Opening up another session of the FNCC! Everyone is welcome to share their week, photos of their work, ask for help or provide help if they can! All levels of work are appreciated here. Hope to see lots of photos tonight!

Cat

Hi everyone!

Hope you all had a great week! No baking for me this week. Lots of beach time and I got a new part time job but no baking. Tonight I'm starting this a bit late because my hubby and I actually got a "Date Night"! We went to go see classic cars and then watch the sunset over the beach. This weekend is filled with birthday parties but I didn't do the cakes for any of them...and, oddly, I'm ok with that!

Hope to see all of your wonderful creations!

Cat

Glad to hear you had a date night sounds wonderful!! I've been a busy bee this week and even got some baking in. Mostly work and legal stuff going on this week but we have made great progress on the commercial kitchen. Not to overwhelm this thread I'll post update photos in my taking the plunge thread lol. Here's what I made this week. I finally made flooded cookies. Donuts anyone lol :) can't wait to see everyone else's work from the week!!!

@Webake2gether   Are those real donuts or are those the cookies? They look like real donuts! They are awesome and yummy looking!

Cat

Thanks!! I usually ice my sugar cookies with buttercream but I wanted to try something new. They are sugar cookies with flooded icing. I made the glaze type icing for the first time. I have a lot to learn with the flooding technique but I thought these were cute :) these are some rainbow cookies I did with buttercream a few months ago for the Girl Scouts 

I only have a small rosette cake for Sunday this week.  We just got back from a beach vacation, the kids are back in school so I'm just kind of enjoying the quiet right now!

Love your cookies Webake2gether!  Flooding is so much fun, once you're in it will be hard to go back.  It is very time consuming though.  I have some fun cookies coming up, looking forward to posting those!

I am working on a secret garden themed bridal shower cake for Sunday.   It's for my niece and I have free reign on the entire cake.   

I am *hoping* to create a stone effect on the bottom tier, the middle one I am stuck on....can't decide what I want to do.... The top tier I am going to attempt a bas relief technique with pieces that one would find in the garden....flowers, birds, vines etc....it will be white on white.

i made flowers to accent the entire cake with....which is why I am stuck on the middle tier....I don't want the design to be too busy....but am not sure if a totally blank tier in between two fairly textured ones will look ok.   The flowers though will be placed on parts of that tier.

sigh.    This cake has kept my brain spinning with ideas every night for weeks...in a good way, but I am so accustomed to having people dictate what THEY want that the creative process with this cake feels vast because I want to do all the cool things I don't get to do normally because I have total control with this one.

Hi everyone! Hope you all had a great week. 

@mccantsbakes  Those flowers are absolutely beautiful!! WOW. Can't wait to see the final product!

Here's my work for the week!

Minion Cookies: (I have a slight obsession with Minions lol )

These cupcakes and cake pops for a Rapunzel themed birthday:

These sugar cookies and cake pops for a baptism:

and finally a Nirvana cake:

I've been struggling with our Kitchen Aid microwave ever since we moved. I can't get the candy melts to melt at the right consistency and its starting to really frustrate me because my cake pops don't turn out as smooth as they used to. The chocolate is clumpy and not runny like it used to be. I tried adding Crisco and it barely worked. This microwave also has power levels which I tried to change but that didn't make much of a difference either. Does anyone have any suggestions? Thanks!

Good morning everyone! WOW! My eyes are popping at the creations this week!

@Pastrybaglady  Hope you post photos of the cake! I'm so happy we live so close to the beach now...it just revitalizes you!

@Webake2gether  I've never gotten the hang of flooding cookies...may need to try it again!

@mccantsbakes  The flowers are amazing! So beautiful. Can't wait to see the final cake. How about blades of grass for the center tier? If you make very close shades of green and texture them just a little bit they would add to the cake without overwhelming the center tier or the flowers?? Just spitballing here! LOL!

@SweetShop5  I don't know where to begin this week...everything is just so wonderful! I'm partial to the minions but I just love everything. And a 15 year old is into Nirvana??? What a cool kid!

You guys totally inspire me. I have no idea what the week ahead holds for me with the new job...it's only part time so maybe just a couple of days work...but I have all this left over blue frosting to use up so I may just need to come up with a new cake just for the family for next weekend!

Cat

@SweetShop5  Maybe you need to go old school with a double boiler!

Here's how the secret garden cake turned out 

@mccantsbakes   

That is simply GORGEOUS! Those flowers are really outrageous! And the design on the tiers gives it texture without stealing the show from those flowers. Really wonderful work!

@mccantsbakes  Wow!  Your flowers are crazy realistic and the colors you accomplished, so beautiful :)

Thank you lovelies for the kind words!   I apologize that the picture is all sideways.   I can't figure out why it keeps loading like that.....it's the right direction on my device.  Grrrrr. 

The colors came out so incredibly rich, I was super worried about that part when coloring my gumpaste.  The purple roses photograph almost a blue....but in person they were this really gorgeous indigo which when dusted created these beautiful shadows.  I couldn't be more pleased with the colors.  

What was even better than the presentation high I got from this cake, was that the taste was raved about by the attendees of the shower and even the wait staff for the event raved over the taste (We had a lot left over and fed the entire restaurant staff a slice)   I pretty much left today floating on happy....it's gonna take a lot to bring me back to earth :)

I am SO proud of this cake.    You know when you make a cake and it's one that makes you grow as a baker and artist........this was one of those cakes for me.  

@mccantsbakes  wow is all I can say those flowers are incredible!!! I can't wait for those moments to happen lol :)

Webaketogether----they will happen and usually when you don't expect it.

on a deeper level for me, doing cakes again is almost a spiritual thing right now.   I had a traumatic loss 22 months ago and with that loss went my will to create anything.    For 18 months.   So the last few months my passion has came back in this almost transformative way.   I am so hungry to create goodness, joy, expression......it is powerful.   It is healing.  It is reclaiming a piece of me that I thought was gone in the aftermath of what happened to my family.    The super cool part of getting my passion back is that my skills have exploded....I have just hit a growth spurt in ways I didn't even know I was capable of.    I look at my work in the final days of what I refer to as life in the before, and I look at what I am creating now, it's almost like I am a total different baker.   Maybe I am truly baking from a place of peace and grace and heartbreak and strength.   Or I am just taking risks on things I wouldn't have touched before.  I don't know....whatever it is, I am obsessed and want to grow even more and more and more.   There is such talent in this community and I want to be at that level someday....

Made 2 this week!!

Made this for my sons birthday, he's a massive lego fan and loves the movie :)

And then I made this for a friends 2 yr old's birthday, based on his favourite book. I'm quite pleased with how this one turned out :)

My sister's baby shower cake I finished Friday night! I used an old postal scale as a cake plate  

@mccantsbakes  it is inspiring to hear a person's loss and tragedy birth such beauty!!! I know from personal experience as well the life after heartbreak (loss) can be full of of joy and unimaginable beauty. (although the losses in my life were not tragic just very close in timing so I'm sure that is something I can't understand). After the death of each of my parents came the birth of my sons and life with them is a blessing. I can't wait to see all of the wonderful things you are going to create!!! Thanks for sharing :)

@catlharper  Thank you!! I was also shocked to read that the Nirvana cake was for a 15 year old! Definitely not something you hear every day.

@Pastrybaglady  I'm gonna have to give that a try since I am running out of options 

@mccantsbakes  The cake turned out absolutely stunning!

Wow I love the cake you all posted!   Such talent in this community!

The postal scale as a cake stand is genius!   I want ONE

@mccantsbakes  I do understand where you are coming from. I didn't pick up my camera for months after we lost our infant son. For me that's a huge thing since my camera goes with me every where I go every day. It sat neglected for 6 months. We went on a trip and I took it with me as an afterthought and there I found my art again. Your art is simply lovely and I hope to see much more of it.

@CoinUK  LOVE the legos....they are a real favorite in this family (the only toy we don't give away, we only hand down) so that's a hit here! My son, Jack, would have loved that Caterpillar cake since he adored that book! Lovely clean work.

@cupcakemama3  Love the cake...especially the ruffled edges! I, too, love to use unusual things for cake stands but you took the cake with this one! SO great!

Cat

 Thanks @mccantsbakes  and @catlharper  !

Everyone's cakes and cookies look beautiful!

Webaketogether and catlharper----thank you for sharing with me your posts.  I have been thinking about them today and how to thoughtfully reply.    It truly is amazing how resilient the human spirit is when faced with unthinkable heartbreak.  How out of the ashes of tragedy and so much pain, we can, in our own time, find pieces of that joy we had in the before. I think that the pieces in the after are so much more meaningful because they are truly expressions of all of the joy, the pain, the anguish, the hope and most of all the love that inspires us.   

I am happy to be in good company as I explore where my passion takes me,  best wishes to all of you as well on your path!

Thank you @mccantsbakes  That's one of the silver linings to loss. That as well as the fact when you come up on someone else who has recently gone through the loss you will be able to help them as no one else can. I have been able to help others along our way in the past 15 years and it occurs to me over and over again how I'm blessed to be able to do so.

Cat