A Conglomeration....

So, a LOT has been going on since my last blog post! Pretty much the month of July has been extremely hectic and will only get more hectic as this is the only week till the 1st of August that I will be home! Anyway! Angie and I have been hard at work making cakes and have made several these last 2 weeks! We over booked ourselves the last 2 weeks with 3 cakes a week, but we knocked them out and were quite pleased with the outcome! Enough said from the peanut gallery, here are the pics!

This beach cake was made for a lady at Angie's work! The cake itself was something that we had never made before but I have to say that it was SO GOOD! We took a strawberry box mix and then added real strawberries along with some other goodies and it was de-lectable!! :-)

This was a birthday cake for a little boy at church! He absolutely loves Hot Wheels and so we thought what a better way to celebrate his 5th birthday than with a personalized Hot Wheels Cake!! I was so excited that it turned out this nice!! Gavin loved it!

We were asked by a lady at church to make a cake for our church 4th of July picnic.  This is the spread that we came up with! We had a watermelon made out of red velvet cake, the grill cake made out of white cake with a surprise inside! The corn was vanilla cake and the corn was the tops of candy corn.  The tartes are choclate cake filled with cherry pie filling! SO Scrumptious!!!! 

Surprise!!!! It was tie died red, white and blue for the holiday!!! :-)

We made a Mario cake for another little boys birthday! This was the first time that Angie and I had ever tried to work with so much fondant!! It was fun and we thought that it came out really nice! And the best part was that the little boy LOVED it!!!

In the same week a lady had called wanting a Thank You cake, but wanted to sample our cake before she bought it.  So, we came up with this cute little cupcake as a taste tester! She loved it and ordered a half sheet cake Thank You cake from us! Here is the cake!

We hand made the roses which are SO HARD to do!!! But, thankfully what I lack in skill, Angie rocks at and we were able to pump those roses out like nothing! We were pleased at the outcome!!

This I Love Lucy themed cake was made for a girl's sister that I went to high school with...we were very pleased at the outcome of this cake! We themed the cake off of the episode where Lucy and Ethel get the job at the candy shop! Those candies  on the cake are called cake pops and they are absolutely amazingly awesome!! :-)

So, thanks to the wonders of Facebook we had another Mario order because they saw the other Mario cake that we did! We changed the layout and design of this Mario cake to fit the wants and desires of the birthday boy!! We thought it turned out really cute!! Where the up! is the mommy was going to put the number 6 candle on it, which we thought would looks awesome!

Apparently Yo Gabba Gabba is all the rage with the toddlers, I think it's deranged HAHA but none the less we make what is requested of us...and to be brutally honest....this was my favorite cake!!! I thought it turned out SO CUTE!! I hope they liked it as much as we did!!!

So, as you can tell we have been REALLY busy!!! However, we are blessed to be getting all the experience and the compliments about how delicious our cakes taste.  We never thought that it would take off like it has, but we are just very thankful and very blessed that our cakes bring so much joy and happiness on people's special occasions! We hope to be doing this for a very long time!!

Have a SWEET day!  

There are more fish in the sea!

Last week Angie and I booked 2 cakes, well at the very last minute we had a mother of the bride come to us and ask if we could do her grooms cake and what do you think that we said?? YES! Of course! I guess the groom is a hunter and the bride not so much...this is how it turned out! Reminder...I am not a hunteress not hunter's wife...PTL I was working with a hunters wife!!

We thought that it came out really cute!! Everything on the cake is edible except the figurine, 4-Wheeler, and Camping Light! The trees are made out of rice crispies and actually were really good!! PTL for a microwavable recipe!! The bride and groom LOVED the cake and actually did a reenactment of the cake, we have yet to see the picture but when we do I will post it!!

Father's Day was Sunday...did you call your daddy?? I hope so!! This family sure did show how much they loved and appreciated their daddy by surprising him with a basketball cake with the symbol of his favorite team! Can anyone take a gander at just what team that was??? Here is the end result!

UK Basketball is where it's at around here! And I have to admit that I have been sucked in to the UK fan-dom! UK all the way for basketball and OSU all the way for football! :-) That's how I roll! :-) HAHAHAHAHA Anyone who knows me at all knows I don't know a lick about sports soo it should strike you as hysterical ;-) This cake had a lot of firsts for us: This was the first time that we attempted a round cake and I might add that it is very challenging to ice, the first time that we attempted making home made chocolate buttercream icing which I might add is SO much better than the canned! If you are willing to try this EASY recipe I will give it to you at no additional charge! :-)

My mom called me at the beginning of the week and wanted to know if we could make a cake for their VBS and since the theme was under the sea we immediately said YES! We were SO excited about this cake! We knew it was going to be a lot of fun colors and shapes, we were just so EXCITED to do this cake for them!! Not to mention that the people getting the cake were very near and dear to my heart so it made it that much better! As we were going through the process of making a cake, anyone with teenagers will know that there is SO MUCH DRAMA in their lives.  Dating, boys, girls, mistakes, make up, GAH the list goes on! So, I dedicate this cake AND the title of the blog "There Are More Fish in the Sea" to our Youth Group! Love ya!

If you are in need of making your next occasion a sweet one, give us a call and we will make sure that we make you the perfect creation for any occasion!

Have a SWEET day! :-)

Astros!

Angie and I made a cake for a Little League end of the season party last week! As with most of the cakes and creations that we come up with, they never quite come out as we see them in our heads, but they always come out looking better than expected! We wanted to do a picture of what the ball field looks like from above.  You know, infield, outfield, pitchers mound, all that.  Here's what we ended up coming up with! I think it turned out really cute for the kids!

We also made 2 dozen cookies that looked like baseballs for the kids to enjoy as well!

These cookies were some what of a challenge! We had never worked with color flow before so we thought we would give it a shot because it's supposed to be good sugar cookie icing.  We get some color flow from our local Hobby Lobby (Gotta spread the love!) and mixed it up exactly how it said.  Well, word on the street about color flow was that it could be thick or thin but that you just add water to thin it out...well I'm here to tell ya that if color flow is at all too thick good luck squeezing it through a tip!! It's not going to happen folks! It took both Angie and myself to get these cookies iced!! We were doing some reading on color flow after the fact and realized that it shouldn't be THAT thick and unmanageable...HA well, like we say we learn as we go and we have fun doing it! The kids loved them and really in the end, that's all that matters! We want our confections to make our customers special day, even more special, so all the hassle and mishaps are worth it in the end!

What do we have in store for you in the future? Here's a sneak peak!!

Check back to see what we've been up too!

Have a SWEET day!

And The Winner Is....

US! Angie and I won 1st place AND people's choice in the Hobby Lobby Cake Challenge! It was so exciting and both of us are still in shock that we won both! We were up against people who had been doing this for a while and to be honest everyone's cake had their own unique things that brought out their strengths.  We were totally floored!

Angie and I have totally found a talent that we share in common and where 1 is weak the other is strong.  I have totally enjoyed working with her and I believe that we will be doing this for a long time! At least I hope so! We have decided to make a little business out of it! Click here to become a part of our group on Facebook where you will get the latest uploads and updates, AND you can click here  to join our fan club!

If you or any one that you know need "the perfect creation for any occasion" just let us know and we will be sure to make your occasion a memorable one! 

Graduation and ... Cake off?

I had no clue that when I started this cake class that people would actually ask me to make a cake for them, I mean really, do they know who they are asking to make a cake? I can't even walk a straight line, but somehow I can pull off making a pretty good cake! My friend Angie and I have taken the first course in the Wilton Methods for cake decorating and we had a BLAST!

The class was 4 weeks long and out of those four weeks, three weeks we completed cakes! Here is my first cake:

We had to take and transfer that rainbow from paper and put it on the icing using piping gel...it's easier than you think and even if you think you are not an artist and couldn't possibly do it...you can because I get the first place prize in "Least Artistic Ability" category and I totally rocked at doing this! I was quite pleased with how they turned out! 

The third week I was out on vacation so I didn't make a cake, however I did have to come back and learn the technique which was how to make people faces using different types of dots and how to make a clown.  Editor's Note: Please don't ever ask me for a clown cake.  Clowns freak me out and these clowns just look possessed! However, I guess it's something I'm just going to have to get over!

The fourth week we were supposed to bring in a cake and have it frosted and put at least 3 Wilton Roses on it.  Now, this makes for a pretty sad, but funny story.  I am in the middle of moving into our new house, which means there are boxes every which direction and we had family that was in to visit.  I forgot about the class until the day that we were supposed to have it so I come home from work and start making my cake.  I'm not too worried about getting it done because I had plenty of time to do the cake, make the icing, and ice and the cake in enough time to get out the door to class.  I pulled my cake out of the oven and all looked great on the outside so I waited for 10 mins to let it cool in the pan before flipping it over and getting the cake out of the pan. 10 mins passes and I go to flip the cake over and pull it out of the pan and it FALLS COMPLETELY APART!!! I was so upset! I had no cake to bring to class because when that happened I totally had NO time to worry about making another one because I had an like 30 mins before I was supposed to be at class.  So, I couldn't take one in that week either.  BUT I'm glad because I got to work on making roses, and let me tell you, they are SO hard, but I actually became pretty good at it the more I practiced! I actually enjoyed learning how to make them and they are not as scary as what I thought at the beginning of the class. 

At the beginning of class our teacher came up to me and Angie and asked us if we would be interested in competing in a cake off...THIS SATURDAY..did I mention the class was TUESDAY! WHAT??! HA! Well, because we are crazy we said we would do it! We were the only ones in the class asked to compete in this competition so we thought that was really cool! Anyway, the theme is the lazy days of summer and we have a really sweet cake picked out that we are currently working on.  I am so super excited about this cake but am also so super scared at the same time! I am not putting a picture up of it right now, but I will give you a hint..it has something to do with summer!! :-P 

Angie was asked before we were asked to make the cake for the competition to make a cake for a graduation.  She asked if I would help her because we are basically a team anyway, we work really well together and one person's strengths highlights the others weakness and so we work great together! Anyway, I went over yesterday and we spent the entire day working between the graduation cake and the Hobby Lobby cake.  We got a lot of things completed for the Hobby Lobby cake yesterday and we also managed to mulit task and get the graduation cake completed! Here is the out come...what do you think? 

 

We had the best time working on it! It's 2 books stacked on top of each other with a graduation cap on top all of which is edible except the top of the hat! Angie and I have basically decided that we are going to do each cake together, which I'm really excited about because I FINALLY have someone that enjoys making and decorating cakes as much as I do! 

So, this is what has been going on for the past month! I will post a picture of our competition cake possibly tomorrow but probably Sunday.  If you are in the Ashland Area and really don't have too much to do on Saturday, come by Hobby Lobby in Russel around 12 and vote for our cake for people's choice! We are super excited, but super nervous because we are going up against people that have been decorating cakes much longer than we have! Wish us luck!!

Have a SWEET day! :-)

SERIOUSLY!

This is why I never try to journal...because my life get's hectic and I can't think of anything that would be note worthy to put in a journal.  However, I'm sure there are many occasions in my life that I could write and blog about because most of my life is filled with drama! HA However, I never develop the discipline of sitting down and writing! And besides, I don't know if anyone even reads this or if all of this done in vain! So, here's the scope!

I have not forgotten, yet again, what I set out to do! Actually the funny thing is I have kept it up and I've over run my camera with pictures of my creations, however, I can't seem to sit down and post about it! So, you have my word that sometime this weekend I'm going to sit down and get those pictures on here! Month by month so that you will know what I did! A lot of them came out great! Many of them..well...let's just say not so great! So, if anyone does read this the certainly don't want to miss out on that!

Also, I am now enrolled in the Wilton Cake Decorating School! SO! I will have many opportunities and chances for posts and updates.  I think I will plug this into my phone to have it remind me to blog...how lame!! Anyway! I am in this class with a friend, and we are calling ourselves Lucy and Ethel because it's probably going to end up being something like the episode where they are in the Chocolate Shop and the belt goes too fast for them to keep up! Yea... at least the teacher is nice and seems very knowledgeable! I'm super excited!

So, pictures to come! I made Jerrod a cookie cake for Valentine's Day, a birthday cake for Jerrod's dad, Rob, 2 cakes for a friends birthday (both of which were not picture worthy because I was having a mental breakdown because they flopped!) And actually I don't think I did anything in April (AHH) because we were in the process of purchasing our first home! YAY! I made my first cake for class last night and will take a pic of that! AND I'm making another one for class tonight with Angie! SO! There will be a lot to come!

I really do hope someone reads this...if not...I guess it's for me!

Have a Sweet Day!  

So Sorry!

AHHH!!! I have not forgotten about my blog and my challenge to myself, I have just not updated in a while!!

So, that cake I was going to make for the Super Bowl....about that....well, let's just say it was a BIG flop...to big of a flop to even post on the internet! HAHA I had some help making the cake and well I didn't monitor the help as I should have and well they put WAY to much water in the batter well to tell you the truth I have never seen in my life! So, no picture to show you!

I made a cookie cake for Jerrod for Valentine's Day, pictures to come! And I'm getting ready to make a birthday cake for my Dad-in-law! It's going to be so sweet! But, for fear that he is going to read this blog I am not mentioning what I am going to do...it shall remain a secret until further notice!

I also made white chocolate chip macadamia nut cookies for a good friend's 64th birthday! :-) They were yummay...dumbo me forgot to take pictures of them! However, just know that they were amazing! :-)

I need some help thinking of what to make cakes for March and April! If you have a birthday and you live close by and you don't mind a cake that is not 100% professionally done...call me!! :-)
 

Ideas Wanted!

So! I'm in need of your ideas! I would like to know if you all have any suggestions for little confections that I could make! Good or bad, throw them at me! I am taking on a huge challenge but I'm so ready for the learning and the adventure to begin!

Let me know if there is anything YOU would like to see!

I leave you with this...I might try it for the Super Bowl Party...I don't know yet!

Enjoy!

I'm Just Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider Man

So! There is much to be said about this Spiderman Cake! First piece of advice when baking a box cake...read all directions carefully! You would think that I know this because I make cakes all the time! However, not WHITE cake! 

So, my first battle was to get this out of the cake batter....

News to me that you do NOT use egg yoke in a white cake mix...I'll never forget that again! However I am very proud of my self for successfully getting that egg out of the batter without breaking it! Go me! :-)

So here is what it looked like before I mixed it...kind of boring...

I have to do this for my mom...Have I mentioned the fact that I LOVE my Kitchinaid Mixer?? Well, I don't think I have so let me say this now! I LOVE MY KITCHENAID!! And I have my mom to thank for that! This crazy lady gave me her mixer because she said, and I quote, "I've never used it, it just sits in the laundry room collecting dust!" WHAT?!?! I don't know where I would be with this mixer, it is the BEST and always gets the job done better than any hand held I've had! Altho, I do have to say that the Oreck Handmixer (yes, I'm right, Oreck, and no it's not a vacuum!) that Jerrod's parents gave us works good if I just need a quick mix for something! :-)

 

You know the drill, after you mix you put in the pan :-) I have way more to spill with you about this but I'll wait until just the right time to spill it to you! Here it is in the pan before hitting the oven for a 350 degree tanning session!

I said a little prayer and then stuck it in the oven! Please come out nice and easy!

While that was baking I decided to mix up the frosting, which I was a little nervous about because I had not used this exact recipe before.  My experience with frosting before has helped me to understand to always double the recipe, becasue 3 cups of frosting could NEVER cover everything that I need.  So, I doubled and here's what I got! Loved the colors I got from tinting with Wilton Colors!

 

 

About the time I was finished with the icing and coloring and all that fun (but stainy) stuff, the timer went off on my oven and time to pull out Spidey! How did he turn out?

WAHOO!! It looks great doesn't it!! Man o man are looks deceiving! So, here's the story I was hinting at earlier....

On the directions it says to use shortening in the pan so that the cake wont stick, however if you would want to use aerosol spray vegetable oil that would be fine too! It just warned not to use liquid vegetable oil...which confused me because isn't that what comes out of the aerosol can?? Anyway! I followed the directions, used Pam (off brand) and popped it in the oven, easy right? Well, it's not! The first one came out so bad, I was so upset with myself I just tossed it right in the trash! Did the whole thing again, this time putting flower in with the vegetable oil because I thought it might help to loosen it up! Well...here were the results...

Needless to say, I'm even more upset with myself at this point! I have no more cake left and I have to meet Jerrod in 20 mins to take the teens from church to see To Save A Life! Which btw if you have not gotten to see it, it comes highly recommended! 

Went to the movie, got back made a quick run to Kroger and it was back to the oven for round number 3! I put so much shortening and flour on the pan that I was actually kind of worried if it would bake correctly! Well all my hard work paid off because here's my 3rd cake of the day...

Ah! Looks great!! I was so proud and dead tired that I just decided to wrap it up and call it a night and decorate the next morning, the morning of the party! Talk about last minute!!

So, as you can see the web imprints did not come out on the cake! I had to freehand the entire detail because the outlining of the body! It was a lot of hard work, but I really enjoyed every bit of it! I was so proud with the way it turned out!! Would you like to see?? Well! Here it is!!

 

 

Tah-dah! Just your friendly neighborhood Spiderman to the rescue!! I was so happy with the way this turned out!! I could have done some things differently but kept reminding myself that this is only my second cake to ever decorate AND that I was doing things that I had never done before! I was quite surprised in myself! 

I had to get a picture with the birthday boy! Aden really enjoyed his cake! Although he's so shy it probably doesn't look like it in this picture, but he smiled really big when he saw his cake!! That made the whole experience well worth the effort!! Here's Aden! 

 

Well, hopefully I will learn from the mistakes that I made during this cake and make my other creations better than the ones before! 

Enjoy!

Spiderman, Spiderman

So! Here I am starting this blog about my year of baking cakes and other sweet confections! Why am I embarking on such a demanding endeavor? Well, I need all the experience I get number one! And number two, I thought it would be interesting to mark my progress and let other people critique and give pointers on how to improve on my work! This is totally a hobby for me and something that I really enjoy! I hope that along the way I can improve my skills while bringing joy to other people's lives!

Let me know if you have any suggestions for me to try! I'm up for it!

The first cake I'm making this year is a Spiderman cake for a birthday party! I'll be posting pictures each step of the way to keep you updated and me on track! Here is what the cake is supposed to look like:

Let's see if the end result is as pretty as the picture!! :-) Wish me luck!