11 Mar
Tinkerbell Birthday Cake
Posted by Michelle as Special Occasion Cakes | 21 Comments
This is a recent cake that I did for a client who was throwing a Tinkerbell-themed party for her daughter’s 2nd birthday. This is a quarter sheet cake with a white almond batter and vanilla bean buttercream filling. The cake is decorated completely in buttercream. The client wanted the cake to have a depiction of Tinkerbell, suggested some pixie dust, and lots of bright colors. It has been quite awhile since I did a cake completely in buttercream since most of my recent cakes have been all fondant, and I had such a blast decorating this cake. I especially loved how fun the borders were to create with multiple designs and colors. The client loved the cake and I’m sure her little girl enjoyed her Tinkerbell birthday party!
24 Nov
Cake Order: Penn State & NASA
Posted by Michelle as Special Occasion Cakes | 19 Comments
Last week I delivered a cake order to Penn State’s main campus in State College, PA for a conference that was being held by Penn State’s Astrophysics department in conjunction with NASA. The two organizations worked to develop and launch a satellite, Swift, and this conference marked the 5-year anniversary of the satellite going into orbit. The conference planners wanted to throw a little party at the end of the conference to celebrate the milestone.
We decided on creating three cakes – one representing Penn State, one representing NASA, and the third representing the actual satellite. All of the cakes are 12″ and 8″ stacked rounds, covered in fondant, with fondant stripes on the bottom tier to match the logo colors, with buttercream borders. One was a white cake with raspberry filling, one was a chocolate cake with a chocolate buttercream filling, and the third was a lemon cake with lemon buttercream filling.
The Penn State Nittany Lion logo was created using fondant:
The NASA logo was created using fondant, with the “swoosh” and stars on the logo decorated with white royal icing:
The Swift cake included the program’s “Swift” logo in fondant on the front of the top tier, and a fondant depiction of the satellite itself on top:
This order was extremely well-received and it was fun to see some of the participants get a sneak peak of the cakes. They were all very excited about how they looked and enjoyed taking pictures of them.
07 Nov
Bachelorette Party Cake
Posted by Michelle as Special Occasion Cakes | 22 Comments
This cake was done for a bachelorette party that had a theme of black and hot pink and zebra/animal print. It is an 8-inch white cake with a layer of raspberry filling in the middle and covered in white fondant. The black zebra stripes and pink borders are all made of edible fondant. The tiara was also created from fondant; the jewels on the tiara are not edible – the only part of the cake that you can’t eat. I brushed the top of the cake with white shimmer dust, and the tiara was brushed in a silver shimmer dust. The cake was a hit and got rave reviews!
If you are interested in seeing more of my decorated cakes, check out some of them here.
12 Jan
More Birthday Cakes
Posted by Michelle as Special Occasion Cakes | 20 Comments
These birthday cakes were done for a very good friend of mine whose father and daughter happen to share a birthday. She threw a party celebrating both this past weekend and wanted a special cake for each of them. Her daughter turned 2 and she planed a brightly colored polka dot theme, and her dad does a lot of carpentry work so she had asked for a cake shaped as a hammer for him. This was my first time doing carved cakes, so I channeled Duff and Ace of Cakes and ultimately was really happy with how these turned out. I ended up carving these free hand after doing a couple of sketches and then did all of the decorating in fondant.
06 Jan
Penn State Graduation Cake
Posted by Michelle as Special Occasion Cakes | 19 Comments
This cake was made to celebrate the December graduation of a Penn State University student. The client asked for a 2-tier cake with dots on the bottom tier, stripes on the top tier, and the iconic Nittany Lion on the top of the cake. I was admittedly a little nervous about pulling off the lion, but was really happy with how it turned out! The client loved it and I heard they still haven’t cut into the top layer because they don’t want to ruin the lion 
03 Dec
Birthday Cakes
Posted by Michelle as Special Occasion Cakes | 22 Comments
During the month of November I had two orders for birthday cakes:
This first one was for a surprise 50th birthday party. The customer requested a zebra-style cake with a pink bow on top. The cake was chocolate with a peanut butter filling and chocolate buttercream icing. They were thrilled with both the look of the cake and how it tasted!
(Again, bad lighting and excuse the wax paper in the bow – that’s to hold them open and in place while the fondant dries and until I deliver.)
This next cake was for my cousin’s 40th birthday party. His party invitations were blue and silver with what looked like transparent bubbles, so I tried to stay with that theme and this is where it led me. The bottom cake was a yellow cake with raspberry filling and vanilla buttercream; the top cake was chocolate with peanut butter filling and chocolate buttercream. I’m happy to report that everyone at the party raved about the cake!
30 Jun
Wedding Shower Cake
Posted by Michelle as Special Occasion Cakes | 2 Comments
My first “official” cake for an event, and it was a huge success! I made this cake for the wedding shower of one of my sister’s best friends. There were approximately 35 people in attendance, and two of them approached me for business cards, and a good many more gave me many compliments on the cake. The bride’s colors are sage green and silver and her invitation “theme” was circles and squares. I tried to incorporate all of those elements into the cake and I think I succeeded, as the bride was extremely happy with the cake. I wish the lighting would have been better (or that I had a better camera), as none of my pictures really turned out all that well, but they do the job 
18 Jun
Wilton Course III, Class 4
Posted by Michelle as Special Occasion Cakes | 0 Comments
My final cake, a 2-tier wedding-style cake. This cake consists of 10-inch and 6-inch cakes, covered in fondant with fondant roses and leaves, and buttercream borders. I actually completed this cake on my own at home because I came down with a little bug and couldn’t make it to my final class. I am pretty proud of completing this with only the instruction of the book and not a teacher!
These roses were definitely time-intensive, as it probably took about 5-6 hours total to construct the 38 roses that went on this cake. Other than that, it was a pretty typical decorating job. I am having a great time doing cake decorating and will move on to the Wilton Fondant & Gum Paste class in July.
More pictures after the break (I went a little crazy with the camera)…
11 Jun
Wilton Course III: Class 2
Posted by Michelle as Special Occasion Cakes | 20 Comments
My very first fondant cake! I was excited about working with fondant, and it turned out to be really easy once I got the hang of it. Kneading it may give me carpal tunnel, but I was beyond pleased with the final product. All said and done, the decorating ended up taking me close to 2.5 hours to complete, but a lot of that was instruction time in learning how to knead the fondant, roll it out, cut it, etc. I think I might be addicted to fondant now – making the decorations was so much fun!
Next class – doing a rose in fondant and learning some additional flowers with royal icing. And then the finale – a two-tier cake!
24 Apr
Wilton Course 1, Class 4
Posted by Michelle as Special Occasion Cakes | 0 Comments
I “graduated” last night from Wilton Course 1: Discover Cake Decorating. I had so much fun with this class, and was very pleased with my final cake:
When we learned “THE ROSE” last week in class, I was awful. I couldn’t remember which way to hold the tip or spin the flower nail and as a result, well, they weren’t the prettiest So I made a batch of icing for the sole purpose of practicing the rose. I probably made upwards of 40 roses just to practice, and it really did help, as I think I definitely improved! A closer look at the rose spray on my cake:
Last night, in addition to putting together our final cake, we also learned how to make sweet peas and leaves. I loved them both! The sweet peas are so cute and the leaves were a lot of fun to make. A close up of one of my sweet peas:
I have already signed up for Course 2 and will be starting in a few weeks. I can’t wait to learn all of the different flowers!
