Cole is 6

I haven't figured out the roses yet, but I've decided that I want to make a cake for my nephew's 6th birthday. Problem is, he's in Maine and I'm in North Carolina....but wait, my mother is visiting and could take the cake back with her on the plane...I'm making the cake.

Cole is obsessed with Lego's and Star Wars and preferably Star Wars Lego's, so he needs to have a Star Wars Lego cake.

I had to make a small cake so that my mom could carry it on the plane, so I made a 6" round, and a 3" round topper to kind of make it look Lego like. I covered it in a bright blue fondant, then covered the top round in bright orange.

My mom and I went to the Lego store at the Concord Mills Mall and picked up some actual Lego men and a few Lego pieces to add to the cake.

While there, I found what was meant to be a Lego man ice cube tray, which we in turn used as a chocolate mold. My mom made Lego men in yellow, red and green and these became the border around the bottom of the cake.

While six year old's can rarely match their own socks, they know the difference between real and make believe. Just writing the words Star Wars on the cake would have been make believe, so I downloaded the Star Wars logo and cut it out of fondant to ensure that this was a "real" Star Wars cake.

My piping skills are weak but I wanted to do something fun for his name. I considered using some wooden letters I found at AC Moore, but they didn't have the 4 letters I needed. So, while I was working, my mom took a little drive over to Michael's and found a cake lettering mold, which I then used to create his name in black fondant.

I used waxing sticks to adhere the stars to each other and stuck the letters on the stars. I finished by using butter cream to glue down the Lego pieces...then it was time to box it up and fly it to Maine.

After it arrived in Maine, my mom added the #6 stick and the Lego men we had purchased. Once she delivered the cake, Cole was very excited and wanted to just keep looking at it.

His sister Lexie had other ideas. She really liked the chocolate Lego men!
And now she wants her own cake!

Well her birthday is next month so I have some time to come up with an idea....
and figure out how to ship a cake!

A Wedding Cake? Seriously?

So Sonya and Zak are engaged and they've asked me to make their cake. It's meant to be 4 tiers, ivory fondant with a pearl border in ivory and ivory gum paste roses on top and splashed about on each tier. I can't breathe.

I've never made a gum paste rose, but I have some leftover gum paste from my first miserable attempt at a flower, so I gave it a shot.

My gum paste is old and dry and not suitable for making roses. This is really sad. I only have 8 months to get this right.

The Party

Of course there would be a blizzard on the date of the party! We are in Maine right? So, with less than half of the invited guests planning to attend, I got started on the cakes that were the reason for everything. The 6" red daisy cake was lemon cake with lemon butter cream icing. The 8" orange daisy cake was white cake with white chocolate butter cream icing and a raspberry filling. The 10" pink daisy cake was chocolate cake with peanut butter butter cream icing.

After a very late night, with Linda's help punching out tiny little white circles to adorn each petal, we were ready to transport the cakes to the party and set up.


Actual cake set up at the party.

They looked great. I was so happy and from what everyone said, they tasted great too.

I had accomplished my goal and achieved what I set out to do...make a cake instead of buying one that I couldn't afford....ahem. Okay, so I probably spent enough on tools and supplies to buy a cake directly from Duff, but now I have a signature cake and I'm still learning, so hopefully some day I'll have a portfolio and might actually be able to make a cake to order.

Please don't hold your breath.

To Maine for the Holidays

All my practicing was done, it was almost time to make the birthday cakes I had set out to do. But, there was one more stop along the way. I found a cool cake pan in the shape of a motorcycle on the internet and purchased it before I drove to Maine. My brother Chip has a birthday right after Christmas, and his son Dakota thought it was pretty cool that I was making cakes like Buddy Valastro and Duff Goldberg. So on Chip's birthday, I made a cake in the shape of a motorcycle, covered in black fondant and brought it over to decorate with Dakota.

Dakota decided that it needed a second layer of green fondant and then the shape of the motorcycle cut out and decorated - something he had seen on one of the shows - so that is what we did. We decorated all day. Dakota did all of the work cutting out and painting the details of the motorcycle and Chip was very impressed with his work. I was just happy to spend the day with Dakota, outside of an ice arena!

The Revelation

I finally found a design that I liked on the Wilton website. I altered it a little to meet my talents (ok lack of talent) and lack of flower shaped pan... and started practicing right away. The basic concept was a round cake covered in white fondant with a daisy made out of fondant and gum paste on top of the cake. Each petal of the daisy was a separate piece, cut into a folded petal.

I cut out each petal and formed them to make the flower and let them dry overnight. The next day, I made another cake and successfully covered it in fondant, sort of. At this point I hadn't purchased a cake leveler yet, which, as can be seen in the pictures is a vital tool. I also found that cutting the bottom edge of the fondant was going to take some practice and in the meantime, I needed something to cover that up, so I decided to make a fondant border that matched the petals.



Fortunately, the timing of this, my first successfully decorated cake that wasn't hideous, was perfect to celebrate Sonya's 38th birthday in November. The cake was far from perfect, but turned out lovely and we had a really nice dinner to celebrate Sonya's birthday.



Then, 3 days later, it was Kelly's 40th birthday, so I got the chance to practice again. I had just purchased new professional cake pans in various sizes, so I wasn't stuck making the same 9" round cake anymore. I had also discovered pre-made fondant in various colors. This was a huge find, as it allowed me to work with a consistently textured product and for once, my hands were not dyed the color of my decorations. Using the 6" pan forced me to come up with a new pattern for my petals...which was important because I had recently purchased a cake stand for my mom's party and it would hold a 6", 8" and 10" cake. I needed to adjust the petals for each cake....so I turned to my trusty Lexmark All-In-One and who knew...it adjusts photocopies by percentages. After a few calculations, I had my pattern and set out to make my first cute little 6" cake for Kelly's birthday.



While eating Sonya's cake, we discovered that more butter cream icing and less fondant is a good thing when it comes to taste, so the center of the flower was also adjusted for Kelly's cake. Instead of rolling a log of fondant to fill the space, I just piped in some yellow butter cream icing.

Later that night, Roland drove me and Dominic and Georgia (Kelly's kids) to the hospital to deliver the cake. While everyone at the nurse's station checked it out, I got my first request for a business card. I was kind of shocked. I never thought of it as a business. I was just learning so I could make these cool cakes for my mom. And truth be told, I was becoming a one trick pony. I only had one design and even that hadn't been perfected yet. A business? Crazy.

Kelly quickly whisked the cake away to save for her break time, which disappointed Dominic and Georgia. They were hoping to eat cake. I was scheduled to baby sit them later in the week, so I told them I'd make them a cake of their own that they could eat and then I asked what flavor.

Big mistake. Dom wanted lemon and Georgia wanted chocolate. I couldn't image a worse tasting cake so I decided I better make them each one. Hey, I needed the practice and one of my mom's cakes was going to be lemon so it would give me a chance to work on the recipe too. So, they each got a cake.


Georgia specifically requested hearts, so her cake was very easy to conceptualize. Dominic on the other hand was 14 and a freshman in high school. I really didn't have the slightest idea on how to make a cake that looked cool for him. Sonya happened to come by while I was working and she actually helped cut out some of the circles for the cake. In the end, he only cared that it was lemon and tasted good. And, I had two new designs to add to my portfolio...

The Journey

I've always been a baker. My best friend Sue and I decided at a young age that we would open a bakery someday.

I was 9 when my Aunt Grace taught me how to make pie crusts and also when I had my first cake blunder.

While my parents were out with my Aunt Grace and Uncle John who were visiting from Florida, I decided that I would make a cake for my Uncle John's birthday... as a surprise. The recipe called for a 1/2 cup of instant coffee. I wasn't sure if that meant to make the coffee, or put the dry coffee grounds into the cake. I called my neighbor Bev and she had never heard of adding coffee to a cake, so I had to decide on my own. I've always been very literal, so in went the grounds. Everyone was surprised ... but not in the way I had intended. The cake was awful.

Although I have not yet opened a bakery, I have always enjoyed it and it has always been a hobby. If you stop by my house at any given time, there is a 75% chance there will be fresh baked goods for you to try. Occasionally, I still screw up and the results are quickly tossed, but for the most part, everyone enjoys my treats.

But, when it came time to celebrate my mom's 60th birthday this year, I actually considered buying her a cake ... something cool, a la Cake Boss or Ace of Cakes. I did some research and quickly realized that I was not equipped financially (love ya Mom, but not that much) to purchase a professionally decorated cake. Good Lord they are expensive. Perhaps I should have opened the bakery instead of going to college. Whatever, can't go back now, but suffice it to say that I decided then that I needed to learn to do this myself and I had about 6 months to figure it all out.

You all know I'm a perfectionist, so I hesitate to show some of my earliest attempts, but the point is to document the story, so I'm going to tell you that it did not start out well. I got a recipe in June 2009 from my friend Tommy to make fondant and I went to town. Sooo not as easy as it looks. It's messy and the consistency is difficult to pin down immediately, and it dries out if you leave it too long. The list of difficulties goes on and on. I used some regular cookie cutters, a basic wooden French rolling pin, liquid food coloring and my counter top with no mat. I clearly did not have the proper tools to get this done.

So shopping it is! I purchased a fondant rolling mat, a fondant rolling pin, some fondant cutters, gel food coloring and a zillion other little tools that I actually have learned to use over the past year. I tried again and actually managed to successfully cover the cake in fondant. But...it was so ugly. I had no idea how to actually decorate the cake. My friend Kelly, a nurse, came over and took this one to the hospital so it would get eaten, but I was far from ready to show off my skills.

At this point, I need to regroup, quit baking and focus on the design aspect. I had already decided that the theme of my mother's party would be red, orange and pink gerbera daisies....so I went shopping again and bought everything I could possibly need to make flowers. They do not sell skills at Michael's, AC Moore or Hobby Lobby...in case you were wondering.

I still didn't have a clear idea of what I wanted to make, so I just started experimenting without getting too complicated. What I ended up with just wasn't even cute. I had all of these tools, but no vision.

So I went to the web and did a Google Image search for ideas.

And then....