Spirited First Communion

I can hardly remember the day I made my First Holy Communion. I think the only memories I have of that day are through pictures I recall seeing. I know it was a nice day because I went to my best friend's house and we took pictures together on her back deck in our pretty white dresses. I also took pictures with all my family out in front of our house but I have a hard time digging up the details in my mind... after all it was almost 20 years ago!! Whoa, I'll pretend I didn't mention that and move on to this year's Communion season.

I was asked to make a cross-shaped cake for a very special young lady in my life. I decided to make my own pattern since the store bought shaped pan would only serve 12 and this needed to serve more than 50! I made two double layer 8" square cakes and cut them according to this model:

I shaped the corners to give it a nice dimension and slathered it in buttercream.

Now comes the hard part - rolling out the fondant to cover this big cake. I've never covered a shaped cake in fondant before... and never one this large. I don't have a lot of space in my small nyc-apartment-sized kitchen so I resorted to the glass-top table in my dining area. Turns out, a little cornstarch does not go a long way... I kneaded and rolled out some ivory fondant nice and thin but couldn't remove it from the glass! I had to re-knead the fondant, throw down some more cornstarch and try again. The second time was better because the cornstarch now had a tacky surface to stick to but the fondant was starting to dry out so I got nervous and didn't roll it thin enough. The thickness of the fondant was good to shape the cross with but I created a HUGE mess:

At least the finished product shows no sign of struggle!

If I had better resources I would have made it a bit larger to accommodate all the servings but I did the best I could and definitely learned a lot...

(like maybe I need a better fondant roller and non-stick mat)

This pretty cross idea comes with instructions from Wilton. I just improvised a little to accommodate the larger cake size.

Super Mario (Michellio) Birthday

My co-workers and I decided to have a video game themed birthday party at our office for a fellow co-worker's 30th birthday. We like to poke fun at her for being a gamer although no one is excused from being teased at our office. She had liked some Super Mario Bros. cupcakes she had seen on flickr so I took the idea and made a special cake for her milestone occasion.

After researching some ideas, I found a cake design I liked made by sncakes on www.cakecentral.com - which really is as addictive as the site claims it to be. I thought the idea was super cute and cleverly used a lot of the classic Nintendo game elements. I rendered it with my own version of Mario on top.

The Mario character on top was initially a concern but it made me take my first plunge into making figures out of fondant!

"It's-a-Michell-io."

I used Wilton's rolled fondant primary colors multi-pack to make the figure and the cake decorations. I didn't use a gumpaste mixture which is probably recommended when making sturdy figures - therefore the fondant was soft and my little gal kept getting more and more squashed as I put her together. I'm still proud of the way she came out for my first try!

Everyone got to enjoy this vanilla fun-fetti tiered cake at work (except me - I was out on jury duty - bummer). I used an 8" round cake base layer and a 6" cake for the second layer. The warp pipe was made out of rice cereal treats, wrapped in fondant and all the other accents were fondant as well.

Sugar Sweet Buttercream

I finally received my new Cricut Cake last week! For those unfamiliar with the Cricut Cake machine, it's an electronic cutter specifically designed for decorating cakes, cupcakes, and cookies. It doesn't officially launch at retailers until tomorrow but I thought I'd share this just to be like "I had it first." Hahaha...

Let's just say that it is a pretty complex (amazing!) piece of equipment, especially since it doesn't need to hook up to a computer. It wasn't hard to use but I don't have experience with the original Cricut for paper scrapbooking so it'll take a little time to get comfortable with it.

My friend asked me to make her a small super chocolaty cake for her roommate's birthday so I came up with this Chocolate Insanity Cake.

Chocolate devil's food cake covered with chocolate buttercream, filled with milk chocolate and decorated with white chocolate chip borders! I used the Cricut Cake to cut out the flower and letter decorations out of white frosting sheets. I had a hard time getting them to stick to the dry buttercream because it's better suited for attaching to fondant-covered cakes. Next time I'll try using the Cricut Cake with rolled fondant or gumpaste.

Since we're sort of on the subject of chocolate buttercream, I wanted to share this lil' cutie bear-shaped cake I made in my first cake decorating class with a Wilton shaped pan. He was my first attempt at piping stars all over a cake, a little tedious to say the least but I love the effect.

How could you resist an adorable face like this? I just want to eat him up!

Oh wait, that's right, I already did...

And now that we're sort of on the topic of shaped cake pans... Here's a piggie face cake I made for my good friend who loves pigs. She requested it special for her birthday.

I used the Wilton animal crackers pan and filled it with fun-fetti cake.

Shaped pans are great for a quick themed cake and are very versatile but I've already acquired so much bakeware and I'm running out of room to store everything! I should experiment with carving cakes to save on space... or start a cake pan rental business... hmmm... do they have one of those already??

The Princess and the Cake

Before I started taking cake decorating classes I thought it'd be a good idea to make a tiered cake for a princess birthday party... I'm glad I did because I learned a ton! I had grand fairytale ideas of sugar gems and fancy piping crowned with an intricate royal icing tiara, but here's what I learned:

-An oven thermometer is a bakers best friend.

-Royal icing only hardens when made with grease free utensils.

-Melting down jolly ranchers is a messy messy venture.

-Sifting powdered sugar really is necessary.

-Sketching cake designs is fun and beneficial...

I created a beautiful Sleeping-Beauty-inspired tiara template which didn't end up working out due to runny royal icing.

I'm proud of my attempt despite the tacky plastic princess costume piece.

The biggest feat was getting it down the super steep roller coaster driveway, but it was all worthwhile to see the birthday princess smile :)