Gold and Pink Ruffled Cake

One funny thing as a cake decorator, I almost never make cakes for my own birthday. In the last 7 years that I have been decorating cakes, I think have only made a cake for myself twice.  This year, for some reason, I got the itch to go all out for my birthday and try some new things. Everyone and their brother has done a ruffled cake, but I had yet to do one, so I took the opportunity to purchase the Maggie Austin Craftsy course on fondant frills (mini-review forthcoming) as she was pretty much at the forefront of the ruffled cake trend.   There are tons of different ways to do ruffles on cakes, but stylistically, I have always preferred Maggie Austin's paper thin, organic looking ruffles to the thicker, more symmetrical ruffles I see on most cakes.  On top of the ruffles, I have been dying to do a pink and gold cake, a combination that I think is so feminine and elegant.

The ruffles were done with straight fondant and edged with antique gold luster dust mixed with vodka. The middle tier was covered in pink fondant and the painted with more antique gold luster and vodka.  I purposely went for visible brush marks with the pink peeking through a little bit. The whole concept was for the cake to be purposefully imperfect which is harder to do than you would think.

I originally planned for more sugar flowers on the cake but in the end, I decided on one lovely, white gum paste rose edged in gold.  Just enough, I think.

Back in the Saddle Again: 60th Birthday Go-Kart/Hockey Cake

There has been a severe lack of cake on this blog lately because this little hobby and I had to take a bit of break from one another.  Side note to anyone who wonders why I keep cake decorating strictly a hobby, being able to ditch it for a little while when I get frustrated with it is one very good reason.  Any way, the last cake I made back in the fall was a horrendous mess.  Nothing I did went right, and I pretty much hated it.  I never even took pictures of it.  After that cake, I just kind of got fed up with cake decorating and felt like I  sucked and was never going to do it again.  An exaggeration of course, but sometimes you just need a break.

I finally came out of semi-retirement to make a 60th birthday cake.  The birthday boy plays hockey and races go-karts, so the challenge was designing a cake that combined the two.  We decided to devote the top of cake to go-karting and the sides to hockey.

The side pieces were all hand cut out of fondant which was time-consuming, but the biggest challenge for me was modeling the go-kart.   The base was rice crispy treats shaped and covered with fondant.  While I would do a few things differently next time, I think the end result was not too bad.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!  I had a glorious two weeks off thanks to my job.  I spent some quality time with family and friends, relaxing, and happily working on some home improvement projects which I hope to blog about soon.

This next week I hope to spend some time thinking about what I want to get accomplished for the new year, but in terms of cake decorating, I have only one major goal.

The last couple of years, I have become increasingly drawn to beautiful, elaborate royal icing work and piping, and working with royal icing is something I really want to add to my skill set. This book was a Christmas present to myself. 

It is absolutely gorgeous and so inspiring. 

Seriously, how beautiful is that work.  Inspiring, but intimidating.  

Holy Buckets! My Cake in Cake Central Magazine!

Apologies if you follow me on Facebook and have already seen this, I have been on a self-imposed sugar art break so I am bit behind in posting cakes here on the blog.

This summer, I received an email from Cake Central Magazine asking if I would be interested in submitting a cake I designed for possible submission into one of their upcoming issues. I was, of course, shocked and totally thrilled to have received the opportunity. The cake had to be an original design inspired by a picture Cake Central Magazine provided,  and I would need to submit professional quality pictures of my cake to the magazine to even be considered for publication.  The turnaround time on designing, creating, and photographing the cake was very short, just two weeks I think, and submission was not guaranteed. 

Inspiration picture provided by Cake Central Magazine

I can't lie. I squealed a bit when I got the email saying my cake was accepted for submission into Volume 3, Issue 6 of their magazine.

To fit the magazine’s blue and purple theme,  sugar flowers were a given as they are my favorite thing to make.  I wanted most of the color in the cake to come from the flowers, and like the inspiration picture, envisioned flowers in various shades in blue and purple popping against a neutral background,  a creamy white fondant from Fondarific.  I worked my little fingers off to make roses, hydrangea, pulled blossoms, sweet peas, white berries, and various greenery for interest.   I wanted to highlight a couple of very full, dense arrangements that look like they draped naturally off the cake. 

Seeing the bird motif in the necklace, I went with slightly abstract hand modeled lovebirds. The lovebirds were sculpted with a 50/50 fondant and gum paste mixture.  I also echoed the bird motif on the second tier with branches that wrapped around the middle tier.

Finally, I loved the textural, architectural aspect of the picture frames in the inspiration picture, but didn't want to go too literal in the design.  I added moldings to the corners and centers of the bottom tier to add textural interest to the cake.  I painted all the accents, molding, branches, and birds, with a silver hi-liter to unify the accents and again, to allow the flowers to take center stage.

The final step was taking the pictures and getting them submitted by the deadline.  I am super lucky to have a talented friend in Kristen at Low Fat Dressing who was able to take some lovely pictures and detailed shots of the cake.  Once the pictures were sent off, there was nothing to do but wait.  Getting the email on a Monday morning saying the my cake had been feature in their magazine was one of the coolest things I have experienced and certainly one of the most unexpected since I started decorating. 

Friday Favorites: Ina's Outrageous Brownies

With approximately 80 billion existing sources for recipes, I rarely bake the same thing twice, and if I do, I know the recipe is winner.  This brownie recipe is awesome!  Not surprising since this is an Ina Garten recipe and I don't know that I have ever had one of her recipes turn out badly for me.  Be warned if you like cakey brownies as this recipe won't be your thing, but if you are like me and like dense bricks of fudgy goodness then you better get on making these ASAP.

A couple of things

1. Yes, there is a lot of butter in this recipe, but I am believer that sweets should be an occasional treat, not an every day thing; therefore, when you do indulge, you shouldn't worry about things like calories or healthifying them.

2. Follow the recipe and definitely refrigerate them as it helps develop that perfect fudgey texture.

3. This recipe makes a ton.  Great for the holiday season if you are having a party or making goodie bag plates for friends and family; otherwise, I would halve this recipe.

Turkey, Turkey!

I hope everyone who celebrated it had a happy Thanksgiving.  We kept it very low key and relaxing here. Since it was just the husband and me, we celebrated, as is becoming our tradition here in Chicago, by running a Turkey Trot in the morning and then going out to a nice restaurant for Thanksgiving dinner.

We had a gift card, a wedding present that we hadn't used yet, and decided to go to Wildfire for dinner.   They did a traditional family style dinner where you could pick two plates for each course.  No complaints here; everything was delicious. We had turkey and stuffing, beef tenderloin, roasted brussel sprouts with hazelnuts, and mashed potatoes.   Not pictured are the delicious pumpkin pie and key lime tart we split for dessert.  I love doing Thanksgiving like this.  No stress, no clean-up, and no leftovers to tempt you into indulging more than necessary.

 
I spent the rest of the my long weekend doing some much needed cleaning, putting out a few Christmas decorations, and doing some baking.   Since we aren't going to be in town this year for Christmas, I didn't feel like going crazy with the decorations.  Just a wreath, our stockings (including two for the pups), and few other little bits and pieces.  My next big project after repainting our master bedroom is to tackle that fireplace.  I am dreaming of a white fireplace which I think will look great with that hefty, dark wood mantle.

Spending a little QT with our house.

This weekend was crazy productive.  Saturday I spent most of the day cleaning, organizing, and purging around the house in preparation for the holidays.  Seriously, is there anything as gratifying as decluttering and getting rid of stuff?   I used to be a bit of pack rat, but as I have gotten older, I have gotten pretty ruthless at getting rid of stuff.

Today, we spent a lot of time taking care of some house maintance and what not since I have finally got back on the home renovation bandwagon.  My husband and I bought our first house 3 years ago.  It is a cute 1950's raised ranch that was in solid condition but in desperate need of updating.  When we first moved in, we did quite a bit of updating right off the bat.  We repainted every room, tore up carpet, tore  down wallpaper.  In the kitchen we purchased a new stove (The original fifties stove was still being used by the previous owner.),  had recessed lighting and a dishwasher installed, added more counter space and built-in shelves, the cabinets were painted white, and a new granite countertop put in.

All those updates were sorely needed and have transformed the kitchen, but they tapped us out budget-wise and motivation-wise.  I have finally got my mojo back and am ready to tackle some of cosmetic issues that I have been bugging me the last couple of years.

Number one on my list, repaint the master bedroom.  We painted it when we first moved in, but I have pretty much hated the color since day one.  It looked great in naturally light, but since our bedroom barely gets any at all, the color looks terrible most of the time.  Forgetting to really look at paint samples at night was a totally rookie mistake.

Any way I am totally, absolutely in love with the idea of  a gray bedroom, so U picked up a million paint swatches at Home Depot today.  Once we narrow it down to our winner,  I will update on the final outcome.