Category Archives: Cookies

Ice Cream & Sprinkles Birthday Party!

16 Wednesday Aug 2017

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Ok, this theme for a little girl’s birthday party is just TOO CUTE!

The client called and asked if I would help her with an ice-cream-and-sprinkles-themed 3rd birthday party for her adorable daughter, Mackenzie.  She needed coordinating cake, cake pops, cupcakes, and cookies to serve about 70 people (whew!).

Her color scheme included mint green and light pink, so I took those colors and got to work.

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The treats for the 70-or-so guests included this tiered cake (8″ pink velvet and 10″ vanilla bean)….

cake pops made with mini ice cream cones (so adorable!)….

cupcakes baked in cones with creamy swirls of multi-colored buttercream….

and cookies.

 

The tiered drip cake was so fun to do…and so popular right now! The melting ice cream cone topper is simply a huge cake pop made in a sugar cone.  I filled the cone with cake and drizzled it with pink melting chocolate. I also inserted a cake pop stick to ensure it would sit securely on the cake.

The pink drip is white chocolate ganache with pink gel color, smoothed over the top and dripped down the sides of the cake.  And, of course, sprinkles (actually sequins)….LOTS of sprinkles!

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I covered the bottom of the top tier with MORE sprinkles and a ruffly buttercream border.  The #3 on top and name plate on the side are cut from homemade marshmallow fondant.

 

The cupcakes and cake pops are made from the same cake flavors as the cake. Cupcakes are baked in regular-sized cake cones, which is always a little more difficult than it seems as they take so long to bake (about 2x the batter as a normal cupcake) and the cone has a tendency to absorb the moisture of the cupcake after it bakes and gets a little soft.  But cover them with a healthy swirl of silky buttercream, and all is good…

Instead of a stick, the cake pops are made in mini-cones and then dipped in white chocolate melts tinted mint green and pale pink–so cute!  These we’re actually much easier than a normal cake pop as the drips down the sides added to the melting ice cream cone look :0).

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This was such a fun themed party, and the party set-up at the client’s house was fabulous (wish I had a good picture, but they all turned out too dark).

Hope you had a great 3rd birthday, Mackenzie!  I loved making your treats!!

Poland Bulldogs Baseball Cake

14 Monday Aug 2017

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Loved making this custom Poland Bulldogs cake for my favorite little Bulldog baseball player, Aiden!

His mother has ordered almost a dozen cakes from me over the years (here’s the last one I did for her older son), each one more fun than the last to create, and this one was no exception!

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This 2-tiered, 6″-8″ cake is chocolate filled with chocolate mousse on the bottom (with chopped Hershey bars mixed into the mousse…YUM!) and hummingbird cake on the top.  Both tiers are covered with homemade marshmallow fondant.

The bulldog is hand-cut from fondant using my Kopy Kake projector (love that thing!).  Using a layering technique I learned about in a Craftsy class by Corrie’s Cakes, I was able to make the 2-D image look more 3-D.

Love this technique as it makes the image really POP out from the cake…putting it together is almost like creating a puzzle.  Once I figured out the layering, details were drawn on using a food-safe marker and the pieces were “glued” together with watered down piping gel.

All of the other details and lettering are cut using cutters from fondant.

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I also made a few baseball cookies to go along with the cake…

Happy Birthday, Aiden….hope you had a great one!!

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Graduation Cake and Cookie Ideas

25 Tuesday Apr 2017

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It’s almost graduation season, so start planning those parties!  I really can’t believe how huge graduation parties are here in Ohio…much bigger than celebrations where I grew up.

These are some examples of half-sheet cakes that are a good party-size and can serve a bunch when made with 2 layers.

These 2 graduation cakes I did for a Poland Seminary High School graduate last year who was going to Ohio State in the fall.

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This Cardinal Mooney cake I did a few years ago (before I discovered how cutting letters out of fondant is much cleaner … and straighter :)).  The graduate was going to the University of Dayton…

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These are full sheet cakes, which I don’t make often as they are difficult to manage in my regular-sized fridge.  I love this black and yellow theme with swirls and stars.  It really says “Let’s CELEBRATE…you’ve done it!!”

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For this one I made a 3-d mortar board and decorated it with stars, sprinkles and fondant twists. Here’s the post that describes it in more detail.

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This cake is for a smaller celebration…followed by a group of specialty cakes.

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And you always need cookies, right?

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Post-Holiday Purple Birthday Cake and Cookies for Maddie!

13 Friday Jan 2017

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I made this cake for a young girl who’s birthday falls right after the holidays…must be hard to make a color statement with all that red and green.

So this adorable 14-yr-old asked for her birthday cake to be purple. That’s it. Purple.  And chocolate.

Surprisingly easy to please for a teenager, huh?!

 

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Her mom threw in a few dozen cookies for fun…

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The cake is a 9″ chocolate mocha cake with chocolate mousse filling and iced with vanilla-bean buttercream.The pics turned out more pink-looking, but the icing color was a mix of Americolor royal purple and electric purple. I added the green and blue sequin/sprinkle mix to add some contrast.

The name plaque, number, and stars are all made from homemade marshmallow fondant.

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Loved this one, so much freedom…

Hope you had a great birthday, Maddie!  I really enjoyed making your purple cake and cookies!

 

Emoji Cake and Cookies

30 Friday Dec 2016

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2016 is nearly behind us…And my feelings for the year that’s quickly slipping away are mixed.

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So what better way than to celebrate with an emoji cake and cookies to express all those emotions!

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I did this order a few months ago for a cutie-patootie 6-yr-old who loves her wacky, zany, tongue-out-wink emoji (who doesn’t, right?).  So that’s the emoji we used for the cake.

It was a 9″ round 2-layer sour cream vanilla cake with smooth vanilla buttercream icing tinted yellow.  The emoji details and font were made from fondant (I used round cutters for the eye and letter cutters for the font, the rest was hand-cut).

 

The cookies were assorted emoji faces iced and decorated with fresh lemon royal icing. Jayde’s mom had me bag them with a ribbon to be given out as favors at the party.

 

The cake and cookies were really a blast to make and ring true for me this last week of the year.  Our family has had so many ups and downs this year with the deaths of 2 dear matriarchs (Grandma at 101 last April and Aunt Tata at 100 just yesterday), the destruction of our cherished Spencer cabin in Wyoming by wildfires last July, and the demise of numerous family pets…But we had great times, too.  It’s difficult to say which won out, the good times or the bad.

That said, I’m resigned to enter 2017 on an upbeat note, so here’s a toast and great big hurrah for the year ahead!