Post-Holiday Purple Birthday Cake and Cookies for Maddie!

13 Friday Jan 2017

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chocolate mousse filling, homemade marshmallow fondant, mocha cake

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!

Pittsburgh Tri-Sport Birthday Cake

15 Friday Jul 2016

Posted by Laurie in Cakes

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Tags

chocolate mousse filling, double chocolate cake, homemade marshmallow fondant, pittsburgh sports cake, vanilla-bean frosting

Made this sports-themed cake for a sweet young boy who was turning 9 and loves all things sport in Pittsburgh!

I used a neat trick I found here on Cake Central to imprint the tri-sport logo onto fondant and then cut it out with an exact-o knife (watch the tutorial, it shows how to use royal icing to make a transfer). This is such a cool technique to transfer about any image you have to fondant and it’s pretty easy and quick.

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I used my clay extruder to make the yellow border around the “P” and the black border around the white disc. The letters, stars, jersey and other sports images are cut from homemade marshmallow fondant using this cutter set from Cake Boss. I hand cut the hockey stick as I had no cutter for that (can’t you tell…).

The cake was a 10″ round double-chocolate with chocolate mousse filling and iced with vanilla buttercream. All of the details were cut from homemade marshmallow fondant.

Happy birthday, Carson! I really enjoyed making your cake!

First Communion Part II…cakes, cookies, and lovely memories

11 Wednesday May 2016

Posted by Laurie in Cakes, Cookies, Cupcakes

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blue velvet cake, chocolate mousse filling, cookies, cross cake, cross-shaped cookies, double chocolate cake, marshmallow fondant, religious cakes and cookies, rosette, royal icing, vanilla buttercream

I’m still trying to recover from the past 2 weeks and all of the First Holy Communion cakes and cookies I baked…not to mention helping to prepare my own sweet 8-yr-old Hannah for receiving this special sacrament.

We didn’t do the traditional first communion religious portraits that are popular in this area. But I loved the shots my husband got of her before and during the ceremony on this beautiful spring day.

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Isn’t she lovely…?

Absolutely the apple of my eye….

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Anyway, I digress….I did do a number of cakes, cookies and cupcakes that I’ll share briefly with you all.

LOVED this sweet dress cupcake cake I did for my daughter’s dear friend, Katie. Her mom had about 50 guests and wanted all white-iced rosette cupcakes with pink beads as details. I was able to fit about 40 marbled chocolate and vanilla cupcakes on the 18″x24″ board, the rest were displayed on a cupcake stand. They were filled with chocolate mousse and iced with vanilla buttercream.

Her mom had a neat Celtic cross that we added to the pink bead belt, but I didn’t get a picture with it :0(

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This cake was SO KATIE–absolutely sweet and lovely, just like her. Love this girl so much!

I just adore the rosette style cakes popular right now….they are so versatile and even works for boys’ cakes.

Speaking of, I did a rosette cross with blue fondant details for Carson’s 1st communion, along with personalized cross cookies…The cake was a 9’X13″ double-chocolate cake cut into a cross and filled with chocolate mousse filling. The banner was made of homemade marshmallow fondant hand-cut into a banner shape that I let dry for a day to keep its billowy shape. The letters were made with my tap-it letter cutters.

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I also did a few more cross cookies in pink and blue for Tessa and Gabriella.

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I made a larger version of Carson’s cross cake in blue velvet for Gabriella, but didn’t get a good picture before I sent it out the door. Things were pretty crazy around here for a few days…But here is a lovely picture of Gabriella and her half-sheet rosette cross cake at the celebration party.

Congratulations to all of these wonderfully blessed children for making their First Holy Communion! What a big day for them!

Believe it or not, I made cookies and a cake for Hannah and our small family celebration, but didn’t get a single picture. However, she didn’t seem to mind…the day was hers and she shined!!

Love you my sweet, gentle girl, so very proud of you….you’re growing up way too fast.

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Kit Kat and M&M Birthday Cake

02 Sunday Aug 2015

Posted by Laurie in Cakes

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chocolate buttercream frosting, chocolate mousse filling, double chocolate cake, Kit-Kat, m+m, Sour cream vanilla cake

So, my 12-year-old loves Kit Kat candy bars and M&Ms (who doesn’t?!)….this was his cake last year (finally getting around to posting it). We somehow managed to only take a few pics, but thought I’d share.

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It’s an 8″ 3-layer chocolate/vanilla/chocolate cake with milk chocolate buttercream and chocolate mousse filling into which I folded crushed Kit Kat bars. Yum. There was honestly so much sugar here it made my teeth hurt, but since I don’t let my kids eat candy often, I figured I’d give them this treat just once last year.

After the entire cake was frosted, I simply put Kit Kat bars–separated into sections–around the outside (I think it took about 6 full-sized bars). I then filled the top with M&M candies (at this point, I figured “why not?”!).

I tied it with a ribbon and put a chocolate-pretzel candy border around the bottom.

Happy 12th birthday, my SWEET boy!!

Candy anyone!?

100th Birthday Cake for Grandma Adeline

20 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by Laurie in Cakes

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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).