a daisy and butterfly cookie cutter to trace and cut out the right and left top edges of the cake. The bees on the cake and the eyes on the ladybugs and bees were made out of sugar and purchased at a local baking supply store. The bee wings were made from white melting chocolates using a plastic bee mold.
I wasn’t liking where the cake was headed as I was working on it but it turned out to be pretty cute. Especially once it was delivered and set up at the party itself. It looked great on top of a green tablecloth with toy bugs scattered in between the cupcakes.
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Baby “It’s a boy!” Shower Cake: Made for a friend’s baby shower and based loosely on these party supplies. Obviously she’s having a baby boy. She loves peppermint so I wanted to try and tailor the cake for her. After looking at several peppermint chocolate cake recipes, I ended up using two boxes Triple Chocolate Fudge cake mix and adding a layer of crushed/chopped York Peppermint Patties in between the two layers. I coated the bottom layer lightly with vanilla frosting and then covered it with the patties. This took almost entire bag of the candies but it did create a decent layer of the candy in between the cake layers. I also added 1/2 teaspoon of peppermint extract to the Triple Chocolate Fudge frosting I used on the sides of the cake to give it just a little extra peppermint kick. Then I used vanilla frosting for the decorations on the top. The baby is a party favor found at a local party store as are the “BABY” decorations. The chocolate frosting on the sides did get a little thin once the peppermint extract was added making it drip a bit. I’m sure it only bothered me but it is worth noting if you plan to do anything more substantial with the peppermint flavored frosting.
In the end, everyone seemed to enjoy the cake and that’s all that matters!
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Backyardigans Cake: Made for a friend’s 3 year old son’s birthday party. 3 layers (choc, yellow, choco) to help boost it up a bit to make the sides easier to decorate (and they were still the hardest part!). Bought a Backyardigans party table centerpiece at Party City and used the characters from that to decorate the top. The sides made the way the rest of the party supplies were decorated.
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Syzygy Cake: A co-worker’s youth group leader was retiring and they were throwing her a party. She liked to bring in games for the youth group and Syzygy was one of her favorite games. They came up with a gameboard for me with words that were relevant to the leader and that’s what I used to make hte cake. This is 2 layers of 13x9 yellow cake and the Syzygy letters are made from melting chocolate colored blue. I made a thin layer of the chocolate on aluminum foil and then used a little square candy cutter to get the squares. Then I added the letters with white melting chocolate. Even the pieces in the draw pile had letters on them.
©2010. Postage by Greg Cooper. Icons by P.J. Onori. Thanks to Jamie Cassidy & Panic.
*Unlikely to find the cake you want but you can try...
