Graduation season

Graduation...always the start of my busy season with graduation, change of command, weddings, and birthdays. Here's the latest graduation cake for a graduate from the AF Academy. The AF seal is made from my homemade gumpaste  and cut out on my Cricut Cake. All lettering is freehand except for the "United States of America." That is cut out of an icing sheet, using a scrapbook punch. The letters are then attached to the gumpaste with just a tiny bit of water. If you use too much water, the letters will dissolve. Next on the agenda... change of command cake for Thursday, and 6 dozen cake pops for Saturday.

More black and white...it's graduation season!!

As I was decorating this cake today, it brought back memories of decorating days gone by...back in Arizona in my baking kitchen when I would decorate 8-10 cakes each day during graduation time. Not that I would want to do that again...I'm too old and too tired. Some of my decorating techniques have changed or improved. For one thing, I'm using fondant allot more. This cake that I did today was done in fondant and buttercream. The silhoutettes and diploma ribbon were done in chocolate fondant, using Hershey's special dark chocolate to resemble black.The diploma was done out of regular fondant, but I added a bit of Tylose powder to it to make it  harden slightly. Then I painted the edges with gold highlighter dust that I added clear vanilla extract to. The rest of the decorations were done in dark chocolate buttercream. This was a full sheet, so I put two half sheets together...one was yellow with raspberry mousse and the other was chocolate with peanut butter mousse.