Revved Up Nascar Cake

I don't know a thing about racing so I was a little at a loss when my roommate asked me to make a Nascar cake for her mother's birthday. I had grand ideas of making a shaped track with little cars and stands full of people [okay - colorful dots representing people]... then work got in the way. It seems to be doing that a lot lately. Regardless, I managed to make a suitable cake. If anything, it must have been delicious - chocolate cake slathered with chocolate icing and blanketed in dark chocolate Satin Ice Fondant. Yum.

 
I mimicked the colorful Nascar logo by piecing together strips of fondant.

The waving flags were colored in with black food color markers.

Although it's not as impressive as I had envisioned, I hope this cake qualifies for the big race... [lame, I know].

Hurricane Luau Cupcakes

Having creative control is something I used to take for granted. I did as I pleased, created what I wanted and if it didn't come out perfect no one had to know. Taking specific orders from people has been the challenge. It's refreshing when I can just do what I want... which is the case with these cupcakes.


My really very good friend was having a birthday luau to celebrate turning the big 3-oh! She asked me to make an assortment of flavored cupcakes in a variety of sizes. Easy Peasy. I really wanted to make her something special. Then hurricane Irene came and ruined it all. Luckily she was able to reschedule but I had lost my footing a bit when it came to timing. This is what I came up with.


I used molds to create various brightly colored fondant flower and leaves to top off some lemon, orange and strawberry flavored cupcakes.

I iced the lemon cupcakes in lemon flavored icing and topped them with big pink molded flowers.

 The strawberry cupcakes were topped with strawberry icing and dark purple roses. The orange flavored cupcakes in the back had blue tinted vanilla buttercream swirls with orange flowers.

I played with different icing tips to create different swirls, some I wanted like ruffles and some I liked to keep neat and crisp looking. The different colors, sizes and techniques came together great at the party.

 Two cupcake stands stood at the end of the candy table.

Another friend surprised the birthday girl with a gorgeous luau cake so there were plenty of cupcakes to go around. I actually took a few to the bar with me later in the evening... they were a big hit - being eaten behind our backs!! The creepsters didn't even ask our permission! I guess they looked delicious - Who can blame them?

Chart Topping KISS Toppers

I had previously made a KISS cake with cupcakes locally but this time the band took to the road and visited Texas for a kick-butt "50th Black & White Birthday Bash."

Cutting the black fondant in such intricate details proved to be very time consuming the first time around for various reasons but especially since it needs to rolled really thin and usually becomes too dry to handle by the time I've made all the cut lines. This time I picked up some Sugar Sheets from Wilton to try. The Sugar Sheets come with a whole system of punches to make cake decorating easy but they also work perfect for this type of cake craft. I used a craft knife to cut the shapes from the edible sheets which shaved off a lot of time spent rolling out and reshaping the faces. After cutting the faces from the black sheets, I applied them to white fondant discs with a little brush of water and then added some fondant accents and silver luster dust.

I couldn't make a cake to ship along but I did make a rockin' fondant cake topper.

Shipping off edible lovelies is always a little stressful but I was glad to hear they arrived fine and they were a big hit at the party!