it's great to be.....CAKE!....uh and 8.

So, I made a baptism cake for my two cousins, hunter and jackson. : ) It was super fun and this time instead of doing a fun cake i attempted to do a more fancy cake. All in all I like how it turned out. I was going to do the silver leafing on it too but ran out of time! : ( Anyway, also this time everything was homemade...it was buttercake with buttercream in between each layer, covered in almond and vanilla flavored fondant, and decorated with royal icing. It took probably around 24 hours but was super fun to make!

cutting the cake layers straight is really hard...

put frosting in between each layer : P

then covered the whole thing in frosting

then kneaded and rolled out the fondant

and covered the cake with it...then i piped a strand of pearls around the edge

and piped designs and hunter and jackson's initials

i painted the top section with white pearl dust

and the bottom section with blue pearl dust

then painted the piping with silver pearl dust and some with white

WALAH!!!

shabbat shalom!

hi!...first of all i want to tell everyone that i purchased some edible gold and silver leafing and it is on its way!!! : ) look forward to a blingin' mini cake sometime in the next few weeks!

alright secondly, in honor of it being sunday i would like to direct you to a few photos. sorry i am lazy but there are so many good examples of what i am about to say...just click here and you will find some hilarious pictures. be sure to browse a lot of them! now, i had the thought to look this up out of curiousity and as i browsed the images i realized why i wanted to share these. as i have considered my desire to become a pastry chef and cake decorator i have thought a lot about what it is exactly that i want to focus on. shows like cake boss and ace of cakes are super fun to watch and i am always COMPLETELY amazed at how accurately they can make their replicas of everyday objects, buildings, places, characters, etc... but whenever i watch those shows i must admit, i get totally stressed out because i feel like i will never be able to make super grand cakes that look just like a giant crayon box or simba from the lion king!...wait, i not only feel like i won't be able to, i also know that i won't be able to, and guess what? after much discouragement and being overwhelmed i have decided i don't really care that i won't be able to because i don't want to. a few things that i have learned about art since becoming an art minor is that while replicating things can be super cool it isn't my favorite kind of art because it can never be true. it will always be the second best thing, because the first best thing is the thing you are replicating (um, confused yet?). for example, if you are making a temple cake even if you could make it look super accurate and detailed it would still not be as good as the temple!...so why try?

have any of you ever seen this painting by Rene Magritte? (the caption says: this is not a pipe.) the whole point of this painting is that it is an image of a pipe and not a pipe. it is funny because we often spend a lot of time replicating things...but why?...just to see how close we can get them to looking like the original? i think that is the reason...because when someone can get something to look super real it really is amazing. but sometimes time is better spent coming up with something totally it's own.

i have a question for you...which of the following two sculptures would you stop and think about and admire the longest?

bird in space by Constantin Brancusi

or

male redstart by Dorothy Doughty

i would probably look at the detail on the male redstart and admire it for how "real" it looked...but that is as far as my appreciation would go. bird in space is not only aesthetically pleasing but interesting in how it actually captures the movement of a bird...and it almost draws you in to look closer just because you wonder "how the heck does this have anything to do with a bird?" haha...

so i have come to the conclusion that my favorite art (or cakes) is art that uses everyday shapes, colors, and feelings as inspiration but does not attempt to replace it. Margaret Braun, the cakes i posted a few times ago (didn't see it? click here), is the best example of this i think. she uses objects and elements from the world but she doesn't try to replace them. her cakes look like cakes. and not only do they look like cakes, they are interesting all by themselves, without trying to look like another object.

so, while i fully appreciate cakes like this:

or this:

i have had to come to terms with the fact that if you can't get them to look THAT good, then don't try (must i remind you of this?). because nothing is worse than a failed attempt at replicating!...i think with practice i could learn to replicate things, but i have decided it wouldn't be worth my time. i would rather use things as inspiration and create things that will be appreciated on their own. with that said, the birthday cake i made for my cousins involved a little bit of replicating (the wii remotes, golf balls, some painting, etc..) and it was fun, but it wasn't perfect. i know it was actually far from perfect and could use a lot of improvement, but really nobody can get representations perfect because they are just that, representations. anyway, i am not opposed to fun cakes like that! especially for children's birthdays and other celebratory events, but i must say, there is nothing better than a well-designed, aesthetically-pleasing, perfectly-frosted cake! : )

these are three of my favorite wedding cakes done by Buddy from Cake Boss

...and so that is my goal; to be able to create unique cakes that look more like art than they do cartoons.

THE END.

also...if you are reading this and you haven't given me ideas for cake business names scroll dooooown and comment on my last post!

hello fellow CAKERS!

alright...it is time! i need to come up with a business name : ) there may or may not be a prize for the person who helps me come up with something that i like! i have some ideas already but i want some input to go off of as well before i decide. COMMENT and tell me your ideas! : )

fancy shhhmancy

I LOVE THESE CAKES.

these are all cakes done by margaret braun. she is seriously amazing. i have just recently discovered her artwork and i love it more than anything i have ever seen. i like that her cakes are so unique and they look more like real art...not cartoony edible art like most cakes do! : ) they seriously are amazing! here are some pics!

1000 explosions

baroque in patent leather

a close up...i LOVE how she uses so much metallic gold, silver, and white! can you see the gold leafing? i love it so much! it is my next experiment. i will be buying some edible gold and silver leafing of my very own to apply to a cake. i will report on this turns out very soon!

akbar's cake

eyes on ursula

gust tutti frutti

queen of symmetry

empress theodora

another close up...how cool are all the little "tiles"? ahhhhhhhhh! looks like a real mosaic!

cakewalk through barcelona

k...everyone...now go check out her website to look at more of her AMAZING cakes and see some more close up pictures! : ) ...just click here: http://margaretbraun.com/index.html

also if you know some awesome cake decorators and they have blogs or websites let me know in a comment! : )

....until next time, happy baking! : P baha

great to be 8!

my cousins turned 8 in march and my aunt so kindly asked me to make them a birthday cake!!! i was SOOO excited because i hadn't ever decorated a real cake for an event ever before! i did research starting like 3 weeks before and bought some books and tried out recipes and sketched designs! i had so much fun preparing to make them a cake!
their favorite colors are blue and orange and they love basketball, golf, poker (haha, i know, i know!), soccer, and playing wii! my aunt wanted to incorporate all these things into the cake. i knew i wanted to paint a mural on the bottom layer and also mold some things out of chocolate modelling clay! so i just started designing and came up with my final idea, which you will see below!

below are some chocolate modelling clay poker chips and some golf balls made with rice crispy treats and covered in modelling chocolate. the poker chips are just painted with lemon extract mixed with powder food color.

this part was super fun to do! i definately wanted to sculpt something and the wii remote was perfect cause it wasn't too complicated but still a little challenging. i used rice cripy treats to make the shape and then i covered them with the chocolate clay. i did get a bit frustrated with these because as you smooth out the chocolate it gets warm and melts on your fingers...so basically by trying to smooth it out you actually make it rougher! haha...but i eventually got them pretty smooth and just had to move on! i painted the details the same as i did the poker chips.

ok so before i move on with the process i have to tell a hilarious story.....basically for this cake i was focusing on the decorating and making it look decent. we didn't try to bake a homemade delicious cake or anything, just used a good ol' box! because seriously if you knew how many times you would have to double a normal cake recipe to fill my pans you would die. the bottom layer took us 4 chocolate cake mixes and the top one took us 3 vanilla mixes! these cakes were HUGE and extremely heavy! but back to the main story...we accidentally filled the vanilla cake too high and it overflowed in the oven!...it was a total flop so we had to bake a new one the next morning. well, we didn't even think about the fact that there was cake all over the bottom of the oven and when we preheated it in preparation to bake the new cake it STARTED ON FIRE! ha!!! we were screaming and jumpin around cause we didn't know what to do, but thankfully my uncle came to the rescue and put it out for us so we could just keep workin! : )

here are some pics leading up to the final cake! : )

rolling the fondant

starting the mural

painting a cake is hard because the food colors run and bleed! i got a lot of practice on this cake though because there were so many precise lines.

the bottom layer complete with its background color

a view of the other side of the mural

the final cake!...i love this picture because with my cousins' big birthday gift sacks behind it it looks so festive! haha

my super cute cousins hunter and jackson! : )

just some other views of the cake:

so...all in all i think the cake was a success! : ) i was really happy with how it turned out and i also had soooo much fun working on it! me, my aunt, and my cousins had some awesome adventures through this process and i would say we all learned at least on new thing about cake! i started the cake on a friday night and worked all day saturday for the most part and then i stayed up until 7 sunday morning. i probably couldn't have gotten through that night without my cousin Baylee who stayed up to keep me company or without the endless supply of dr. pepper my aunt and uncle so kindly provided! : ) at 7 me and Bay took a 2 hour nap and i finished up the cake from 9 until 1, an hour before the birthday party began! ha! i had so much fun on this cake! and seeing my cousins have so much fun eating the goodies and helping me make poker chips made it even better! i will be doing a cake for their baptism pretty soon and i cannot wait! : ) we are going to have so many more adventures.

it's alright to be itty bitty : )

so a few months ago i went on a total shopping splurge at gygi's in salt lake and bought some new supplies! i was sooooo excited to use my new MINI pans!!! : ) so me, heather, and our dear friend justin had a cake decorating night! we baked 6 mini cakes and covered them in fondant and attempted to decorate them. we weren't doing anything special as far as delicious recipes for frosting or cake, i basically just wanted to test out my fondant recipe and have an excuse to use the cutest cake pans in the world!

this is me putting fondant on one of my mini cakes....a LOT harder than you might think! turns out my revolving cake stand doesn't work so well with the miniatures...

...and there was a little accident : )

but i did eventually get it covered and quickly piped some icing pearls around the bottoms. let me tell you though, canned icing doesn't work that great for decorating! as you can see, my pearls are not quite the same size! haha...but i did redo them so no worries.


so, another reason i wanted to do these mini cakes as practice was to test out painting fondant. i did some research and found that the best way to paint it is to use powder food coloring and lemon extract. i wanted to try it out and so i kind of just started spreading colors on! i decided to do a fairy cake dedicated to my dearest sister brailee because she always does these cute magical characters! but since it was just practice i didn't spend too much time on getting them too cute or their heads proportional or anything like that...as you can tell. but it was fun! and even though the colors aren't that great and some of the fairies have problems, you have got to admit those mini cakes are just too cute!

an up close of a fairy! : ) and also you can now see that my pearls have been fixed and evened out! wahoo

just paintin'

me and my mini cake!...i didn't bother finishing the top and bottom layer because i really was just doing to it test out the paint...which turned out to work pretty good but it is a lot like using watercolors which are ANNOYING. the fondant soaks the liquid right in and so it bleads into places you don't want it to! you must be extremely careful. one great thing about it is that it smells delightful!

and there you have it! this is probably about the 4th cake i have covered in fondant. my very first one was in a wilton class, my second was a birthday cake (if i ever get brave i will put up a picture of it...it was HORRIBLE...the fondant was the quick marshmallow kind and melted...sooo embarassing!), and my third was like a year ago after i made my first successful batch of fondant but i just left that white and didn't decorate it cause it was just for practice. so i guess this was the first successful cake covering and decorating i did! : )