Cactus Cake

Happy Cinco de Mayo/birthday to me!

What better way to celebrate a Cinco de Mayo birthday than with a cactus cake? I've always thought cactuses (cacti?) are cool. I saw these cactus cakes all over the internet, so naturally I really wanted to make one. I saved it to make for my birthday cake. :)

The flower and cactus spikes need to be made ahead of time so the royal icing can dry. I made mine several weeks ahead of time because I needed to use up some royal icing that I had left from other projects, also because I was anxious to get a start on this cake.
I didn't really know how to make a proper cactus flower out of royal icing, so I just improvised and did more of a lily type flower. Although it has its flaws, it still looked good on the cactus.

The soil is crumbled cake from what I had to cut off to level the cake. I added some broken royal icing spikes to make it look more like potting soil. For the actual cactus I used a Wilton tip 32.

So far I have had a wonderful birthday. Almost as soon as I woke up my parents and sister came down the stairs singing happy birthday. They all gave me a present that I had been wanting for quite some time (the Phantom of the Opera 25th Anniversary performance at Royal Albert Hall on DVD :D). I have had happy birthday sung to me three different times by different groups of people and numerous birthday wishes. :) I definitely feel special.

Thanks everyone for all of the birthday wishes! Happy Cinco de Mayo!

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.

Brush Embroidery

I have seen brush embroidery several places lately so I figured it was time to give it a whirl. I love the way brush embroidery looks; its so elegant and dainty.

It was a lot easier than I was expecting. I was imagining everything possible going wrong in my head, but it worked out pretty nicely! What didn't work out so nicely was the sides of the "cake". It was my first time using a cake dummy which was a little difficult. I was using royal icing to cover the dummy and it was crusting over before I could get it smooth, so there were little annoying wrinkles everywhere...ugh. But at least the top turned out okay!

 

I was originally going for a deep green icing color, which I thought would look really pretty with the white flower, but this was the green I stopped at after getting tired of mixing in so much color.

Overall, I'm happy with my first attempt at brush embroidery! I will definitely be doing it again.

Mocha Basket Weave

I made this cake the other day:

It was a chocolate cake with mocha icing. I was disappointed though because the mocha icing was delicious by itself, but after it was on the cake, it just tasted like chocolate icing. Oh well though, it was still good. :)

I used a different tip for this basket weave than my last basket weave. Which one do you like better?

Melted Snowmen Cookies

Ok, so these aren't cake, but I wanted to put them on here anyway for the decorating aspect.

I know, snowmen must be on my brain lately, but these melted snowmen were fitting because the weather had warmed up to around 70 degrees when I made them. No snowman could survive that. Anyway, I just used a sugar cookie mix because I was going to jazz up the flavor of the icing. The best part about these cookies? You don't have to make sure that they're perfect circles, you want them to be odd shaped, because what snowman melts in a perfect circle?

To frost them, use slightly thinned royal icing so that it runs off the sides of the cookie in some parts. I flavored my royal icing blackberry and was surprised at how well the blackberry flavor paired with the sugar cookie.

For the snowman's head, stick some marshmallows in the microwave for a few seconds to get them warmed up so that they mush down when you press them onto the cookie. You can use anything you want for decorations, but I just used royal icing and mini chocolate chips. Scarves, mittens, hats, or anything else you could think of would be adorable! Be creative!

Oh, and what do you think of the new layout?

Basket Weave

The other day I finished my last class in the Wilton cake decorating courses. I learned how to do the basket weave which was something I had been wanting to learn for a while. It's so pretty and really fun to do!

The flowers are apple blossoms made out of royal icing. They're really fun to make as well!

 

I think I have a new favorite.

More Flowers

I started my last level of Wilton classes a little over a week ago. This level is learning how to make even more flowers. The first class we made button flowers and pansies out of gum paste and fondant, and the second class we piped the Wilton rose out of royal icing. My piping definitely needs more work.

Here are the button flowers and pansies:

These are all my attempts at piping the Wilton rose:

Like I said, my piping needs more work.

Out of all of the roses, this one is my favorite, so it gets the close up.

No, the edges aren't supposed to be jagged, I just wasn't squeezing the icing bag hard enough because I hadn't done any serious piping lately, so my hands got out of shape. I was told to squeeze tennis balls in my spare time to strengthen the muscles, so I'll work on that. 

When I got home I decided to try piping some flowers that I hadn't yet learned in class. I tried daffodils and lilies.

The lone pink one was before I decided to make a new batch of icing, and it was what I had left over from the roses. When I made a new batch of icing I fiddled around with different color combinations to see which one I liked best. I think the white petals with the yellow middle is my favorite.

Any tips and suggestions are always welcome!