The Best of Both Worlds...

On Friday, I decorated and delivered cakes for a friend of ours from church. They were getting married in Denver and returning to Colorado Springs for a 6 pm reception. Only problem was that we had one of our April snowstorms, so the bride and groom didn't get to the reception until 7. In the meantime, I had also made 3 specialty cakes - carrot, chocolate lover's, and Shirley Temple. So, since we didn't want to cut the wedding cake until after the bride and groom arrived, we had plenty of other cake to serve. Actually, it worked out much better this way. You see, the wedding cake was just plain vanilla with no filling...good, but not nearly as good as the 3 other cakes. The wedding cake turned out beautifully, so we had the beautiful wedding cake PLUS the great tasting specialty cakes, without cutting the wedding cake. Granted, the family had lots of wedding cake left over that I understand they were able to share with friends, but it was really having the "best of both worlds."

Gumpaste flowers

After all these years, I'm finally learning how to make gumpaste flowers. So here is my first attempt...the last wedding cake I did had royal blue and white roses, and other flowers and was accented with chocolate brown satin ribbon. I also tried out my new pearl airbrush color on all the flowers, and it gave them all a beautiful glisten-look. 

Happy Birthday, Carissa!

Today is my youngest granddaughter, Carissa's 1st birthday. We had a party for her the week before they moved to Hawaii, and here is a picture of the cake I did for her. It was done in chocolate marshmallow fondant with a gumpaste bow. Baking cocoa is added to the soupy marshmallow mixture before adding the powdered sugar. It's yummy. The rest of the pink decorations were done in pink marshmallow fondant. The cake flavor was vanilla with raspberry mousse filling. I don't know which she enjoyed more...the cake or the ice cream.

Happy March Birthdays...plus yummy Bavarian Creme recipe!

This is the latest cake that I did for my friend, Michelle, who works at Wynwood Assisted Living Center.

The cake flavor was Swiss chocolate with a Bavarian Creme filling. Michelle said it was a huge hit. I have always used a purchased ready to use Bavarian Creme until recently, when I discovered a yummy fresh alternative that I now make from scratch.

Easy Bavarian Creme Filling

8 oz. package cream cheese, softened

2 (3 1/2 oz.) packages vanilla instant pudding

3/4 cup milk

12 oz. Cool Whip, thawed

Mix together dry pudding mix and cream cheese. Slowly beat in milk. Fold in Cool Whip. You may also use other flavors of puddings.

Another Cake Tasting Day...

Ahhh....the day before Valentine's Day...the perfect day for another one of my free cake tastings. Again, it was successful, and well worth the time and energy that I put into it... even though I have been under the weather for a few days, so it made things a little more difficult for me. Since it was just before Valentine's Day, I added a couple of other yummy treats to the table for tasting...a small strawberry topiary tree, and decorated Valentine cookies...both of which are available in my catered items. 

New Cake Decorating Techniques and Materials

Over the 32 years that I have been decorating cakes, some techniques and materials used in decorating have changed or improved, as well as styles. For example, I have been designing cakes for Eagle Court of Honors for many years. I used to use piping gel, tinted with just a tiny bit of black paste color to get a gray color (which didn't taste very good) to fill in the metal portion of the Eagle badge. I did this because there was no metallic silver available to put on cakes that was edible. The same was true with gold metallic color. The nearest thing you could put on a cake was an ugly golden yellow color. Now, both silver and gold edible metallic colors are available, in both dusting powders and airbrush colors, which gives you the actual color you need and desire. I have used the silver dusting powder to paint on my Air Force emblems. Just recently, I purchased silver airbrush color which makes the work a lot faster and simpler. The results are wonderful. I also purchased a pearl airbrush color, which you can spray over an entire surface (fondant for example) to give a lovely shiny pearl appearance. I am excited to try it. 

Happy Valentine's Day!

I needed a cute cake pattern for my latest cake that I designed for the February birthday folks at Wynwood. So I googled cupid coloring book pages, and found this cute little cupid...complete with boxer shorts with little hearts and heart-shaped glasses. My friend, Michelle, that orders the cakes, tells me that the whimsical cakes I do for them are always a big hit. I love looking for cake patterns on the internet...so much easier than it used to be in years gone by. The flavor of this cake was French vanilla with cherry mousse.