Open House & birthday cakes

Red Velvet cake, Cream Cheese Frosting. This was an order from my very good friend Lara. This was also my first cake order of the new year! Apparently Donna's birthday is actually on Xmas, so they decided to surprise her and celebrate the 1st week of January. It was a hit!

So this is Red Velvet too. It seems to be a very popular cake! Last Saturday my friend Amber had an "Open House" and she invited me to bring some cakes! So I made 3 cakes, and this was 1 of 3. This cake is a trial run of an order I got that's due the end of Feb. The original picture that this is supposed to look like is actually a cake made with Fondant. However, I don't work in Fondant yet. So I made the whole cake in buttercream. I think it worked pretty well-and I absolutely got the colors down pat! This was a lot of fun!

Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. This was cake 2 of 3 for the "Open house" I had ordered some business cards with hopes of getting them in time for this day, however the 3 day express didn't come thru. So Brian ended up buying a template and printing some out for me. Which looked very good and served the purpose! The flowers on this cake are made from Royal Icing, which is "make ahead" frosting flowers pretty much. So when they harden, they taste like button candy. They are reallllly good and make me smile :) This was the easiest cake of the 3 to make, because all I had to do was plop the flowers on in strategic locations.

Cake 3 of 3 for the Open house. This was a lemon cake. Just decorated with plain buttercream, pretty flowers. I pretty much went a little overboard for this open house, but I wanted a wide variety of cake samples and examples of what I can do for decorations. I think I pretty much covered it!

Christmas cakes

Unfortunately there are no real big stories for this cake. no real drama, just a pretty picture. The royal icing flowers I made for this cake were not dry enough in time, so plan B (Which I always have one now-only from experience) was just to make little rose buds. The leaves are royal icing, they did dry in time. So I used pre-made frosting for the rosebuds, because it's very difficult to make your own red frosting.
This cake was what I feel like was my first "outside" order. This was not family or co-workers. This was ordered by my Silpada Jewelry rep. She had a christmas party on the same day as her friend Angelica's birthday. So needless to say, she wanted A LOT of writing on this cake.
"Merry Christmas to all and Happy Birthday Angelica" I know, I'm surprised i squeezed it all on too. OH and this is my first Red Velvet cake with Cream cheese frosting. I did a trial run on this one....it worked out well :) All in all, very pleased with this one.




Well, this is my other favorite cake. (Best Mom Ever was my 1st favorite) These are my royal icing poinsettias. This is also a Red Velvet cake with Cream Cheese frosting. This lovely cake was ordered by Pat T. the Super-Dog Driver. He always pays on time, and quite well might I add! I really had fun decorating this cake. Because I split up the cake baking, the frosting and the decorating, I didn't stress myself out on this one. I knew exactly what I wanted to do on it, and it actually worked! No need to execute plan B!
So, when he orders cakes, he typically calls me on Monday morning to tell me how it went. So he called me Monday after he picked up this one. He said that this cake was a HIT and that EVERYONE was asking him where he got this cake! He told them a girl @ work does this on the side and they all said they wanted to get more cakes from me! He said I would be getting many more cake orders from him and his friends/family......YAYYYYY!!! I wanted to scream and jump up and down when I heard this...tooo bad I was at work, that just wasn't happening. Yes-I absolutely loved this cake. &&& before I forget, I have to give my hubby Brian his due credit. For the flowers in the middle, kind of in a mound. I used white frosting to make little raised balls to create some dimension for the flowers so they are all not flat. Well, they you could see thru the flowers straight thru to the white mounds of frosting. It looked funny. So Brian's idea, why don't you use green frosting and make it look like leaves in between the flowers?! BRILLIANT! Thank you hunny-for your fabulous idea. What would I do without you? I don't even want to think about it :)

Bluebirds & Carrots

So as you know, I took course 2 of the Wilton Cake decorating class via Michaels craft store here in Taunton. In the 1st course, we had to make a cake for every class, to practice new techniques. Well, in this class, we only had to make 1 cake for the last class, it was our Finale cake. On that cake, we used all the things we learned thru the whole class. So, this was my Finale cake. All the cakes in the class were more or less the same. We all had to make the same flowers, the same basket weave on the side of the cake and we all made the blue-birds that went on the cake as well. The only thing different was maybe frosting color, and placement of the flowers. More or less they were all cascading down the side of the cake. I must say, this is my best cake yet. The flowers are Royal Icing, and the bluebirds are "color Flow" which is a more liquidy frosting, that can "flood" into the outline. then it hardens and you peel it off the paper, much like the royal icing flowers.

As i'm sure you can tell, this is a carrot cake. There's lots of stories to go with this one! This was ordered by another driver for Super-Dog. JK we'll call him to protect his identity. This is my first Made-from-Scratch Carrot cake. He ordered this for his wife Linda. Her actual birthday was on a Thursday, he wanted to pick it up on Thurs. I also had another cake due on the Friday so it was a busy week for me. (The "No Tuesday nite dinner in Franklin" kinda busy) I worked so hard that week to prepare myself to deliver one on thurs and one on Friday. So when i brought in his cake on Thurs as requested, I was sure that he would be in thursday to pick it up. I had a Dr's appt that day, and thought maybe he'd come in to pick it up while I was out of the office, I asked a co-worker to make sure he got it, and also take the money as well. Well, he never came while I was out. I returned @ 3ish, and called him to remind him about the cake, call went straight to v/m. He called me at 4:50 to say he was stuck in CT and was about 3 hrs away. I offered to meet him at work when he got back that nite, but he said he would just pick it up Friday. So Friday comes, I bring in BOTH cakes, and the other guy picks up his before noon! It was Pat, my other returning customer & super-Dog Driver. He always pays well, and picks up his cakes quickly. Friday comes and goes, and I go home with the Carrot cake again! He called me again @ 4:50 to say he wouldn't be back in town until after 7, and that he had forgot his wallet that morning, so he couldn't pay me that day. Hmmmm, this is turning into more of a hassle than it's worth. But wait, it gets better! He was supposed to call me @ 7 Friday nite, and I was going to meet up with him at work, since it's only 6 mins from my house. He didn't call me until 8:30!! So I ran over to work to meet up with him, and finally delivered his cake! It's a good thing too, i was ready to raffle it off to the highest bidder! Do you know how much I coulda made on that one??!?!?! I did end up getting the money TUESDAY of NEXT WEEK!!! I'll think twice before I take another order from him without a contract written in blood.

Now on to the actual story about the cake. Since I had never made a carrot cake from scratch, I wanted to do a test run. Of course it would get eaten, between my husband and co-workers, no problem! && The grooms cake for our wedding was Carrot cake, it's Brian's favorite! Well, the recipe calls for 4 cups of shredded carrot. So I hand shredded 4 cups of carrots!!! Since i've lived in this house, i have never owned a food processor, nor have i ever needed one,...until NOW! OMG I have never needed a food processor as much as i needed one now. Have you ever hand shredded 4 cups of carrots?! IT'S HELL! Talk about hand cramps..wow. And this was only the practice cake! I'd have to do this all over again when I made the actual cake. The practice cake came out pretty good. So now the day arrives that I have to make the real cake. still no food processor. The funny thing is, I asked Santa (mom) for a food processor for Christmas, which was less than 2 weeks away. I got home from work that Tuesday, and dreaded the shredding.

Mom calls as I walk in the door, and asks me if I started shredding yet. No-i just walked in. She says "Well, do you feel like going back out again? I just called the Macy's in Taunton, and they have Cuisinart Food processors on sale. I had them put one on hold for you, and you can go pick it up, i'll reimburse you for it. Merry Christmas!"

OMG I thought I was going to cry! I ran out to the mall faster than you could say Cuisinart! It was $79 and perfect :) I immediately took it out plugged it in, and started shredding. The job that potentially would have taken me all nite, only took 90 seconds!! That saved me so much time, i was able to make the other cake that was due on Friday and frost both of them!!! So all I had left to do was decorate both cakes the next 2 nites. So much easier!!!

MOM-I STLL LOVE MY FOOD PROCESSOR! THANK YOU SO MUCH-XOXOXO!!!!!