cakes Rae makes

Firefighter Themed Cake: A friend got her first firefighting job and we were celebrating. 13x9 pan, double layers, house made with chocolate and graham crackers, fire trucks bought in toy section at Target. Not pictured: We stuck a candle through the doorway of the house so we had actual fire coming out of the house.

Gravestone Birthday Cake: Made for a friend’s friend’s birthday. Wilton shaped cake pan on top of a 13x9 layer to give a more 3-D look.

Pumpkin Cake: Made for our annual Pumpkin Carving Contest at work. Wilton shaped cake. When I make this cake again, I’d actually make it pumpkin flavored cake. Now that I do a lot of customized cakes, I use this cake when I need round pieces of a cake. (It works better than the perfectly round cake pans.)

Halloween Cupcakes: Made for our annual Pumpkin Carving Contest. Gummy bats were bought at target.

Power Rangers Cake: My friend’s son, Gavin, wanted a Power Rangers birthday cake so I ended up getting this set of toys at Toys-R-Us and using the logo in the center of the cake. 2 layer 13x9 cake. One of the toys kept falling over so I went with it and made it look like he’d gotten knocked over by one of the Rangers. The kids loved it. They kept wanting to play with it so their mom finally put it away until we were ready to blow out the candles.

Gymnastics Cake: Made for a co-worker’s son’s birthday. He’s big into gymnastics. Cake is 13x9 pan. The “mats” are all made from rice krispie treats cut into the appropriate shapes. The pummel horse is also made out of rice krispie treats supported by lollipop stick legs. The handles on the pummel horse and the rings themselves are Cheerios. The rings are suspended out of straws with a black string pulled through them and secured at the end. The little gymnastics boys are sugar cookies decorated with frosting. Toothpicks were inserted in the legs of the cookies right after they came out of the oven, this gave me a way to stick them into the cake so that they’d stand upright.

Tonka Truck Cake: The cake itself is 13x9 chocolate cake with mostly cream cheese frosting. Except for the black frosting which is made from chocolate frosting because it’s easier to dye black without the frosting tasting like nasty. It’s a double layer cake and I just kept some of the batter from the second cake aside to make the cupcake. (I used a single silicon cupcake cup so that I could make just one cupcake.)  I looked at a few different truck toys that I could use but ended up with a Tonka toy set from Target because it included the little construction cones and barriers which I thought added a cute touch. Since I couldn’t put the cupcake in the bed of the truck, I filled it with sprinkles instead and it ended up being quite cute.

50th Hollywood/Movie Themed Cake: A co-worker requested this cake for her uncle’s 50th birthday. He likes movies so we went with a Hollywood theme. I suggested doing a clapboard to make it look like it was the movie of his life and Nancy wanted it to say, “50 Years in the Making.” She wanted a raspberry filled cake so I used French Vanilla cake mix with the fresh raspberries and raspberry preserves (seedless) melted with a little bit of water to make the jelly to go in the center. The black frosting is chocolate fudge icing dyed black and the rest is cream cheese icing. I used three 9×13 cakes. Two made the clapboard and the third made the film strips.

Pottery Wheel Cake: A co-worker does a lot of pottery work so we decided to make her a pottery wheel themed cake. The cake itself was two 9″ yellow butter round cakes with a layer of raspberries (melted raspberry perserves and fresh raspberries) in the center, covered with cream cheese frosting. This was my first time making modeling chocolate and it was less than successful. It wasn’t strong enough to stand on it’s own so I ended up putting it on the vase I was originally going to model it after. Everyone else thought it was great but I was annoyed that it meant not everything on the cake was edible. I also bought some flowers at the last minute (since it was a real vase anyway) to give the cake a little bit of color.

Puppy Cake: Hannah wanted a puppy cake so I ended up getting a Pocket Puppies set from Toys-R-Us and using that to set up a backyard scene. The pool is melted sugar colored blue-green and circled by gummi worms to make it look like a blow-up pool. The doghouse is graham crackers put together and decorated with melted chocolate. The sandbox is pretzels covered in melted chocolate and the sand itself is crumbled graham crackers mixed with brown sugar. And pretzels were used again for the fence around the outside of the cake. (2 layer 13x9 cakes.)