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.