Blue's Clues Birthday

This cake was for our very adorable 2 year old neighbor, she does love Blue's Clues.  Its a yellow cake with a chocolate ganache filling.  It came out cartoony and fun and she got to keep Blue off the top because he was made from gumpaste/fondant.

Falling leaves and pumpkins

I know I did one like this last year, but its just so fitting for this time of year. The cake is a pumpkin spice cake with a vanilla swiss meringue buttercream. We took it to a picnic in the park.

Tea with the Queen

My daughter only turns 4 once so we pull out all the stops. Because Grandma was visiting at the same time we did a 'Tea with the Queen' birthday party. The Queen (grandma) read 'Tea for Ruby' to all the dressed up little princesses and served up home made root beer in the miniature china tea set. It was a beautiful sight to see all the wonderful manners all of the children had as they very carefully drank their tea.

The cake was a 3 layer funfetti cake with cherry filling and swiss meringue buttercream icing. On top, my very own Kayti having tea with her babies, wearing the same dress up dress that Grandma bought her for her birthday, so they would match. This was a wonderful day!!

Whats on your mind

What is a 34 year old bachelor thinking about?...Oh, the usual....guns, women, the marines, his dog, his mustang, his jeep, designing tattoos, his online classes, etc. The scary part is that its a red velvet...so cutting it up will be fun.

Troy's Pre-K graduation cake

Its bittersweet to see the kids growing up. Today was our son's Pre-K graduation, he starts Kindergarten next month but this is a big step. They did a whole cap and gown ceremony with slide shows and video of the kids from throughout the year (He's only been there 3 weeks but they still had plenty of him). After the ceremony was a picnic in the park so I made this cake to go along. Its a marble cake with an oreo buttercream filling. The little feet under the top cake are 9 boys and 5 girls for the kids in his class ( the girls all have purple toenails).

A Whippin' birthday

This is my first cake in Tennessee and with limited supplies until the rest get here, all my cakes will be 8 inch round cakes :D

This cake for Miss Amy is a lemon cake with a vanilla swiss meringue butter cream. She's the kind of lady that is sweet and flowers and lace but you can see a glint in her eyes of how she may really be. It was great fun to make but boy do I need to practice roses.

No cakes for a while

Well, big changes is our lives and my cake pans are all packed up for now. We're in the process of trying to sell our house and move from Loveland, CO to somewhere in East Tennessee to pursue a position I've been offered. I'll update this as soon as I make my first cake in the new house.

St. Patricks Day birthday party

Some great friends of ours share birthdays right around the happy green day, so I combined it all in their cake. It was a green maple walnut cake with swiss meringue buttercream...looked funny, but tasted great.

Baseball Training Camp

For the baseball fan going down to watch the Anaheim Angels and the LA Dodgers spring training

Just a fun little cake

Just for fun and meeting a great group of people, I brought along this little cake. Its an almond poppyseed cake with rasberry swiss meringue buttercream filling.

Captain Blackbeard and the Queen Anne's Revenge

Here are some additional pictures of the cake



UPDATE: The cake won 2nd place

My entry this year for the Sweet Times in the Rockies cake show at the Denver Home and Garden Show. The Extravagant Cakes category this year had a theme of Caribbean Pirates.

The inspiration I used was the story of Captain Blackbeard, who stole a french slave ship and renamed it The Queen Anne's Revenge. He was a ruthless pirate who took many ships many by sheer intimidation. When his crew became too big and unruly, he ran his flagship aground on a sandbar off the coast of South Carolina and abandoned it and most of his crew. Leaving only with a handpicked short list of his closest.

This was the kind of project I could have just kept working on if I had time....adding more pirates, more equipment, more canons...etc.

I'll update with the results I'll find out sunday at the awards ceremony.

Troy's Superhero birthday

My son's request this year was for 5 superheros to adorn his super 5th birthday:

Spiderman, Batman, Flash, Ironman, and Captain America.

Happy New Year 2009

Happy New Year!! We celebrated it with friends, the kids, and this little cake. A spice cake with a maple swiss meringue butter cream icing.

Snoopy and his doghouse

This little snoopy cake was definitely fun. Its an almond poppyseed cake with rasberry buttercream filling in it. Its for a 1st birthday so little Woodstock is sitting on the smash cake.

Volcano Explosion

This smoking volcano cake was for a young man named Keegan. There was a cup in the top of the cake to put the dry ice and water in. I'm still hoping to get more pictures of the smoke coming down the sides of the cake.

Troy's Christmas party cake

This cake was made for my son's class Christmas party this week. The Shingles are all golden graham cereal. The rocks and woodwork are all fondant and the cake is a yellow cake with a chocolate chip buttercream filling.

Woodturners Achievements

For the local Woodturner club Christmas Party, a cake that reflects what every woodturner makes most.....Sawdust!!









The pile of sawdust usually far outweighs the size of the output turning.



Wearing proper turning attire, steel toed boots, long sleeved shirt, and an apron.








Its a Powermatic lathe with a thumbnail gouge and a scraping tool.

50th Anniversary

To celebrate the 50th wedding anniversary, this couple's wonderful kids had this golden wedding cake made. The tiered cake is as close a replica as we could come from input from the bride and a 50 year old slide picture.







We re-used the original wedding topper they had in 1958.

My snow wishes cake

If I keep hoping for snow and make icing snow flakes and keep singing the song will that make it happen??

Boo

Scary little ghost cake I did for work, and I can't help myself, my pumpkins were cake related too :D

Eddie Royal Bronco's cake

This young birthday boy wanted a cake with Denver Bronco's player Eddie Royal #19 and himself, #23 on his own little football team on the cake.

Well, if you are not very specific, you are at the mercy of my imagination... This is what I think it would look like if they played together

Pirate birthday cake

Fun little pirates birthday party with a young pirate the birthday boy got to keep.

My first topsy turvy cake

A dear friend who was formerly in the navy, just turned 40 and I'd been dying to try a topsy turvy cake for the occasion. She doesn't like fondant so I did it in buttercream

Blue ribbon fresh daisies wedding cake

This cake was done for a friend's wedding, each tier was a separate flavor and all covered in Swiss Meringue Butter Cream. Red velvet cake with buttercream filling, Pumpkin spice with buttercream filling, Chocolate with peanutbutter buttercream filling, and Almond poppyseed cake with rasberry filling.

A little magic and a saucy rabbit

This is a fun little birthday cake I just finished for a young man's birthday.

I think the rabbit turned out pretty cute.

Cherries Bachelorette Party cake

The bride saw this cake in a magazine and wanted it for her bacherlorette party tomorrow night. Its a cherry chip cake with cherry filling.

Fun fall pumpkins

Did this fun little fall pumpkin cake for work. A pumpkin spice cake with bavarian cream frosting, white chocolate fondant, and fondant leaves. A little air brushing goes a long way.

The Chocolate Horse

From the same structure I used to make the bull cake, I made this modeling chocolate horse. No cake in the horse this time because it had to make a 10 hour trek. I made the rest of the cake and iced it there.











Finished off, he looked pretty great, but because I had to put him in a cake, his feet were left to be lost in the grass.













The rider is the birthday girl of course, in her printed dress and painted toenails











She has indeed kept the horse for as long as possible.

Hydrangea mini wedding cake

A very sophisticated teenager requested this miniature wedding style cake with hydrangeas on it for her birthday.

Orchids

My first gumpaste orchids on a nice little fondant covered cake. What it hides underneath however is a spice cake, covered and filled with a maple swiss meringue buttercream frosting. Sounds good doesn't it?














Then I sat and stared at it while I was working and couldn't stand it anymore. I painted on more flowers.

Then....if you stare at it long enough you hate how it turned out and with 1 hour to go before delivery, you take the fondant off, trash the orchids, and start over.









Much happier with these orchids.

4 Jokers

For a teenage girl who is quite the joker.












Since I KNOW I can't make 4 paintings identical, each joker is unique and hand painted.

Hot Air Balloon

My first hot air balloon cake and I'm already planning how I can structure it better












I used a hanging candle holder/vase as the structure between the balloon and basket













What would you be doing in a hot air balloon on your birthday?? Be lounging, drinking a beer.

'32 Ford Roadster

For a guy into hot rodz and toyz, his girlfriend asked me to make this 32 Ford Roadster. Its a dull rusty color because the body is the last thing to be done and the nice shiney engine always gets done first.











Hot Rod Toyz

Beauty and the Beast birthday cake

I've been working on molding faces from modeling chocolate using a sculpting how-to book. They're starting to get cheekbones, chins, etc.

Here is our daughter's 3rd birthday cake. She wanted Beauty and the Beast princess cake. So here is Mrs. Potts, Chip, Lumier, Cogsworth and Belle.

Under the skirt is chocolate cake with an oreo buttercream filling. The cake underneath is chocolate cake with a peanut butter mousse filling.












The characters were hand molded and painted from fondant

2008 Colorado State Fair cake entry

I entered this cake in the state fair Special Contest Decorated Cakes. The theme of the contest is Planes, trains, and automobiles. I did my research to make sure this is authentic and accurate. It is a 1934 Chevy 1/2 ton truck, hauling a load of corn. The truck has a detailed interior, with the ratcheting hand brake, gearshift with no boot, the big steering wheel, etc. The cab roof is molded from gumpaste and has poured hard candy windows clear enough to see shapes but not details in the front, back, and driver’s side. The passenger window was left rolled down so you could see the detail inside. The cake is in the engine compartment and the box of the truck as well as the bench seat inside it. The bags of corn in the back of the truck are little pats of chocolate covered in fondant.

1. Additional things I learned while making this cake:
2. The windshield wiper (there was only one) was a hand crank wind up one that used pendulum clock parts.
3. There were no side view mirrors in this year.
4. 1934 was the first year they built the truck differently than the typical Chevy cars back then, it was a cab pieced together (which is why you see the seams) in the 2nd half of 1935 they went to a solid one piece cab that was much cleaner looking.

The deluxe model of this year had a split front windshield (this is not the deluxe model)

The front windshield had a slide prop system to prop the bottom of the windshield out so you had air flow inside the cab.

The exhaust on this model ended in front of the back axle so it was not visible from the back.