Great American Bake Sale

I really want to get involved in the Great American Bake Sale

http:​/​/​gabs.​strength.​org/​site/​PageServer?​pagename=​GABS_​homepage

It puts 100% of the proceeds towards helping children and their website claims the funds stay local. I really want to sign up to host a bake sale, but I need to know that there will be people behind me on this because I can't do it all by myself. If you would be willing to bake a dozen cookies, bake a cake, make some brownies or cup cakes or something to donate to this, and if you'd be willing to sit someplace with me on a Sunday or two selling this stuff for a good cause, please let me know.

If I can get the people behind it, I am more than willing to put in the leg work to advertise our bake sale and get us a spot to hold it. 

If you are here in Dayton, Ohio and want to help, shoot me an email at gemcitykitty@tmail.com

Lovely

This is the best cake I've ever made! I think it's completely lovely. My friend ordered it from me for her sister's bridal shower.

She gave me a lot of creative control, which I loved because this was a cake I've been wanting to make.

My original design was only two tier, but I kept staring at it this morning thinking, no, no I need one more tier! It needs three. this is the first 3 tier cake I have made. I was really excited about it.

This cake is surrounded in rolled vanilla wafers and topped with white chocolate that I spent over an hour curling to perfection.

The wedding colors were lavender and white, I really wanted lavender roses and I was way excited when I found these cloth o

nes at the store which matched the ribbon perfectly.

Beneath all this, the top tier is confetti cake, the middle tier is chocolate and 

the bottom tier is confetti. Yum!

Today I also made cake pops for the first time! I've been wanting to do them for a while. It was a lot of work!

I cut small cylinders of cake out of a sheet cake, dipped the bottoms in candy melt and put s

ticks in them. I let the candy melt set up in the fridge for a bit and then iced the tops.

I ended up taking these into the bar I work at for my co-workers to munch on and give away to friends.

While I was in there I got to snag a fresh strawberry cookie that my boss's mom had made. It was delicious haha.

I made some full size cup cakes today to because I can't handle not having some kind of cake in the house at all times now haha. Didn't take any photos though! Sorry!

One of my favorites so far!

This wonderful cake is hiding a delicious secret beneath all this decor... 

White chocolate filled rolled wafers are pressed into the side of the cake while top is comple

tely covered in hand-shaved dark chocolate.

Inside? Devil's food cake! Coated in a buttercream with a hint of cocoa powder and a slathering of chocolate syrup in the center, between the two layers!

The Best part about making something so delicious?

Eating it! Of course! So tasty!!!

Mother's Day cakes

Alright, so today is Mother's Day and I decided to make some special cakes for my mom and my mother in law. I figured it's kind of a lot to ask someone to take an entire cake home, it's a lot of cake to eat, so I made one large cake and cut it in half! 

I did this before I covered in fondant, of 

course. I made 3 colors of fondant and rolled out two large sheets of orange to cover the halves. My mom loves tigers and my mother in law's favorite color is orange. 

This was the best I've ever done on covering cakes with fondant

. I was REALLY REALLY watching Ace of Cakes earlier and watching extra close whe

n they were covering cakes today so I could try to get the technique down. I realized there's no reason I should EVER have a seam in a fondant covered cake.

After covering both cakes, I went to work on the details. 

I covered my mom's with black fondant tiger stripe

s, cut out with a pizza cutter and Brian's mom's with fondant flowers cut out with fondant cutters.

Overall, huge success. I love the way they look! The insides were alternating layers of lemon and white cake! Yum!

Rainbow cake

Alright, alright, here's what I was making earlier. I know it looked like a stack of kitchen sponges, but it was really a seven layer rainbow cake!

Nom nom nom!

VERY time consuming. Each layer was colored and baked one at a time! I loved how it came out. It was a mini cake test run... I want to make a full size version some day! I was excited I got the full spectrum! 

Birthday Cake!

I worked on this cake all day! This is basically the first time I've sat down in hours. My feet hurt like they hurt after I work at the bar lol.

Today I made this birthday cake. It's f

or the little girl who's parents needed some help. I'm donating this cake to them free of charge. I had to make it a couple of days early, but you'd be surprised how long all that frosting and fondant keeps cake fresh lol. 

The bottom tier is one big round yellow cake. The top tier is a two layer chocolate cake. I covered the top layer in purple fondant and the bottom layer is covered in buttercream. I cut zebra stripes out of fondant for the 

bottom tieras, well as the polka dots for the top tier.

I went with yellow buttercream for the piping work because I thought it w

ould really make the zebra print pop. It really turned out well.

I think the coolest part was I drew a picture of what I wanted this to look like and it came out even better than my sketch.

I thought the zebra print would be hard, but it turned out to be pretty simple all in all. 

I covered my cake board in a girly pink wall paper sample for some added pizzaz. I hope little Courtney loves it. It's probably the best cake I've made so far.

Today I also worked on an experiment for a crazy layer cake.

More on that later hahaha... I was trying to accomplish something but I was so damn tired after making the birthday cake that I ran out of any energy to come back to this. 

I made cupcakes this weekend!

They were delicious.

They weren't all the most glorious looking... I was quickly running out of frosting after making 

several roses lol. It was fine though, I started kind of slopping it on with interest in time saving... didn't effect their yum-factor!

For good measure, here's a photo of my cat being freaking adorable.  His name is Gibson.  He really wanted some cupcakes, but I told him no. He was kind of heartbroken about it since we were all really enjoying them :)

Cakes next week

I have several cakes coming up next week!
I will be working on a cake for a special little girl's birthday. I plan on making it very fun and girly. Lots of colors, shapes and all fondant. I want to make it two tier with stars and polka dots and zebra print... something like they made on the food network challenge for Miley Cyrus.

I also possibly have a cake for my old friend Charlie's sister's birthday.
She asked for speakers for her car... so he wants me to make a cake that looks like a box with two subs in it! haha... I'm totally down. We just have to work out the logistics. I think he said it was next Friday, but if it's this Friday, it's a no go... I have no time this week for cake, sadly.

I also have to make one or two cakes for mother's day. I think we'll have both of our moms over at the house for dinner and I'll just make one cake so everyone can have some.

We're having company this Sunday for dinner, but I might make cup cakes. I can bring some to the bar if they don't get eaten!

cake cake cake!!!

So far

I started making cakes on May 11, 2009.
I've decided that cake is a pretty safe business to be in. People will always have birthdays, people will always get married and people will always have special events and need and wants cakes to celebrate them with.

I want to turn my art into something fun and exciting that will really effect people. I want to make cakes that when presented people say "wow" and want to take pictures. I want to make cakes that are different and outside the box. I want people to remember my cakes and ask "where can I get a cake like that?"

I'm working on creating a portfolio. Thankfully, I'm finally getting busy enough to really start creating. I learn SO much with every cake I make and go into each one with greater confidence.


The first cake I made was not perfect by any means.
I made gum paste roses, which I slaved over for hours. I covered it in buttercream and I tinting icing pink for the piping.
I had a hell of a time getting my icing smooth and I don't think I even realized that on my very first try, I would not end up with the most omgperfectly smooth amazing cake on earth.

I was pretty happy with it in the end.






The next time I thought I would try fondant. I didn't care much for the flavor, but I like the way it looks and it's basically an industry standard. This on had me losing my mind. It's waaaay harder than they make it look on tv. Charm City Cakes makes it look for effortless.
Well, my cake was not level, my crumb coat was far from smooth and my fondant took on the shape of every imperfection. Oops. I mad a mangled mess of the bottom, which I tried to then cover with a bow. Hmm. Something like that, eh? Not my best work for sure haha.



My friend then asked me if I could make her son a WALL-E birthday cake. I wanted to do a test run. So I made a small version of the cake I eventually wanted to do, just to get my ideas and techniques down. It turned out really well for a trial run and was the first time I carved cake.





After this, with a while before my Wall-e deadline, Easter was coming up. I made a cake to bring to my family function. I got up early easter morning and threw it together. Complete with a dyed egg. It was fun and everyone like it.
It was a strawberry cake inside. My buttercream came out really well and I made some gum paste florals.






After Easter, I wanted to try a two tier cake. I used my new spring form pans and made a Devil's food cake two tier cake. I colored my buttercream Tiffany blue and the piped with some white. It came out pretty well. I was trying to make it elegant. It might not have come out perfectly elegant lol, because I was piping it at like 3am... but considering it was the first thing I've done like that I was pretty happy with it. (I say that a lot haha...) Someday I will be able to just say YEAH! Look at my awesome cake.





Finally, it was time to make the REAL Wall-E cake. I put so much into it and it came out very well! Wall-e and Eva standing in front of Wall-e's little house. So cute. stacked several cakes. Two sheet cakes and two square cakes and then carved the top cakes into the shape of his house.

Eva is gum paste. The lunch box and other things like that are gum paste. The stars and blue panels are fondant. The bridge and wall-e were the only things not edible on the cake. Everything else the children devoured!




I then took great pride in my favorite thing I've made so far! My Fight Club cake! I am a huge fan of Fight Club and the 10 year anniversary of the movie is coming up. What better way to celebrate than with cake??

I figured it was time to give fondant another chance...
I made my own this time though! Marshmallow fondant tastes good and was much easier to work with. I loved it. It was so great.

I cut the letters out of gum paste and then laid them on my cake after the crumb coat. I laid the fondant over the letters and secured it into place. After this, I used my gum paste tools to smoth all the fondant around the letters to make them raise out of the cake. It was lovely. I love it!



This is the last cake I made. It was for my niece's baptism last weekend. I made a white cake with buttercream. Then I covered it with green home made fondant. I made the stream from fondant as well. I created the tree from rice crispy treats and covered it in fondant.

It was a very exciting cake for me because it was the most technical cake I have done and it turned out REALLY well. I was really proud of it!
Everyone loved it so much that no one wanted to cut into it! Hah! The next day Lisa said it was so good that she even ate the tree lol.