cakes Rae makes

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.)

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!

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.

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.

Camping Cake: Made for a friend’s daughter. They went camping for her birthday so she wanted a camping themed cake. Found the little girls at Toys-R-Us. They actually came with camping accessories but I ended up making my own sleeping bags out of fruit roll-ups. The tent is made from graham crackers covered with fruit roll-ups as well. The fence, trees, bridge, and canoe are all cake decorations I got online. I used candy and other snacks to create the rest of the effects. There is “pebbles” candy you can buy that look like rocks, the pretzels served as wood, and candy corn for the “fire”. Also, I used chocolate frosting for the campground but covered it in crumbled graham crackers to make it sandy like Florida. The candles were placed to look like tiki lights. Easy way to make a 2-layer 13x9 cake look like a campground.

Tinkerbelle & Fairies Cake: Made for HP’s birthday. She saw this cake in the bakery book at Publix and asked me if I could make it for her. I couldn’t get those exact cake toppers anywhere local and the shipping online made them way more expensive than this set of figurines from Amazon. The figurines are now ridiculously expensive but the Disney Fairies line was new at the time and I got them for $13 (and, more importantly, free shipping). The entire cake was comprised of 2 13x9 layers. I cut the second layer in half and then cut one half diagonally. I used the left over cake to cut out Tinkerbell’s lily and the toadstool the fairy on the bottom level is standing upon. I also had some confectionary flowers and a couple of my candy rocks to add other details.

BRATZ Cake: For the birthday of a daughter of a friend, one who clearly loved the Bratz dolls. At that point (back when Bratz were first really popular), there were no cake pans for these dolls. I bought a table centerpiece or party decorations (I’m not sure which at this point) at Party City and used one of the pieces (pictured with the cake) as a template to cut out a 13x9 cake. To ensure there was enough cake for the entire party, I put the doll on top of another 13x9 layer. It’s not perfect but I remain pretty happy with it.

Dinosaur Cake, Take 2: Remember my last dinosaur cake? Yeah that friend’s other son wanted a dinosaur cake for his birthday too. My friend looked through her bucket of toys and gave me back the dinosaurs and trees. She couldn’t find the rock formation so I made due. This time I used candy to create my additional rocks rather than marshmallows because it was much easier. Just went to a candy shoppe and picked out a bunch of candy that looked rock-like. It’s not as good as the other cake but the kids still liked it.

Dinosaur Cake: Made for a friend’s son’s birthday. He wanted a dinosaur cake and I found a dinosaur toy set at Target that was perfect. It came with a tree and the fake rock structure that also worked on the top of the cake. I used marshmallows and nuts (the kind you can buy to sprinkle on your ice cream) to create the additional rocks, etc. This is an 11x17 cake which meant I had 1/2 a bowl of batter left. I used that to make the additional round layer I used to help boost the rock formation in the back corner. This remains one of my favorite cakes.