Hannah's Puppy Cake

When I asked our niece, Hannah, what kind of cake she wanted for her fifth birthday she was quick to tell me she wanted a puppy cake. Everyone who knows her knows that Hannah is so cute that you really have no choice but to give her exactly what she asks for. So I did.

Puppy cake breakdown:

The body was made using a standard Barbie dress pan.

The head and paws were formed from cereal treats

And everything got a coat of vanilla buttercream prior to being covered in fondant. The details are also out of fonfant.

Hannah took great joy in eating the tounge. I took great joy in knowing that she loved her cake.





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Darth Vader

Darth Vader, need I say more?
Unlike many of my cake creations I was confident of my ability to bring one of sci-fi's greatest villians to life in the form of cake. And I was thrilled with how he turned out.

I confess to having a geeky side to my personality, and I actually like the "Star Wars" movies a lot. But my appreciation of the films is miniscule when compared to my husbands love of them. I knew going in that Ben would be a tough critic of this particular design. So I knew the cake was a success when he threatened not to let it leave the house.

Darth Vader breakdown:

Cake: 2 eight inch round layers with the dome layer on top.

Icing: Dirty iced with vanilla buttercream. Covered in fondant, airbrushed black.

Embellishments: the helmet flair and the "mouth" are made with rice crispy treats.


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I love the 80's

If the 80's decade played out for you anything like it happened for
me then you spent more time than you should have desparately trying to figure out the Rubic's Cube. You know, without peeling off the stickers.

When a friend of mine asked me to make a Rubic's Cube cake for her brother's rehersal dinner I wasn't really expecting it to be all that difficult. For some reason, despite my top of the line education, I completely neglected to remind myself that a cube is just that; a cube. All sides are equal. It's height is the same as it's width and depth.

I did eventually remember this troublesome mathmatical fact, but not before I had put the fondant on the cake. It wasn't until I started trying to place the colored squares on the cube (well, the cube that wasn't actually yet a cube) that I realized I was going to have to shave part of the cake off and redo the fondant. After that minor fiasco it was just a matter of painting the squares. It should also be noted that when you are making a Rubic's Cube cake even though you will never see the underside of the cake it must be taken into consideration when adding the colors. I remembered just in the nick of time to save my Rubic's Cube from a missing color.

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Maura's Birthday Castle

Maura turned five last week. And every little girl deserves a castle on her birthday. I love making castle cakes. They're actually quite simple. This one was three 9 inch layers covered in fondant "blocks" with matching buttercream piped between the fondant. The towers were made out of rice crispy treats. I made these the night before so they would have time to set up before I coated them in a thin layer of buttercream and wrapped them in fondant. The tops if the towers are the standard upside down ice cream cones that I decorated with fondant. The final touch was the flower vines, loved them on the Dragon Castle and I love them on this one too. Hope you like it!

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Lego my Legos Cake

**I have gotten several hits from a reader in the United Kingdom on this particular posting. I can only assume you are planning on recreating this cake. If you would like any help from me you are welcome to email me at cakesbyamybeth@aol.com. I'd be happy to give you some pointers. Have a great day. Amy**






My son, Wil (previously mentioned in the "Luau" post) turned six in August. I can't remember a time when Wil didn't love taking things apart and putting them back together. Puzzels, train sets, forts constructed out of kitchen chairs and blankets, and of course the childhood staple...Legos.

Give my boy a box of the tiny plastic blocks (sorry, I have a horrible habit of unintentional rhyming when I talk, it apparently translates into blogging too. I'm gonna have to watch that). Anyway, let's just say Wil can spend hours playing with Legos. So I wasn't the least bit surprised when he told me he wanted a Lego birthday cake.

The cake is pretty easy to construct. I made two half sheet cakes. And using templates I made out of card board, I cut three different sized blocks with at least two of each size. The individual blocks can be of varying lengths but it is very important to make certain they are all the same height.

Once the "blocks" are covered with fondant you might want to give them a chance to set up then stack them any way you want. I made the "dots" out of fondant using a small round cutter.

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Luau!

I love this cake. It is one of my favorites. Often when I'm trying to determine a design concept for a cake I'll take inspiration from pictures of other peoples' cakes. However, as I'm sure you can imagine, when you Google "pinapple cake" you only get picures of pinapple upside down cakes. With the exception of the occasional Spongbob cake I believe I may be the only person to ever make a pinapple shaped cake.

It all started when I began planning my kids' birthday party. Gracie (turning 7 at the time) and Wil (turning 5) were both born in August. Wil the second and Gracie the twenty-eighth. So my plan that year was to have a joint birthday luau in the middle of the month. Because I didn't want to bake two different cakes (been there, done that) I was trying to come up with a gender nutural tropical cake idea and when "pineapple" came to mind I couldn't not give it a try. The cake itself was pretty simple. Four layers carves into the general shape of a rather large pinapple. When I had the shape right I put light green buttercream on one side of a piping bag and yellow/orange on the other side. I then piped the individual "squares." Once the buttercream had set up I went back with a soft paint brush I painted between the squares with brown food coloring.

Now, on to the hard part. The leaves. It was a nightmare trying to figure out how to get them to stand up. In the end after much trial and error my sister, Thilia and I found a way to hang the leaves upside down and flair them out so they could harden. It was worth every frustrating minute. This was the second time I was completely satisfied with how the cake turned out.




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Becca Recca Crew

My little sister, Becca, is one of my favorite people in the whole world. She starts each and every day with no anger, no disappointment, no bitterness. Every day is fresh and full of possibilities.

To some in this world the only thing they see when they look at my sister is that she was born with a genetic defect. She has Down Syndrome.

Personally, I think she is what the rest of us should aspire to be. She gets mad, but she doesn't stay mad. Holding a grudge is a concept she doesn't understand. Becca has to work so much harder than the rest of us to make even small accomplishments, but it doesn't occur to her to give up. She just keeps on trying.

Last year Becca Recca Crew (my pet name for her and every time I call her that she says, "Amy, I'm Rebecca Lynn" as though I never knew her name and we haven't had the same conversation five hundred times) turned fifteen. When I asked her what kind of cake she would like she told me she wanted a mermaid cake. I can't say that I was surprised. Becca, myself and our sister, Boo, all share a love of Disney's "The Little Mermaid." If you see the three of us together chances are that we have been, or soon will be singing "look at this trough, treasures untold, how many wonders can one cavern hold?" At the end of that song Ariel is singing on a rock with waves crashing all around her.

It's an iconic scene from the movie. And one of our favorite parts of "The Little Mermaid." So I recreated it in cake. It's one of my favs. Obviously Ariel is a doll, but each of the scales were individually applied by hand. The rock and waves are iced in buttercream. The white caps were made using royal icing at a slightly runny consistancy and applied with a soft paint brush.





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Princess Dragon

Our niece, Hannah, will soon be celebrating her fifth birthday. Later this month, for the third year in a row, I will hijack (I say "hijack" because I don't really give Kerrie and Ryan a choice in the matter) the priviledge of designing and creating this precious little girl's birthday cake. As the day of her party approaches I've been trying to figure out how I'm going to improve upon last year's cake specimen.

The Princess Dragon's Castle cake had been in the back of my mind for months prior to Hannah's birthday. I couldn't wait to make it come to life, so to speak. I about drove myself and my very patient husband crazy trying to figure out how I was going to make the castle's torrents. I finally decided to line soup cans with parchment paper and bake the cake batter in them. And it worked. Mostly. Unfortunately, they didn't bake as evenly as I would have liked. Each one ended up being just cone shaped enough that they required adjusting. This ment I would have to cut each one in half and bake four more so I could stack them on top of eachother. After cutting of the corners of the cake to fit the shape of the torrents the fun part started [it's a dang shame sarcasm doesn't easily show through in the typed word]. I cut each and every one of the "bricks" by hand (except for the four or five Ben [my ever supportive spouse] turned out for me. It took me longer to apply the bricks than I would have liked. My original plan called for the roof of the castle to be covered in the fondant tiles, just like the sides. The more work I did on it the less I liked. So I turned it into a rooftop garden. I don't regret the choice.

The best part of the cake, in my opinion (and Hannah's), was the sparkling pink dragon. The picture doesn't do the sparkles justice. She, I think pink definitly says "I'm a girl dragon," was hand shaped out of fondant several days before the cake. This allowed the fondant to firm up.

At the party my husband's eighty-something year old grandmother was admiring the cake (did I mention that I love this woman). She looks over at me and asks, "So, did you bake a sheet cake and use a biscuit cutter to make the round corners? You are so smart and talented. " Oh My Stars! Are you kidding me? You could have knocked me down with a feather. I spent hours working on those stupid things, HOW DID I NOT THINK OF THAT?! Naturally, I just smiled and thanked her.





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Better Late Than Never

Obviously I have been seriously neglecting my blog. Yes, Again. I wish I could claim that my life is so busy, and interesting that I haven't had the time, but that would be misleading. Actually, that would be a flat out lie. My life has been blessedly dull, I just keep puttin' off writing. However, since I can post from my phone, maybe I will do better. Now, on to the cakes.

In case you've been living in a cave you know that football season is upon us. Apparently, at least for me, that means a lot of football themed cakes.





















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Savannah!

Our dearest friends, the Hallock family, drove all the from Kansas to spend a few days with us in central Alabama. I had been promising Savannah that I would make her a cake. Apparently, getting a "Cake by AmyBeth" was a big deal to this precocious little girl. Naturally, I had to oblige. I originally intended to cover the cake in white fondant, rather than buttercream, but due to time constraints I eighty-sixed that idea. In the end only the flowers, stems and leaves, and "dots" are made of MM fondant. The best part for me was that Savannah got to help make the decorations for her cake. Personally, I think she's a natural and I can't wait until her family moves to the Heart of Dixie so I can recruit Vannah to be my sous chef!

It's been too long

I'm so SORRY, I haven't posted sooner. I will try to do better in the future. No guarentees though. As you may have noticed, my favorite season is finally here. SUMMER!!!! I live for it. All winter I long for it to be June. This year I had a little reprieve early in the year. Gigi, one of my favorite clients, (hope you don't mind that I use your name, but it's on the cake anyway) decided that her birthday party would have a tropical theme. And what says "tropical" more than a tiki hut? Not much in my opininon. The bottom is a standard quarter sheet cake and the hut is several layers plus a roof. Lets talk about the roof. Oh my goodness, I thought my fingers were going to fall off. By the time I was finished stringing every individual piece of "straw," my hands were screaming in protest. But it was so worth it. I love the final look. This cake is all about details. Everything you see (with the single exception of the umbrella pole) was edible. The surf board was a last minute addition. I had to figure out what could fill up that space when I couldn't get a palm tree to cooporate with me. My airbrush came in handy. All in all, I was thrilled with this cake. It's my dad's all time favorite. When he saw this one, he said, "you really are good at that cake thing." Apparently, all the cakes I've made prior to this one had not convinced him that I had any real talent. He lucky I love him so much.

My Signature Cake...

I can't believe I haven't posted in over a week! Actually, I can. I warned you that I was lousy at blogging. I may be many things, but I almost always tell the truth. So to get back in the swing of things here is a little bit about my "signature" cake. There is only one cake I've ever made more than once (excluding simple cakes). The Princess Pillow Cake with a gumpaste crown. My inspiration for this cake was my step daughter Lexi. Unfortunately, the version I made for Alexis was my first and far from my best. I was so nervous about carving it too much that I didn't carve it nearly as much as I should have. The crown was made of gumpaste. My original plan was to make the individual pieces and then let them dry together. Unfortunately, the gumpaste had other ideas. The pieces didn't stick together as they dried. So I had to make edible glue. While the crown dried white, the "glue" dried with a yellowish tint. It just about sent me over the edge. Despite all these problems I was thrilled with this pitiful little cake.

A year went by before I had the opportunity to re-attempt this cake. When I met with soon to be four year old Emma she knew exactly what kind of cake she wanted. I sat down with her one morning and asked her what kind she was thinking about. She didn't hesitate before passing me a well loved door knocker featuring the Classic Disney Princesses and a small pink plastic cell phone with Princess Aurora on the front. Emma pointed to Sleeping Beauty and announced that she wanted a princess crown cake. I described the princess pillow cake and Emma quickly agreed. So here is what she got:

My original plan was to airbrush the crown gold after adding the swirls and accents. But when I saw this it looked so much like the cartoon version of Princess Aurora's crown that I didn't want to risk messing it up. In the end, Emma loved her cake (at least that's what my sources say). And a week or so later I was commissioned to make a cake for an adult "Princess" and for her I went ahead with the airbrushing. And was thrilled with the results! So was the birthday girl.

Here you go Angel...

I'm writing this blog right now for the benefit of my dear, dear friend Angel. She is my biggest supporter and my greatest encourager when it comes not only to life, but to my cakes. She's also the main reason I started this blog. She's a big time blogger, and she likes to read them as much as she likes writing them. Anyway, here you are Angel. Monday afternoon at three o'clock a friend of mine asked if I could make a cake for her (actually, it's for the twentieth wedding anniversary of the pastors of our church). "Sure," I replied, "when do you need it?" "Um, Wednesday?" Okay. Now what? I believe I mentioned in an earlier post that butter cream is not my strong suit. But this cake is entirely butter cream. The super short notice did not allow me the time to make fondant. This is the first time my butter cream roses have actually made it on to a cake Although the icing is as smooth as I've ever been able to get it, I still need a little more work in that area. Swirls hide a multitude of sins, and they look great.

Elmo's Birthday Surprise

About a year and a half ago I donated a kidney (I had a spare ;) to Mike. Well, Mike's only grandson turned two this past March. Austin's favorite character is....Elmo! Of course. So I was privileged to get to make Austin's birthday cake. I must admit, I really like this cake. But there is one mistake I can't believe I made. Have you spotted it? It's his... eyes! I can't believe I didn't put them together! I guess I just assumed I knew what he looks like. I know, stupid mistake. All I had to do was pull up a picture of one of the most well known characters in the last ten years. Other than that "uh-oh," I was very pleased with how this cake came together. The hand painted "box" is the actual cake. Elmo's body is also made of cake, his head and arms are made from a crispy rice cereal recipe molded into the desired shape. It was time consuming, forced me to be creative with the how twos, and I prayed his arms would stay attached until he reached the party. This one was definitely a learning experience. All things considered, I was thrilled with the way this cake turned out. According to his mom, Austin liked it too. And that is the most important thing.

Campfire Fun...

A couple of years ago I told my neighbors that I would make a cake for her son, if she would let me pick the cake. I can't quite remember if the theme of the party was born from the cake or vise-versa. Regardless, the party had a "camping" out theme, and everyone knows camping is no fun with out a campfire. This cake was so much fun to make, and it was kinda at the beginning of
my cake "career," so it was definitely a learning process. The cakes were baked in bread pans and then carved into log shapes. I carefully placed the cake logs on a bed of chocolate doughnut holes coated in confectioners' sugar. Personally, I think the detail that just makes this cake awesome is the flames. I found a recipe for suckers (lollipops) and instead of pouring the mixture in to molds I free formed the flames on parchment paper. I did several different sizes and thicknesses because I wasn't sure which (if any) would work. While the sugar mixture was still gooey (for lack of a better word) I mixed in yellow and orange food coloring to give the flames some life. Last, but not least, I covered the cake board in green grass and Rita (the neighbor) added the bugs. This cake was simple to make, but it is still one of my favorites.

Happy Mother's Day!

I hope all you mother's out there are having as good a Mother's day as I am. Benj and the kids let me sleep in, which y'all know is a luxury we dedicated mom's don't often get. When I did wake up I was greeted with, yep, you guessed it, breakfast in bed. A Mom's Day classic. My family did really well with this decadent meal, serving croissants, fresh strawberries, bacon and hashbrowns. Then I was lavished with gifts, including tickets to a Randy Travis concert this Friday night, and a delightful pedicure.

Although I may offer snippets of my life in this blog its primary purpose is to extol the adventures and misadventures of my cake baking, designing, and decorating. This week I had the pleasure of making a soon to be first time mom her son's first cake. The fact that he is still in utero is beside the point. Joshia's (he's the baby) aunt happened to be dining at a local resturant when we were celebrating my eldest daughter's 12th birthday. Because we were all sitting in the same section we shared the cake with everyone who wanted a piece. I gave my contact information out to those who wanted it. And within a couple of days Josiah's aunt and I were discussing her sister's baby shower cake. In the end they decided on a train theme. Benji loves this cake, says its one of his favorites. I think its cute, but I was kinda disappointed too. I should have make the base cake bigger. This one is 9 inches, it should have been at least ten. The top layer was originally 8 inches, but I cut it down a bit to make more room for the train track. I should have gone ahead and made a six inch round. The name should have been more even because I used cookie cutters, but for some reason the "I" looks much too big. I'll correct that mishap on the next cake I make with a name on it. Right now my next cake up is a graduation cake, but I have yet to speak to the mom about the details. I guess thats it for this post. Hope y'all are having a great day!

Brandi and Phillip's Wedding Cakes...

Late last year Brandi (the bride) was kind enough to ask me to make her wedding cakes. She knew her color scheme and that she wanted something unique and visually impressive. I drew up a few rough (very rough) sketches and she chose her favorite.


I was actually pleased with how the finished cake turned out. Hind sight being twenty-twenty, I would probably make the flower columns smaller in diameter. Oh, and the monogram should have been black, but I ran out of time and didn't get a chance to paint it.

And now for the groom's cake.

This is the cake that had me in tears on my kitchen floor (I had to mop it first, but that's beside the point). The original neck of the guitar was made of gum paste. And it was completely decorated. I had it resting on the counter when
my son blew through the kitchen and somehow managed to knock it to the floor. It shattered on impact. Did I mention that this happened on Saturday morning and the cakes had to be ready by six? No time to make another one. So once I pulled myself up off the floor, showed my son the errors of his ways, and dried my tears I said a prayer and asked the Good Lord for an idea. I ended up at Hobby Lobby (twice) but I did find some thin wood strips that I could use in place of my poor shattered guitar neck. Unfortunately, the time ate up by this solution meant I didn't have enough time left to detail the guitar as much as I would have liked. Mercifully, my husband, Ben, made it home from work in time to help me finish what I could and deliver them to the reception.

Thank you to my wonderful husband/sometimes pastry sous chef for all your evaluable help. And thank you to Brandi and Phillip for believing in me enough to let me make your wedding cake. I wish you all the best!

But Mom, I hate this blogging thing...(should be said with a nasally voice)

I've tried blogging before and failed miserably. I guess I don't really think anything going on in my life is so interesting that anyone else would possibly want to read about it. And the parts of my life that are juicy are generally not appropriate for strangers =). So I've decided to dedicate this blog to my cakes. Although I've made a lot of cakes I still consider myself to be a newbie. So far I've taught myself everything via websites, books, TV shows and a lot of trial and error. I prefer to work with fondant, but I'm forcing myself to start working on my buttercream skills. The actual buttercream taste really good, but I've got a long way to go in application. My flowers are rarely to my liking, so I tend to stick with fondant for those. Anyway, I'll start posting pics as soon as I get a chance. Right now I've got a baby shower cake to finish. =O)

God Bless.