Oliver's Baptism Cake

Happy Sunday! This week brings two celebration cakes! The first one is for baby Oliver who was baptised this weekend. Topping this cake was Little Louie the Lamb. We had become quite attached to Louie over his drying time but his new family loves him and thinks he's just as cute as we all do!

Louie is made of fondant mixed with tylose and yes, every single curl is handrolled. I took this photo in the middle of this process so you could see the shape of his head and how his feet are constructed with half toothpics so they fit into the body the next day.


The next morning I continued with the curling and assembling of Louie. I used extra curls for the bottom and to cover the toothpics on the legs and to act as extra glue to hold the feet to the body. The bow was the very last piece to add to the piece and then he was ready to dry for about 2 weeks.

The cake is one tier almond cake with raspberry filling and one tier chocolate chocolate chip cake with chocolate brownie buttercream filling. After covering the tiers with vanilla marshmallow fondant I divided and colored the left over fondant. Then I mixed in tylose with a small bit of the blue and rolled out enough to make the bow. After forming the loops around paintbrush handles, I let the bow dry the rest of the day. Then I cut out the thick strip for the top tier and the thinner strips for the bottom tiers and used water to glue those to the white fondant. I stacked the cakes and then started the time consuming part of the cake. Rolling out all of those fondant marbles. After using water to glue them to the cake tiers I added the plaque. The plaque was cut out at the same time I made Louie so it would have time to dry. Since it had to be thick enough to hold the bow on the bottom tier I knew it wouldn't stick to the cake with just royal icing. So I placed the plaque, with royal icing on the back, onto the cake and then I used two toothpics inserted into the cake under the plaque so it held the plaque up. I let this dry for about a half hour then rolled out the green trim for the plaque and glued it to the plaque. I then made the bow and slipped it over the toothpics and glued it to the plaque as well as to the cake. Then, after letting that dry up a few minutes, I pushed in the toothpics just barely enough so that you can't see them and the cake was done!

The client was thrilled with the cake, as were her family that were at the house when I delivered it. Truly a wonderful feeling to have someone appreciate your work that much! And speaking of appreciation....

Vic's 40th Birthday Cake

Here is the second celebration cake this weekend. This was a complete surprise for my clients husband who had no idea at all that she had such a grand gift in mind for his big birthday! When we delivered this cake to the restaraunt he was just shocked and thrilled with this cake.

Meant to resemble the jersey of a certain Bay Area team, this cake was fun to do but a challenge as well. As with all copyrighted items you can't copy a logo exactly without breaking the law but you want people to know what you were after so it has to be close. Well, close enough for this birthday guy!

I baked then froze the almond cake and while still frozen I filled it with passionfruit buttercream filling and then immediately carved the shape out and crumbcoated it. Then I let it set up and thaw out before covering it with the fondant. Put together much like a real jersey, this cake is covered in fondant pieces rather than in one solid sheet. I then covered the "seams" with rolled fondant to give the impression of the raised seams on a real jersey. I used my Cricut Cake to cut out the letters/numbers and made the logo out of ovals of what I hoped was just the right colors. I matched it as close as I could without getting TOO close to the actual team color. I let these dry up over night so that they would be stiff enough to place on the cake. I used very little water to glue the letters/numbers to the cake. You have to be SO careful when you do this. Once you touch the colored fondant to the white fondant you are committed! The colored fondant instantly stains the white fondant so you have to be sure that you are placing the colored fondant in just the right places. It's a little nervewracking until it's done! I then trimmed the cake with flattened snakes of the red fondant to make the jersey really pop off the base.

The last touches were the ones on the cake board with the logo being the very last piece to this cake puzzle. My own husband being a huge fan of this team was my critic and fact checker on this project and he said he'd be thrilled to have this be his cake. I couldn't wait for Vic to see it! And I was not disappointed. The whole table was impressed with the cake but you could tell that the Birthday Guy and his loving wife were thrilled with it. As I said, no better feeling than to know someone loved and appreciated your hard work.

Well, this upcoming week I get to share with you MY birthday cake! Usually my partner, and younger daughter, makes my cake but we went out to dinner this weekend and I had a fantastic dessert there. So I get to make my own creation this week and I have some GRAND ideas! I'll share them with you on Sunday!

Cat