Super Mario Cupcake Toppers

I've already lost track of how many Super Mario requests I've gotten but these were a little different in that they were shipped to Massachusetts.

I did some research of how other bloggers send cookies and meshed their tips together to come up with what was easiest for me.

I made parchment paper envelopes for each fondant topper and then wrapped each envelope in bubble wrap secured with tape. I piled the toppers in a small box and placed that small box in a larger box, using bubble wrap and plastic bags to cushion around all sides. Then I brought the box to FedEx and prayed they survived the trip across state lines.

I heard that they did! Whew!

Masquerade Madness

I've been dawdling with writing this post for over 2 months. Dawdling? What an odd word. I think words like 'dawdle' are the reason why I have a hard time writing a blog. Don't be fooled by the date on this post... it may say March 18th [which is when I started it] but today is definitely June 1st. 

I was asked to make something masquerade-themed for a surprise 40th birthday party. The party was at a loft in Manhattan so I went with a cupcake tower adapted from Small Things Iced thinking that it would be easy[ish] to transport. I still had issues... will discuss later.

I hand cut these masks from fondant using a paper template I created.

After hand-cutting a bazillion of those masks [I say a bazillion because it was 2 months ago and I just can't remember how many] I wised up and bought a push mold for these beauties. I used pink fondant and brushed them with luster dust.

I painted the white masks with layer upon layer [upon layer] of gold dust, placed them on top of aqua colored fondant discs and hand painted unique pink designs onto every single mask.

The cupcake tower topper was a Styrofoam cake foam covered in fondant.

The mask broke in half just outside the venue... my heart sunk but it was too fragile to fix. It was supposed to stand upright on top of the faux cake but I was forced to lay it down.

Chocolate, Strawberry and Vanilla cupcakes in foil wrappers with vanilla buttercream icing.

Left over cupcakes on the table after the stand was disassembled.

I kept finding cupcake topper remains throughout the evening.

Whew! That wasn't so bad was it?

Yes, yes it was. My computer crashed and I had to rewrite half the post...

Sweet Baby Shower Cookies

I follow of ton of cookie blogs and have recently become more and more obsessed with the art of cookie decorating. It's been beneficial to me though because I've learned a lot of royal icing tips and tricks from all those talented cookie artists... like using a spray bottle of water to get royal icing to the right flooding consistency and keeping plenty of toothpicks on hand to pop air bubbles and scrape off any mistakes.

One of my favorite cookie blogs is The Sweet Adventures of Sugarbelle - SweetSugarBelle [Callye] is so innovative with her cookie designs [she can use a dog bone cutter to make practically anything] and very generous with her cookie knowledge and loves to create tutorials [and has no shame in sharing her mishaps along the way]. I find her work extremely inspiring... so much so that I basically stole her baby face cookie designs for a friend's baby shower cookie favors.

Well, Callye's baby faces are sweet and perfect and adorable... and my version of them are just... meh.

Okay... okay... mine came out cute [if you don't look at hers - which are here - so please don't look!] I can't be too hard on myself since this is the first time I've completed an order of cookie favors and not only that, I had to make 60 of them. So Yay! Good job me!  

In addition to the baby faces, I made bears, feet, carriages, duckies, and onesies.

I packaged them in individual bags and tied them off with blue curling ribbon.

Next time I'd like to make cute printable header-cards to take place of the curling ribbon... my fingers will thank me!

Rockin' KISS Cake

I was particularly excited when I got a request to make a cake for a KISS band enthusiast. My brother grew up listening to this American hard rock band in the 70s [and beyond] but I didn't have much hard rock interest growing up [as I was an 80s baby] and didn't get to know their music very well, I just knew them by their make-up personalities and on-stage antics.

I researched the original band members and found their comic book style characters that influenced their make-up and costumes on Wikipedia: The Demon [Gene Simmons], The Starchild [Paul Stanley], The Spaceman [Ace Frehley], and The Catman [Peter Criss].

I used their make-up designs to create paper templates for which I used to cut the fondant cupcake toppers.

I made white fondant cupcake topper bases and cut the make-up details from black fondant [very carefully] with a craft knife. I used some colored fondant for accents like Gene Simmons' famous tongue and used silver luster dust to highlight The Spaceman's eyes.

I cut a few more faces to go on top of the cake along with a larger Kiss logo and the sign of the horns as a way of sending a "You Rock!" birthday message.

I wanted to add some badass flames to the side of the cake so the bf suggested that I marble the red, orange and yellow colors together to give them an authentic look... so that's what I did and I think it worked out pretty badass indeed.