Valentimes

My daughter won't believe me when I tell her it's "Valentine" not "Valentime".

It's been a long long long time since I've just messed around with cake, playing for the sake of experimentation. I made a Valentiney cake today, just for shiggles.

I baked  a lemon cake and covered it in pink fondant. Then, I tried a new lace cutter to make a border:

Cute, right? 

But I got another new lace cutter for Christmas, too. I wanted to see what it could do. I made the other lace and then brushed it with pink petal dust to make the design more visible:

Fancy schmancy. Remember that rose mold I bought 2 years ago that I haven't tried yet? Let's make some roses out of fondant, too:

Meh. Let's try this lace mold in white:

Huh. That is so not me, but I bet someone else would like it. 

Remember that button mold from that baby shower cake a couple of years ago? Let's make some buttons to go with the first lace border:

Cute. 

 Let's try some stuff on the top. I can emboss some hearts into the fondant:

Or make some fondant heart confetti:

Yeah, this isn't really me. What kind of Valentine cake would I like. Oh, spiders! Holding hands.

See, they're on a date. That's why she's wearing a bow.

And maybe I can make a heart out of colored sugar:

That's enough decorating. Let's cut this bad boy open.

This was my first attempt at making a cake with polka dots inside. I'm partially pleased. Next time, less food coloring on the dots so they look less like... meat. 

Happy Valentimes!

The Big Oh-4

I see that I have not blogged any cakery since Boo's birthday in September. I thought I was being lazy and slacky during the fall. It turns out that I was sick, though. In retrospect, with the broken gallbladder, teacher job, part-time student gig, and family, it's a miracle I made any cakes at all. At least, I think I made some cakes. I don't actually remember... December. The gallbladder thing is fixed now, though, so the cakery can reconvene.


Anyway... hey, it's Bug's birthday!


We started talking about the cake right after Boo's candy cake party. My girl wanted a princess cake. We looked at a bunch of pictures on the 'net and finally found the right cake plan for her.


The cake had to be chocolate:

This is the first time I've used that center cone thingy for large cakes. I'm a fan. That's what that circle is in the middle there.


Make it white:

The icing was a challenge. I haven't been keeping on top of my inventory in the past few weeks and I'm low on a lot of things. Like ALL the flavors for my icing. I used them all up last night. There was some creative flavor substituting.


So then, I tried to get the outline of the picture on there:

At this point, I was worried. It was around 9 at night, the kids were in bed, and I was crossing my fingers that I could get this mess to look like something that wouldn't make Bug cringe before the 11am party.


Maybe some color would help:

Oh, sweet horror.

Maybe more color will help?

Better. Thank goodness. What the heck is wrong with Cinderella? More colors:

I got to this point around 2am. Don't judge, mixing colors takes a while. I decided that Bug would probably like it OK. I mean, she's four! And Cinderella would just have to stay like that.


Border, name, and number four:

Here's the birthday girl with her cake:

And now I need to go order some icing flavors.