Ballroom Dancing Themed wedding cake

I had the pleasure of designing a cake for a newlywed couple whose theme for their wedding was ballroom dancing. I decided to do ruffles on the bottom tier, resembling dress ruffles. Then I put a silhouette of a dancing couple on the top tier. It turned out more lovely than I had hoped.

Fall Rosette Cake

I absolutely love fall! The colors are amazing and the smells when I'm baking are something my family and I always look forward to. 

The beginning of October is my in-laws' anniversary, and this year we celebrated their 50th! That is amazing! They are some of the best people I know.

Anyway, since we were celebrating, I was asked to bring a cake. I decided to make a spice cake with cinnamon cream cheese frosting (my own recipe 😉). My house smelled heavenly! 

I decorated the cake with rosettes filling the sides.

For a little splash of color I added a purple gerber daisy. It was simple and looked elegant. My in-laws loved it!

My Little Pony Cake

Being a child of the 80's, I grew up watching awesome Saturday morning cartoons like Strawberry Shortcake and Rainbow Brite. So I was super excited to make this My Little Pony cake for my niece's 13th birthday. Of course, My Little Pony has changed a bit from when I was younger, but it was still fun to sing the old themesong to myself while I made this special cake.

Minnesota Themed Cake

I had a request last week from a friend to make a Minnesota-themed cake for his buddy who was visiting from California. Loons are the official state bird of Minnesota, so I thought it was fitting to make the cake have a loon on it. I'm very pleased with how it turned out. 

Trade Secret: the water looks semi realistic... There is this awesome product called clear piping gel (it also comes in colors, but I prefer using the clear), and when it is spread over blue-colored frosting, it looks like water.

Orange Creamsicle Birthday!

Well, since there are lots of people in my family, we celebrate LOTS of birthdays. I make cakes for several of them (sometimes we get tired of cake), but this birthday was very special to me because it was a joint party for my mother-in-law and my sister-in-law. They are both amazing people and I wanted their cake to be amazing.

Notice the orange-ness? I bet you can't guess what the theme of our party was...yep, orange. My sister-in-law's favorite color is orange, so we decided to build our party around that color. 

So besides being orange on the outside, I made my secret orange creamsicle cake recipe with vanilla pudding filling. Can I just say- deliciousness!

The party was a success and that cake was devoured! Nomnom

So happy birthday to two very awesome people!

Chocolate Cupcakes with White Cream Cheese Frosting

I have a dear friend who asked me to make some cupcakes for her daughter's wedding reception, which I was more than happy to do. Her daughter was very specific: she wanted chocolate cupcakes with white cream cheese frosting and a raspberry on top. I searched and searched trying to find a good stable icing recipe with cream cheese in it because in my past experience, most cream cheese frostings aren't stable enough for "fancy" cupcake decorating. So what ended up happening was I made up my own recipe, and man, it was freakin' delicious!! I am not one who usually likes eating frosting, but I could get a giant spoonful and eat it all, it is that good.

I have recently discovered that maybe I should share some of the recipes I come up with regarding cakes, etc., because sometimes you need specialty things made and they are impossible to find. So below is my recipe for White Cream Cheese Frosting. This frosting will work wonderfully for frosting the "fancy" way, and as long as you keep the frosting cool (not necessarily refrigerated, but out of hot places), it should work great!

Laura's White Cream Cheese Frosting

1 - 8 oz. pkg cream cheese, room temperature

1 cup white shortening

2 tbs. Meringue powder

2 tsp. clear vanilla extract

5-6 cups powdered sugar

Approx. 5 tbs. milk (or amount needed to achieve desired consistency)

Put cream cheese, shortening, vanilla & meringue powder in bowl and mix until blended on low speed. Slowly add powdered sugar and milk alternately, the sugar one cup at a time and the milk one tablespoon at a time. To check for correct consistency, stick a knife into the frosting and gently shake the mixing bowl. If the knife doesn't move, it is ready!

Also, a word of caution: this frosting is so good, you may want to make extra because you will be eating it ;)

Fandom Graduation Cake

I was so excited to get this order from a friend of mine. She wanted a graduation cake for her daughter and wanted to incorporate a TARDIS from Dr. Who somewhere on the cake. Well, luckily I follow her daughter on Pinterest and know that she is a fan of several different awesome shows (Sherlock, Once Upon A Time, etc.), so I decided to put a few different symbolic items from some of her favorite shows on the cake.

So above is the Tardis, an apple from Once Upon A Time, and it's kind of hard to see, but there's a smiley face on wallpaper, like on Sherlock.

Avengers!!

As an added surprise, I decided to do rainbow marble inside the cake. It's so pretty :)

Here is the finished product. I am very pleased with how it turned out, and hope that she was too :)