Tag Archives: double chocolate cake

Fall Flower Cupcake Bouquet

20 Friday Jan 2017

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I made this fall flower cupcake bouquet as a special gift for a friend to take to her grandmother’s 80th birthday.

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I loved working  with these fall colors. The cupcakes were an assortment of chocolate, vanilla, and red velvet flavors, all with vanilla buttercream.

I variegated the icing colors in the piping bags to make the flowers look more realistic and used 3 different Wilton piping tips to pipe the petals: #18 for the green hydrangeas; 1M for the red roses; and #81 for the yellow mums.

 

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Once the cupcakes were piped, I popped them into the fridge for a bit to firm up. I used wooden skewers and foam blocks to arrange them in the basket, then added green and orange tissue, silk leaves, and a few fronds to add height and interest (I made sure nothing “foreign” touched the icing…:0).

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Hope you had a great 80th birthday, Louise’s grandma!  

I really enjoyed making your cupcake arrangement!

Vintage Baseball Cake

17 Tuesday Jan 2017

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Another sports cake for a great kid!  I’ve made birthday cakes for this sweet boy for many years now.  They’re always sports-themed and just keep getting bigger and more fun!

Anthony’s mom asked for a 2-tiered vintage baseball-themed cake with a worn, vintage look.  The only way to really do that without an airbrush (which I don’t own….yet) was to cover it in fondant and creatively brush on the “dirt” using cocoa powder and a small brush (cocoa powder…who knew?  worked great!).

 

The base 9″ tier is a 2-layer chocolate cake with mocha filling and the 6″ tier is Italian cream cake with almond buttercream filling.

The cakes are iced with vanilla buttercream and then covered with homemade marshmallow fondant. The details are a combo of fondant, red edible pen (small stitching on baseball), and cocoa powder.

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Loved the simple, vintage, worn look of this cake and it was so fun to make…

Happy 14th birthday, Anthony!  Keep being a great kid!

Nautical-Themed Baby Shower Cake

06 Friday Jan 2017

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I did a bunch of baby shower cakes last year and I’m so behind on posting, I’m only now getting to them. I also had orders for lots and lots of nautical or ocean-themed cakes. Not sure if there were enough to qualify as a “trend,” but it seemed like a wave of them during the summer and fall months (no pun intended :0).

This cute baby shower cake was fun and used a number of different icing and fondant techniques, so I thought I’d share…

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The mom-to-be knew just what she wanted in terms of style, I just added a few tweaks of my own.

For the cake, the bottom tier is a 9″ round chocolate and the top is a 6″ round vanilla.  Both are filled and iced with vanilla-bean buttercream  The decorations and boat are made from homemade marshmallow fondant (except the red, I buy that because it is so hard to make large quantities).

The little sail boat is made from brown fondant with lots of tylose powder (to make it stiff); I used a woodgrain stamp on the sides to make the fondant look like wood.  The biggest trick was letting the sails dry long enough to stand up and stick to the skewer, which goes down into the top tier to hold the boat in place and keep everything together.

 

The baby boy was fun to make….There’s actually a cute little body under the blanket (wish I would have taken a picture).  I wanted the details on his little face to be subtle and soft, so I pressed them into the pliable fondant  with a needle tool and added a little dot of flesh-colored fondant for a nose. I drew his hair on with an edible marker…so cute.

The anchor and lifebuoys (that’s really what they’re called) are cut using cutters and the roping is 2 strands of fondant twisted together.

The bottom tier is iced with a rough surface to look like the water using a dark to light ombre technique.  The top tier is similar, just more smooth-iced.

This was a fun cake for an excited mom-to-be.  It was back in November, so I’m sure she’s a happy (and exhausted) mom by now.  Congrats, Maria!

Starbucks-themed Cake

30 Friday Dec 2016

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Ok, so this was a strange request for a cake.

One of my regular (and best) customers wanted a special birthday cake for her daughter who happened to love iced coffee from Starbucks.  She initially wondered if I could put a cup of her daughter’s favorite drink right on the cake, but that made me very nervous (liquids and cake DO NOT mix).

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So we decided on chocolate mousse in a Starbucks cup to be added right before she presented the cake (in the cup is homemade chocolate mousse with crushed Oreo cookies and whipped cream on top).

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The 10″ cake is double-chocolate sour cream with cookies and cream filling and smooth-iced with vanilla-bean buttercream.  The modified Starbucks logo I hand cut from homemade marshmallow fondant, along with the other details.

The cake was certainly a fun challenge….happy birthday, Georgenne!

Sports-Themed Cakes, Cookies and Cupcakes…

17 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by in Cakes, Cookies, Cupcakes

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Whew!  It’s been a busy month and I haven’t had time to post much of what I’ve been up to.  So I’ve decided to lump a few of my sports-themed creations into one post…Seems like there are lots of sports enthusiasts out there!

These cakes were for twins turning 8 who both wanted a sports birthday, but liked different sports and wanted separate cakes…


Delaney’s cake is a 9″ round vanilla cake with a 6″ball on top (brown sugar caramel cake with caramel cream filling). The base cake is iced with vanilla-bean buttercream.  and the grass is piped with a grass tip.  The flowers are made from homemade marshmallow fondant as are the letters.

To get the look of the soccer ball, I  covered the half round cake with white fondant and added the pentagon shapes cut from black fondant.  I used a seam tool to make the markings and indents like a real soccer ball.  I thought it came out great and  it wasn’t too difficult to get the look I was going for .

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Cooper’s cake was a 10″ square double chocolate cake with marshmallow cream filling and vanilla-bean buttercream.  The sports details were all made from fondant.

I used a small ball pan to make the ball cake and covered it with different colors of fondant to look like the 4 sports balls (a bit tedious, but I like the final product).

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All in all, 2 really fun (and challenging) cakes to make :0)

Happy birthday, Delany and Cooper!  I really enjoyed making your cakes!

 

And speaking of multi-sports, here are some small 6″ cakes I made for a sports-themed birthday earlier this summer…

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The 6″cakes are chocolate, red velvet, and banana. They are frosted with vanilla-bean/chocolate buttercream with fondant details.

 

And one more…check out these cute softball cupcakes I made for my daughter’s team party this past June.

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The cupcakes are a mix of vanilla and chocolate with an Oreo cookie baked into each.  They are smooth-iced with green buttercream and the edges are “rolled” in crushed Oreo cookies.

I then piped green grass on half of them and added a bat and ball made of fondant; the others have large fondant softballs.  The stitching is drawn with edible red pen.

 

Ok, just one-more-one-more!  Football cookies made for a sweet girl who’s flag football team won the Flag Football Super Bowl this past weekend (congrats, Sophia!).

 

Sports treats, always fun!!