100th Birthday Cake for Grandma Adeline

20 Tuesday Jan 2015

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chocolate ganache filling, chocolate mousse filling, double chocolate cake, raspberry mousse filling, Sour cream vanilla cake, vanilla-bean frosting

This cake was certainly a labor of love for a woman who is very dear to me….my husband’s grandmother, Adeline DeBartolo, who turned 100-yrs-old last November.

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She’s the reason we packed up and moved our entire household and 1-yr old son from Utah to Ohio 10 years ago and now live 2 blocks away from my in-laws. She’s the reason my kids can have the wonderful influence of their loving grandparents just down the street every day. She’s the reason, truth be told, I married my husband…Before I’d met his parents (they lived in Hawaii when we were first dating), I met Grandma and she welcomed me to the family with open Italian grandmother arms. She’s the reason for a lot of good and wonderful things in my life and I love her dearly. So when it looked as if we were going to get to celebrate her 100th birthday, I had to make the cake.

I’m finally getting around to posting this as I found all of the pictures we took in my kitchen and at the venue that day (this is Grandma with my beautiful Mother-in-Law). The party was a terrific event and friends and family came from near and far to celebrate Adeline’s long and eventful life.

I wish I would have taken more pictures of the process, but the cake is modeled after this one from Sprinkles Bakes. When it was posted last year, I knew I had to do one like it for Grandma’s celebration.

The cake is actually a 3-tiered cake, with the bottom and middle tiers both 10″ diameter and the top 8″ diameter. Each tier is 3 layers, chocolate-vanilla-chocolate with different fillings (cream cheese, raspberry mousse, chocolate ganache).

The entire thing is frosted with vanilla-bean buttercream. I added little Swiss dots in buttercream to the bottom two tiers and buttercream pearl borders.

The flowers I made in advance from homemade marshmallow fondant mixed with a little gumpaste to make them stronger. Grandma’s favorite flower is gardenia, so a did a few of those (perhaps one of the hardest to make out of fondant!) and added a few pink dogwood blossoms for contrast.

The lovely topper I got from this vendor on Etsy…It added the perfect touch to the cake.

Adeline is so beloved that along with immediate family, virtually ALL of her nieces and nephews (and many great- and great greats-) drove hundreds of miles to celebrate her life.

I love this series of photos showing her reaction to the cake with the candles lit (we had to put it on a cart and bring it to her as she’s in a wheel chair). The other lovely lady in the first photo is her sister Violet (Aunt Tata to all of us), who will be turning 100 in 2 years…definitely some long-lived genes in this family!

The last photo is my favorite, with all of the the youngest great-grandchildren helping Grandma with the candles (that’s me, holding up my youngest…she really wanted to see 100 candles on the cake, but was finally satisfied with 1 LONG candle for every decade ;0).

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It was a wonderful celebration and I was honored to be a part of it….We love you very much, Grandma, and I can’t wait to do a cake for 101!

Curious George Birthday Cake

19 Monday Jan 2015

Posted by Laurie in Cakes

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Curious George, double chocolate cake, frozen buttercream transfer, homemade marshmallow fondant, vanilla-bean frosting

This cake was ordered for a little boy who was turning 3 last week. His mother wanted a modest celebration cake to share with his preschool class with the image of his favorite character–Curious George! She asked for a simple design on a square cake with a picture of Curious George on top and fondant balloons spelling out his name.

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I did the image as a frozen buttercream transfer. I found a picture I liked, sized it to fit the cake, and traced it onto waxed paper with buttercream icing. It’s almost like making the picture in reverse, as you put the details “closest” to you down first (i.e., the face, etc) and build up the icing on top of that. In other words, the whole thing is flipped over in the end, with the buttercream that’s directly on the waxed paper being the image you see on the cake (make sense…? Probably not….).

During the process, the entire thing was put into the freezer in between colors to keep the buttercream from smearing together…thus the term “frozen buttercream transfer.” It’s actually an ingenious way to get any picture you want on a cake without piping it on freehand.

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Anyway, it’s a 2-layer 9″ square chocolate cake iced with vanilla buttercream. After transferring the image to the frosted cake, I added green grass to the top and colorful buttercream balloons on the sides. The wired balloons, letters and number are all made from homemade marshmallow fondant.

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It was a fun cake to make, albeit a bit challenging to get the little face just right. He’s such an iconic image with a face everyone recognizes, right!? Not just any old monkey! I mostly wanted the kids to know who it was (and they did!).

Happy birthday, Little Neil! I hope you had a great 3rd birthday!

Minecraft Cupcake and Cake Fondant Toppers

07 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by Laurie in Cakes, Cupcakes

≈ 22 Comments

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cake toppers, cupcakes, homemade marshmallow fondant, Minecraft

Hard to believe, Minecraft is still here and going strong! I made my first Minecraft cake almost 2 years ago and I still get orders for it. This past month I did cupcakes with fondant creeper and TNT toppers and also a set of fondant figures (Steve, creeper, piggie, and 3 TNTs) that I shipped as a topper for a birthday cake in Florida….I even threw in a little fondant pick ax! Who knew this game had such appeal and staying power!? I find myself refining the look of the figures each time, hopefully for the better :0)

As long as kids keep playing the game, I’ll keep making the treats! Go Steve!

Lego Fondant Brick Cake and Cookie Tutorial

01 Thursday Jan 2015

Posted by Laurie in Cakes, Cookies

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chocolate mousse filling, double chocolate cake, homemade marshmallow fondant, Lego brick cookies, Lego Cake, royal icing, tutorial

Like many other parents out there, I fell in love with the “Lego Movie” that came out last year. My boys (ages 12 and 9) are still playing with their millions of Legos they’ve collected over the years. Even my 7-yr-old daughter has a few sets. They’re such a fun toy that promotes creative play (despite the tiny pieces everywhere that drive us parents NUTS!). And the movie had a great message….see it if you haven’t yet.

I had the opportunity a few months ago to make another cute Lego-themed cake as well as some Lego brick cookies for a sweet little boy. These Lego cakes are so fun to make as they’re “”multi-media”…I get to use buttercream, fondant, Lego brick molds (I finally got one), Lego brick candy, and mini-figs, so fun! Here’s a link to another Lego cake I made earlier with more description about the cake. This post shows how I made the big Lego brick on top as well as the Lego sugar cookies for Aiden’s 5th birthday party.

The Lego-themed fondant cake toppers I made after watching this great Craftsy tutorial. Some of the bricks were made free-hand and others from a brick mold like this one.

The Lego brick mini cake I made in a mini loaf pan. After trimming it up and doing a thin crumb coat of buttercream (to smooth it out and keep the crumbs in), I covered it with blue fondant and cut off the excess.

The Lego studs (yes, those little dots are really called “studs”) are cut from thick fondant with a round cutter. I plopped the entire brick onto the buttercream iced cake without any supports as it wasn’t too heavy.

I added the other decorations and the mini-figs supplied by the mother of the birthday boy. Too cute!! Love these cakes!!

The Lego cookies were made by baking up some rectangular-shaped sugar cookies and doing a smooth royal icing base coat. After drying overnight, I used my template to mark evenly spaced dots and then piped on royal icing studs. This technique I got from this great blog from Sweet Sugar Belle and it worked quite well.

What a fun birthday theme for a sweet little boy! Thanks so much to Karen (Aiden’s mom) for ordering this Lego cake and cookies…They were so fun to make! Happy 5th Birthday, Aiden!!