Eliana's 10th Birthday

This summer were available to celebrate Eliana's birthday.  With Eric getting married just a few days later, he asked if I would help him by making her a birthday cake.  Since it worked well with my schedule, I was happy to help take that off his plate (pun intended).

Eliana has enjoyed playing softball this Spring, so I jumped at the chance to do something other than a soccer ball.  Her team was the green Lucky Charms, but I didn't have any clover cookie cutters, so I went with stars instead.  She also wanted a raspberry compote, and seeing as I have never made a cake with a compote, much less made a compote itself, I took that as a challenge.

Fortunately, the raspberry compote was so extremely easy to make, and tasted delicious. I will definitely try that again.  It was placed between the chocolate layers of the bottom half of the cake. The round softball was a cake pop mixture of cake and frosting (copied from Cody's 17th birthday basketball cake).  It helped it keep it's shape so nicely, and make it easy to cover with the softball fondant coloring.

Finally, I attempted fondant stars on little metal wires to help give it a little pizazz on the top,  That proved to be a nice touch and really was easier than I thought it would be...not that I thought it would be that hard.  All of this made for one happy girl!

 

Micah's 11th Birthday

I seem to have a recurring theme of making Micah birthday cakes based on his current favorite computer game.  This year, he's been into a game called Brawl Stars and it has quite the colorful little group of characters.  I agreed to make the cake based on this theme, and chose one of his favorite characters to focus on.  With Cody's help, I was able to get a screen shot of his actual game listing, and thus could customize it as close as possible.

I was able to use techniques I have used in the past to get my measurements right (tracing the fondant from a paper printout), and slowly it all came together surprisingly sharp.  I tweaked the shield a little to fit with the color of fondant I had available, and used it along with the circles to fill in where it felt too empty.  The best part was that since the cake was flat, it traveled very well to the cottage where we celebrated with the extended DJ family.  While most people had no idea what they were looking at (Leon), those cousins who knew the game and this character were impressed with my work.

 

Paige's 13th Birthday

Because Paige is still our soccer loving kid, I needed to some up with something a bit more creative with my soccer cake for her birthday this year.  Fortunately, she is signed up for a trip to Paris with her ODP team and that gave me my unique spin.

With little time on my hands due to Vacation Bible School again this year, I didn't attempt anything too new.  I decided to decorate with fondant, and only struggled with how to get the soccer ball pieces to look right.  Eventually I gave up and used the same shape for all of them instead of the two different shapes like in real life.  Later, Brian informed me that it is impossible to make the actual shapes from the soccer ball work on a flat surface which is why I was so frustrated and had to alter my plan...wish he had been around when I was figuring that out for myself.

I must also confess to cheating on the logo as well.  I purchased a sticker to use as the symbol because of the lack of time to make it myself, and the lack of food printing device (which I do hope to own someday).  In the end it was still very sharp and I can add another variation of soccer cake to my list of achievements.

Allie's 15th Birthday

This year I decided to try my hand at an elegant flower cake for my 15 year old.  I have always admired cakes that use live flowers, but have never dared try my hand at it until now.  I had great inspiration ideas, however quickly learned that the great limitation of this type of cake is the type of flowers you can find at the store.

My original color scheme did not work out, so I ended up going with a flower-fruit combo which gave me the attractive look that I wanted, but ended up feeling more like a wedding cake.  Also, because of scheduling I had to make it the night before which meant by the time it was actual cake eating time, the fruit and flowers were a little wilted.  Mental note: these types of cakes are best made as close to the celebration as possible.

In addition to decorating with new items, I also decided last minute to put some fresh fruit in the cake.  I sliced up some strawberries and layered them with the frosting between the layers.  It worked great until I found small areas of red juice leaking out of the side of my cake and down the white frosting.  Another great learning moment for me!

In the end, it was a very beautiful cake, it tasted delicious, and Allie was very happy with it.  I would definitely attempt this type of cake again, but will do a little better being sure I can find the types and colors of flowers that I am envisioning. 

Cohen's 11th Birthday

I'm not sure that this cake even deserves a spot on this roster, but I did make it so it's only fair.

I did not go to my brother's house for the holidays expecting to make my nephew a cake for his birthday.  So, the day before his birthday when we were planning the next day of celebration, we determined we needed a cake.  And, while Cohen was not super particular, he mentioned wanting a WWII cake to go with the video game he is currently playing. That seemed easy enough so I offered to see what I could do.  No tools, no pans, not my kitchen, and no fancy prep.  But, it's okay to do last minute creative things sometimes.

So, I headed to the store and purchased the last 3 WWII vehicles the toy department had, a bunch of cake and frosting, as well as various candies and cookies that could help make things look like land.  The only new creative endeavor was to use jello as a means to turn my vanilla frosting tan and brown.  It didn't work great, but it did enough for what I had time for.  The rest was strategic placement of crushed graham crackers, cookies, marshmallows, and chocolate covered raisins.

Allie and Andy even won some army men at the arcade we went to for Cohen's birthday and they were added to the cake.  Thus, we ended up with this:

Micah's 10th Birthday

It was hard to come up with something new for Micah's cake as his interests stay pretty consistent.  But, when asked, he ultimately determined he wanted a Hunger Games cake and it brought on the job of making a nice, celebratory cake out of a dark and haunting theme.  Unfortunately, he also wanted his birthday at the cottage which meant my yearly challenge with making a cake in high humidity without my normal space or tools. Aaggh!  But, there's nothing better than a sunny day at the lake on your birthday, so the humid cake decorating challenge was on.

I found a great idea online to make the mockingjay symbol from the book, and it turned out more amazing than I could have ever imagined.  I traced the symbol in pieces from a printout onto black fondant, which I then added dimension to with some 3D style pieces on the bird's body.  Then, a quick dusting of gold powder gave it a great old metallic look and it couldn't have turned out better!

Unfortunately, after that it was compromise after compromise.  My triple layer cake became a double, the slanting top became flat, and the fire moved from hardened sugar on top of the cake to fondant on the sides.  It still looked okay in the end, it just didn't have the wow factor that the amazing cake topper deserved.  Oh well, Micah was pleased and that's all that matters...right?!

Paige's 12th Birthday

Scrolling for ideas on the internet, I came across a fun new cake idea which I knew would work great for Paige (my lover of all things candy).  I combined it with a concept I have known about for years but never tried, and it turned out perfectly.  In fact, it was so easy and turned out so well I decided if I were to open a shop this would definitely be on my menu for ordering.

The cake itself was a basic two-layer 9x13 with a layer of funfetti frosting in between.  I covered it with green fondant, and then carefully cut out the number 12 from the fondant and top layer of the cake.  This created a 12-shaped hole that I was able to fill with sour flavored skittles (Paige's current favorite).  I proceeded to add a border of skittles and some fondant circles to match my skittle colors.  Super cute!

Finally, I took the skittles wrapper, propped it on a skewer and glued sour skittles to it so that it looked like they were falling out of the bag.  I originally tried chocolate melts to hold them on, but that didn't work well due to the sugar coating on the skittles, so I moved to frosting, which did the trick for the small pouring effect I was going for.  Chocolate melts might be better for higher pouring effects, but I'll have to try that next time with a candy that has a more solid covering.

Like I said, super easy and turned out super cute.  I would definitely do this one again with other candies like M&M's or possibly Nerds.