Grandpa's Birthday Cake

Today I brought my grandpa this cake that I made for his birthday, as a one-day belated gift.

I went for a nautical themed cake because Grandpa was in the Navy when he was younger, and he has owned several boats throughout the years.
This boat was fondant, though. :)

My grandpa is the best there is. I always enjoyed going over to my grandparent's house when I was younger, and I still enjoy it very much. When I was growing up, I would love to go to their house and do one of the many puzzles they kept around for their grandchildren. I loved to play my favorite game that they had with my sisters. It was a picnic game that flung plastic ants when a timer went off. My sister and I would take the ants and arrange them in a trail throughout the house and try to convince my grandparents that they had ants invading. I don't think they ever believed us. ;) They also had a Snow White board game that came close with the picnic game in the ranks. Probably one of my favorite memories with Grandpa is when he would take a nap in his recliner and my sisters and I would pile all the toys we could find on top of him, until only his limbs were visible, trying not to wake him up. I found out years later that between the excited squeals and laughter of four girls ages 3-9 and the weight of the numerous toys, Grandpa wasn't really asleep the whole time. Unbelievable.

This is Grandpa. The wonderful man that I wouldn't be here without.

So, once again...

                                                      ...I hope it was just as great as you are. :)



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!

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.

Things I've Learned

There are so many things that I have learned about decorating cakes and cakes in general since I started decorating them almost 2 years ago now. Most, if not all, of the things that I have learned have been learned through trial and error.
No, luckily I haven't dropped a cake yet. Every time someone asks me if I have, I wince a little when I tell them no, knowing that my turn is going to have to come. It is bound to happen eventually. I don't think any cake decorator can avoid such a disaster.
But anyway, here is a list of some of the things I have learned since I got into decorating cakes:

1. Always make more buttercream than you think you will need.  I have run out of buttercream so many times because I thought I had made enough. And once you get the buttercream a certain color, it is hard to match that color with the next batch you have to make. So, even if you think you are making enough buttercream, make more. Make more until you KNOW that it is going to be enough to cover and decorate that cake. Seriously, did leftover buttercream hurt anyone? I didn't think so.

2. Dry your hands on a paper towel, not a towel, when you are going to be working with fondant. Why? Because the seemingly invisible fuzzies from the towel will stick to your wet hands and they won't be visible until they are stuck to the fondant. Everything sticks to fondant, and once fuzzies are stuck, they don't want to come out.

3. Bring more decorating tools to an event than you think you will need. If space allows, bring it. If you think you probably won't need that decorating tip or a certain spatula, but there is the slightest possibility that you will? Bring it. If you end up not bringing something, you're going to end up needing it once you get there. That's just how it works.

4. Get used to people watching you. Chances are, when you are setting up a cake at an event, you aren't going to have a space all to yourself. People are going to be walking in and out and doing their own thing. But at some point or another, people will watch you. Whether out of fascination or boredom, people will watch you. You have to get used to this fact and not do something stupid out of nervousness.

5. You learn a lot of birthdays you didn't know before. When you bring a pretty cake somewhere, for some odd reason people start telling you their birthdays? Hmmm..I wonder why that is. ;)

New Name!

Icing on the Cake is now Once Upon a Tier!

It was time for this blog to have a new, more original name from the one I created a couple of years ago...so it got one!

What do you think? Do you like the name Once Upon a Tier?

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.