Wine a Bit

This wedding cake was done for a long-time friend of the family. Her main wedding color was wine, and she had orange as an accent. Her flowers were white hydrangeas, wine-colored mums, and tiger lilies.

I researched pictures of tiger lilies on the internet and found 3 different ones to recreate. One was a traditional tiger lily, with curved petals and brown spots. Another was a golden-yellow lily with orange shading, and the third was a bright orangy-red. These I made using fondant. After I had them shaped how I liked, I placed them in empty egg cartons to dry. If I had simply laid them on the table to dry before the fondant had stiffened, they would have dried in a heap. The egg cartons allowed me to rest the flowers in the little nooks and drape the petals over the little dividers. Perfect fondant-flower-driers!

I then created the mums and hydrangeas with different fondant cutters, using my fingers to shape each one. I covered all my flowers and allowed to dry for several days to ensure they'd remain stiff while handling (the heat from your hands can sometimes cause fondant to bend if it's not thoroughly dry). Once dry, I airbrushed each flower individually, and painted on any details.
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Then I assembled my cake and iced it. I mixed a combination of wine and brown in my airbrush and sprayed around the bottom of each tier. Then I placed my flowers in a "cascade" down the cake, and used green icing to pipe leaves. I placed on their topper and added flowers around it, and finished it all off with a white border.

My Very First

This wedding cake was the very first that I did on my own. The bride and groom wanted a contemporary, autumn theme. They said I could have whatever freedoms I wanted for the design, as long as I incorporated  pale pink ivory to match their cake topper.

This I did by making tiny rose buds, made of fondant, colored to match. I then decided to use tradition fall colors for the other decorations: brown, orange, yellow, purple and green. I assigned each color to a specific decoration, be it a pine cone, leaf, or flower.

I put a fondant ribbon around the base of the top 3 tiers and used chocolate icing to pipe a "branch". This was to not only enhance the fall theme, but to guide your eyes along the decorations. I placed them on starting heavily at the bottom and, working my way to the top, getting more and more sparse.

Pinkish-orange dots and a white border finished the look, and my first wedding cake was complete!

Stars and Stripes

A client wanted a birthday cake for his mom, whose birthday happened to be on July 4th. I went on the internet and found a picture of a large, floppy, 4th of July-celebration hat. It looked easy enough to interpret it into cake, so I got to it.

 I shaved the top tier of my cake so that it was smaller at the base than at the top, and rounded the top edge. Then I iced and stacked the tiers as I normally would. Since the icing was already white, and 1/3 of the appropriate Independence Day colors, I knew that my decorations needed to be red and blue. 

 The picture of the hat that I had originally used for my inspiration had thick stripes running down it with a big blue bow off the back. So I used a similar design for the top tier. The bottom tier was easy to decorate, seeing as how fireworks and the 4th of July go hand-in-hand, stars were only appropriate.

It was a simple design, but it "explodes" off the page!

Autumn Melody

A man had ordered this cake for his wife's 40th birthday. He told me she loved music and that she really liked fall colors, and if I could incorporate them both, then that would be great. No problem! (note a hint of sarcasm) How on earth was I going to mesh fall colors with music? Music notes are black against the stark white of a piece of paper! Fall colors are oranges, reds yellows and golds. Were there any songs about fall that I could reference? No. Could I somehow make the veins in the leaves look like musical notes? Ok, now I'm just talking crazy.     With no luck trying to create an idea, I tried a bold move...I just started creating.

I put my cake together and iced it, just like always. Then I decided to add some shading with a neutral pinkish-brown color, so I airbrushed lightly along the bottom of each tier. Then... I was stumped.

I knew I had to define my themes somehow, so I made up several fondant maple leaves in various fall colors and set them aside. It was here, while staring at these leaves and thinking about music, that a little spark in my brain started a fire of ideas, and I knew exactly what to do!

I rolled out another piece of white fondant and cut it into a long rectangle. Remembering my 5 years of playing the flute, I painted on lines of music with black food coloring. While the fondant was still malleable, I draped it down the side of the cake so that it resembled the look of a piece of paper. Then I added my leaves and made up a few calla lilies airbrushed with the same color that I shaded the cake with before. And voila!

The cake looked great and had everything the client had asked for.

Bringing Out My Inner Child

This cake was fun to make! A mother of a 5 year old boy had wanted a birthday cake for him to be a recreation of one of his latest drawings.

I started by making all the little components of his picture, the stars, moon, planet and rocket ship, out of fondant. I painted with food coloring all of the details on the rocket ship, making sure to be as loose as possible in my movements so that they looked more like a child's. To be honest, it was kind of challenging creating a picture and trying to be not exact. But I guess that's just my own need for perfection coming through!

I, then, airbrushed the top of the iced cake black and then placed the decorations on it according to the picture. I put in a couple extra stars to fill in the empty space, and put some along the sides so it wasn't just blank. I finished off with a white border around the top and bottom edges.

That's Just Peachy

This wedding cake was an early spring creation about 2 years ago. The bridal colors were peach and pale yellow. The bride had chosen a couple different cake designs before settling on this one, a 4-tiered, peach-colored cake covered in pale yellow rose petals. And so I had my task at hand and I set to work.

I chose about 3 different-sized circle cutters for the petals. I rolled out a bit of white fondant as thin as I could get it and cut out just a couple circles at a time. I knew that if I cut too many, than some would be too dried out to work with before I had even gotten to them. With the ones I had cut, I took a small fondant rolling pin and pressed and rolled them even thinner, and into petal shape. I used my fingers to help shape the circles into petals, as well. I did this over and over again until I had about 400 petals. It took me close to 4 hours.

Once the petals were all made, I lined a large sheet pan with the petals in a single layer and airbrushed over them lightly on both sides. When I was doing this, I made certain to not be particularly accurate, as petals in nature are not all one solid color, and are not all identical to each other. So as a result, some ended up lighter, and some a tad darker. Exactly what I was going for!

Once the cake was stacked and supported as it needed to be, it was iced and airbrushed peach. Then it was time to put on all the petals! Since this cake was to have no piping along the borders, I had made certain while icing it to smooth the corners as much as I could.

I continued to place the petals, starting at the bottom, one at a time. I used the biggest ones at the bottom and worked my way up. Once to the top, I used the smallest leftover ones to fill in any gaps.The bride wanted them to be more sparse towards the top of the cake, so I made sure the bottom was heavily "petaled".

 Though time consuming, this cake turned out really lovely!

Transformers

    My good friend, Tom, has a son, Myles, who is absolutely obsessed with Transformers. The obsession has been happening for several years and is showing no signs of stopping. So for Myles's 5th birthday, it was only obvious that he get a Transformers cake!

Tom told me I could put on whatever Transformer I wanted, as long as it was either Optimus Prime (of the good guys) or Megatron (of the bad guys). Tom also told me that when they play, Tom is usually Optimus Prime. So in that case, I decided to put Megatron on the cake.

I found, and printed, an image off the internet of the Transformer and cut it out, following his shape exactly. I, then, rolled out a piece of fondant about 1/16" thick. I placed the paper image over the fondant and traced with an exacto blade around the image so I had a Megatron-shaped piece of fondant. I then used my airbrush and paintbrushes to recreate the image on the fondant piece with food coloring.

Once I had the cake iced, I airbrushed very lightly all over with a deep purple. Then I airbrushed the transformers logo onto the top of the cake with the same purple. I airbrushed a jagged-looking design around the sides of the cake in the purple, and cut out small, yellow, fondant circles which I placed around the sides as well. I placed on my Megatron, and finished with some writing and a border.

Watermelon Fantasy

For this cake, my client wanted a birthday cake with watermelon colors. They told me to make it pretty. So the first thing I did was researched watermelons. Then, after seeing what colors actual watermelons are, I found some color swatches in very similar tones. I knew I couldn't use the exact colors, because they would have been too bold, and since they wanted it more elegant than literal, I used softer shades.

The flowers and ribbon on the cake were fondant, made by rolling and cutting with flower cutters and a pastry wheel (which is pretty much a small pizza cutter). I then mixed up watermelon pink food coloring for my air brush, and sprayed them with different intensities of air pressure to create either lighter or darker tones of the color. Then I airbrushed the small, green flowers.

Once the cake was put together and iced, I decorated it with my fondant pieces. To finish it off, I used small, edible pearls for the centers of the green flowers, and fondant-flower centers, that I had gotten at the cake store, for the centers of the calla lillies. I mixed forest green into my icing and piped on the leaves, and ended with a smooth white border around the tiers.

Hannah Montana Birthday

My client wanted to surprise her daughter, Hannah, with a "Hanna Montana" birthday cake. She had brought in a piece of the shows merchandise, that was her daughter's, for inspiration and told me I could use it for design ideas. They were having a bit of a large party, so instead of doing a flat sheet cake, I decided on a small tiered cake in order to have enough servings.

I knew I had to recreate the "Hanna Montana" logo, and so I did using fondant, which I rolled out, airbrushed and painted. I did the same to make the guitars. I used a small fondant cutter, similar to a cookie cutter, for the music notes and white flowers.

Once assembled, I airbrushed the cake in mostly purple, with hints of pinks and blues. Then I placed on the logo and guitar decorations I had made. I piped white icing for the vines of the flowers and placed the white, fondant flowers accordingly. I finished by piping a swirling border around the tiers, and placing the music notes as needed.

Whimsical Wedding Cake

My latest wedding cake creation was done for some friends of mine, Jody and Sadaat. Their wedding had a "Pirates and Fairies" theme, so they had asked for a cake to match- something fun and whimsical! Their main colors were a rich purple and metallic gold, with some reds and golden yellows for accents.

Since their guest list was over 300 people, Jody and I decided on a 5-tiered, styrofoam cake for display, and sheet cakes for the kitchen to cut for the guests. We had decided on using styrofoam for the cake because it was going to be a "topsy turvy" style, in which the tiers are all slanted. And, just as it sounds, it's a bit of a balancing act, especially when a cake is as large as we were making it! So to be safe, a styrofoam "cake" was made by sawing and sanding into the correct shapes and sizes.

I used royal icing (an icing made of confectioner's sugar and egg whites) to cover the styrofoam, which I then airbrushed in their chosen purple color, and used a metallic gold airbrush spray to highlight some of the tiers. Some fondant was used for the stripes and swirls. Fondant is another type of icing that has the same consistency as play-dough, which can be rolled out or sculpted.

Jody and Sadaat wanted a piece to cut, so I included a small side piece along the very bottom tier that was actual cake. The piece was covered in the same icing and was disguised by flowers. After the cutting, the flowers only needed to be rearranged and the cake could continue to be on display!