Cake Tour, Part 3

{Reposted; originally appeared on my regular blog in 2008}

In answer to someone's question, no I have never taken any cake decorating classes; I just like doing it. I watch a lot of Food Network (hello - Ace of Cakes!) and have learned some stuff from my mom, who took cake decorating classes and always made awesome cakes for our birthdays. One day I want to take the full Wilton cake decorating course... in the magical future day when I have oodles of extra time on my hands. (Other goals I have for that magical time are singing in the Arizona Mormon Choir [which is called something different now], being on my HOA board, and catching up on my scrapbooking...)

Anyhow, I give you the 3rd installment:

Zoe & Lucy's 2nd birthday featured Dora and Boots. I assume I must have printed out pictures of them to make outlines or something but the main thing I remember is mixing up about a MILLION different colors of frosting, of which I only needed about a tablespoon each.

One of my favorites for sure; Molly's 4th birthday Hello Kitty party. I went a little crazy at the Sanrio store getting decorations. But the cake was all me - this was a big cake, two layers baked in cookie sheets. We printed out the outline of Hello Kitty on two sheets of paper and cut it out. This is the only time I've done all the star-tip fill-in like that and it took forever. Fortunately my in-laws were in town for the weekend and Ruth helped me with all that piping. I think it turned out just perfect. Jellybeans for the eyes and nose were just the right size and shape.

A baby shower cake for Jamie's baby (who is now almost 2)! I loved this one. It was HUGE - very heavy - and very hard to cover with fondant since it was so tall. But I loved the beach theme, which was the theme of the shower -- I made the white chocolate shells (swirled with dark chocolate) in candy molds. Hubs made the white chocolate castle. The sand is sugar in the raw. The letters I painted with a paintbrush using a regular plastic stencil and the "ink" was brown food coloring gel thinned out with water. But my favorite are the little baby footprints... the fondant indents easily and I think I did those with the end of a small paintbrush. The whole thing was edible, although this batch of fondant didn't taste very good. But the insides always taste good.

A truly random occasion -- not my child's birthday. It had been a year since we'd moved, and 6 months since I'd seen or talked to this particular friend from our old ward, and she called me out of the blue one day to ask if I would make her daughter's birthday cake. It was a big deal (8th birthday I think) with grandparents in town and a big princess-themed party or something. This friend offered me some food staples in exchange for my services. More specifically, a few cans of cannery rolled oats. What?? She did ultimately pay me in sugar, which was more appropriate a trade for a cake than oats I think, but it was really just a labor of love on my part. I had almost said no until the friend told me that she'd just had a baby. See, we weren't even in touch enough for me to know that she was expecting. But, apparently my reputation as a cake maker is legendary (just kidding). I wasn't actually 100% happy with this one; I would've spent more time on it if had been for my own child...

Next will be part 4, featuring cakes from 2007 and 2008.