Pig Cake

Funny story: I've had plans to make this cake for months. Finally this past weekend I started making all of the fondant pieces that needed to dry ahead of time. As I was making all the little piggy pieces I remembered a fetal pig dissection in biology was coming up. I finished putting the cake together today...the day I had the dissection. My family joked that there would be more cake for them after I did the pig dissection, but I came home and happily proved them wrong by eating a piece. The dissection was awesome, but I prefer this type of pig. :)

Look how happy he is! I've always loved pigs. For my 6th birthday I had a pig party. I had a whole bunch of friends over and we put on pig noses and played lots of games that my mom had planned.

My pig nose :)

There were snorting contests (where we had to snort with different emotions if I remember correctly), pebble pickin', and a game where we had to eat jello out of a bowl using only our faces...like a pig! My pig party is one of the birthday parties that I actually remember a lot about. Because, as you can see from the pictures, I had a lot of fun!
But back to the cake:

I saw pictures similar to this little guy floating around on the internet. I'm not sure of the original source, but if anybody knows I will be sure to give credit.
Mr. Pig was made in half of the Wilton sports ball pan. Everything else was marshmallow fondant, although I'm sure you could make his feet out of cake balls if you wanted to. He is in a chocolate pudding mud pit that I spread around the cake board. I gave him happy eyes because he really loves his mud. :)

That's all there is to it!

Ok Mr. Pig, we'll leave you to your mud now.

Jane Austen Teapot Cake

My sister, Rachel, is a huge fan of Jane Austen. She has read almost all of her books twice; some of them three times. She loves practically anything related to the Regency era. She has said several times that she was born in the wrong time period. She also enjoys having tea parties.

Teapot cakes have always fascinated me. There are so many different ways they can be done. Since I knew how much Rachel liked teapots and Jane Austen, and since I got a couple of comments mentioning Jane Austen on my Brush Embroidery post, I decided to combine the two and make it a surprise.

The cake is covered in marshmallow fondant, and the piped beads are royal icing. For Miss Austen's silhouette, I printed off a picture and placed it on the fondant. Using a toothpick, I traced the outline of the picture, leaving an indentation in the fondant. Then, I cut out the silhouette with a knife.

I originally wanted the background of the cameo to be a light pink, but I read that Jane Austen's favorite color was blue (I wonder if that's true?). I'm glad I went with the blue.

And for those of you who may by skeptical that this is really cake....I have some proof. :)

Mmm....chocolate.

This is by far my favorite cake that I have decorated yet.