Final thoughts for the year

As this year ends, here are some of my final thoughts. I am blessed that I have a very supportive husband who has been patient with me while I spend countless hours doing this time consuming and expensive hobby. I am also blessed with my secure job as a physical therapist during this time of economic hardship. In less than half a year, I have learned a lot and have been humbled in this world of cake decorating. I plan to further take classes so I can learn to create more cakes and perfect my skills. I also want to further share great tasting cakes to those who hate them and hopefully change their opinions. Thank you for your time and have a great new year!

Farm animal themed baby shower cake / cupcakes

Yeah, I finally finished this year with an order for my husband's coworker's baby shower. It was farm animals. I decided to mold fondant into farm animals to match the cupcake picks that I found. I also accented the cake with light blue flowers and baby images. All these were then tied into the cupcakes. The cake was a 5 in. red velvet with cream cheese buttercream. The cupcakes were the same as the cake as well as chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream.

Sugar paste roses and orchids

This has been the busiest and craziest weekend ever because I actually have 6 orders of cakes or cupcakes to do. I pulled through and still managed to work a full day at Kaiser yesterday and take this wonderful class at Let Them Eat Cake in Costa Mesa today.

Learned alot from Margie. Boy, these flowers were tedious, but looked so pretty. No wonder we can charge an arm and a leg for these.

Snowflake cake

I wanted to try a winter themed cake for this holiday party cake order. This was a chocolate pound cake with chocolate buttercream. I discovered that I am not a big royal icing fan and putting the edible beads was not easy.

Gingerbread man cake

This was a birthday cake for a 8 yr old boy. He requested cinnamon flavored cake. So, I came up with a cinnamon chocolate cake with cinnamon buttercream. I thought of adding the santa hat to add to the festive holiday season. This was so much easier to carve, frost, and lay fondant over than the hand cake.

Hand cake

Attempted to do a carved cake for the first time. My coworker, Linda passed her CHT exam and I thought it would be cool to make a hand cake. Boy, this was hard to do because of all the curves, from crumb coating to putting the fondant on. I should have left the writing to my husband. Mine is not as good as his. This was a 2 layer red velvet cake with cream cheese buttercream, her favorite.

"Chinese Cake"

I called this Chinese cake because of the super red color with gold (no characters though) I made it for my dad and sis-in-law's bday celebration today. I decided to try painting again. The red was made out of super red gel color, vodka, and luster dust. I also tried a marble effect at the bottom. This was a 6 in red velvet cake with cream cheese filling and chocolate buttercream.

Strawberry Shortcake 1st Birthday

This was such a cute cake after everything was done. It was for our coworker's niece's first birthday. Theme was Strawberry Shortcake. I decided to match the color into the cake and cupcakes. The cake was a 6 in round chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream. My husband actually wrote on the banner. Covered the cake board in fondant and glued the candle with royal icing. Hopefully the celebrant will enjoy them.

Kaiser Christmas Cake

This was the biggest cake project I have ever made. Jayson volunteered my services for his Christmas party. I decided to do 3 tiers, 3 layers of 8, 10, and 12 in rounds, about 5 in. high. The top two were red velvet with cream cheese, the bottom was chocolate pound cake with chocolate buttercream. To make it more festive, I used xmas cookie cutters for the bow strip. The only thing that went wrong with this one was that the royal icing at the bases melted. Other than that, I spend a good 15+ hours on this cake. Glad it was able to make it to Pasadena, boy it was heavy!

Blue green cake

This blue, green cake is made out of red velvet and my new cream cheese buttercream recipe. It was for Jayson's coworker, Cindy. I took a painting class 2 weeks ago from Let Them Eat Cake of Costa Mesa with Beth. Therefore, I tried painting the color blue for the background using vodka and gel color (as you can tell by the streaks). This was my first time using a square pan.