Quilted Decadence

Tonight Brave Heart Volunteers are hosting a huge birthday party at the Channel Club.  The fundraising event includes an elegant dinner followed by a dance party with live music.  They are also hosting a birthday cake contest. 
I wanted to create an elegant cake with flair for this event.  I also wanted to include something that represents the Brave Heart Volunteer organization.  After a few sketches I decided upon a black and white theme with a red fantasy flower accent.  Quilting looks so beautiful on cakes and this was my opportunity to give it a try!

The cake is a rich chocolate cake from scratch with a vanilla buttercream.  I used marshmallow fondant to cover the cakes.  The heart and red flower are made from gumpaste. 

Come to the Channel Club tonight and support a great organization!

Amanda

Happy Easter!

Children LOVE these darling Easter bunny cookie pops!  I made these and sold them as a fundraiser for my girls' preschool.  I was surprised at how fast they sold and how much everyone loved them.  The bright colors make them look cheery for the spring.

I used my favorite sugar cookie recipe and stiffened it up with additional flower.  After I cut out the cookies, I inserted a sucker stick and baked. When  the cookies were cool I used royal icing to pipe a dam around the entire cookie.  After the dam set up, I used a thinned royal icing to flood the center of the cookie.  I let this dry for 24 hours before adding all of the detail work. The ears required a dam of white icing before I could flood with color.  When the color was set, I piped additional details on the ears.

Happy Easter!

 

Fly, Love and Sing

My dear friend Janie is expecting her second baby girl.  I made this cake for her shower and I used her nursery decor as inspiration.  I tried a painting on a cake for the first time.  It was fun to do and it looks great!  Janie LOVES nutella so I made a nutella buttercream to layer in the cake with a pound of fresh strawberries.  The bottom layer is a little crooked because of all the wonderful berries but it was worth it.  this cake was delicious!

I am a little late posting this cake!  In fact Grace Arren is already almost two months old!  Congratulations to The hall family on the birth of their beautiful little princess.

Monogram Cookies

I was asked to make monogram cookies for an upcoming wedding.  I have never seriously decorated cookies before so this project took a lot of trial and error.  First was the cookie recipe.  The cookies had to be firm, hold shape in the oven and bake flat.  After trying several recipes I found one that worked and made 5 batches of dough to yield 60 large cookies with a few extra.  Next came the icing.  I needed something that would dry hard, look great and be duarable.  I knew royal icing was the way to go but it took a while to master consistacy for coverage and decorations.  Finally, the monogram!  There is no way I can pipe 60 monograms perfectly so I turned to my cricut cake.  After making the gumpaste, I rolled it out so thin that you could see through it and I let cricut do the rest.  Even though the machine did the cutting, this was a tedious and time consuming process. 

They ended up looking pretty good.  I was not thrilled with the end result but I have to remember that this was my first attempt with cookies.  Here they are:


                           
                            
                            

I have to say that I enjoy making cakes much more than making custom cookies.  It is not fun to do the same thing 60 times over!

Thank you for visiting.

Amanda

Cake With Style

Sitkans Against Family Violence is holding its annual fundraiser tonight and part of this event is a silent dessert auction.  I wanted to create a show stopper for this event with hopes that it will bring in a large sum of money for the organization.

This cake is the most complex yet!  I started by baking two 10" round white cakes and two 8" round white cakes.  I prepared two batches of butter cream, a double  batch of fondant and my favorite gum paste recipe.  That is over 12lbs of sugary topping for this cake!  Before I started on the cake, I made my gum paste roses.  Each flower was formed one petal at a time.  When they dried I dusted them with pink blossom tint and a bit of red pearl luster dust. 

Next came butter cream and cake carving.  I was a little nervous carving the purse from the 8" cakes but I measured twice and took my time.  It was a challenge to get the correct slope and keep the entire thing symmetrical.  Once carved, both cakes received a generous coating of butter cream. 

Covering the hat box in fondant went fairly quickly but the purse took nearly three hours to complete.  I wanted it to look realistic which meant details!  Hand painted stitching, gum paste handle and well place dragees for rivets completed this work of sugar art. 

Here it is!

Stop by ANB Hall tonight and bid on this gorgeous confection!

Amanda

Birthday Boy!

I just completed this cake for a young man's 12th birthday.  His mother asked that I include his two favorite activities soccer and swimming.  It was challenging to come up with a cohesive design for this two tiered cake but after a few different sketches I had a plan.However plans do not always work out!  At one point I completely tore apart the top layer and started over!  I used a lot of fondant on this cake.  I also used gum paste for the swimmer and gel for the water.  Inside was a dark chocolate cake with butter cream frosting. 

You should have seen the smile on his face when he saw his cake!  It made my day!

Enjoy!

Amanda

Cupcakes fit for a Princess!

The USCG Spouse's association hosted a father daughter Valentine dance.  All the little girls were given tiaras to wear and they wore their favorite princess dresses.  The USCG ladies had the entire place decked out in hearts, pink and more pink.  It was so cute.  They even had a photo shoot area just like a prom. 

Of course I had to bake something amazing for all the little princesses! 

This basket is covered in over 50 mini cupcakes. 

Top view of the cupcake basket.

I enjoyed making this basket.  I completed the entire project while the twins were napping!  This one went smoothly and the results speak for themselves.

Thank you for reading!

Amanda