Starting another session of the FNCC! ALL levels of cakers are welcome to share their weeks, photos of their work, ask for help or provide help if they can!
Cat
Only one cake this week..my SIL's golf cake! It was really humid that day so I ended up with slightly droopy fondant...he loved it anyways!
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Wow even droopy it looks good my ball cakes never look that good.
Only baking I have plan are some cupcakes for work. Just not sure when. They are for August birthdays so I still have time.
Spending today making cupcakes for my best friend's daughter to sample tomorrow in advance of her wedding in Feb. So far I have done vanilla with vanilla buttercream, chocolate with white chocolate buttercream, mocha, raspberry & coconut with raspberry flavoured white chocolate buttercream. Left to make I have lemon drizzle, coffee & walnut and orange & elderflower.
@catlharper it looks pretty good to me :-)
I received feedback on the Kevin minion cake I did last week. The comment was best cake ever but that the birthday boy was traumatized when it came time to cut him. He knew that I was cake but the idea of cutting up Kevin I guess was hard for a three year old brain to process. Poor little guy....
I only had one cake this week and it was for someone I don't know. Word seems to be spreading that I make cakes as this was for a co-worker of one of my boyfriend's friends. Lol. She wanted a kayak themed cake for her daughter's 15th birthday. My original idea was for the kayak to be the cake until she sent me pictures of the kayak. Racing kayaks are very skinny and with the dimensions too hard to make it a cake unless it was like 3 feet long. So instead I did my best to model one out of gumpaste for on a simple 9x12" cake. I don't know the correct terms for everything but the handle part of the paddle is two toothpicks glued together and painted black and the ends of it are gumpaste. I used yellow fondant to cover the cake board because the aquatic club's logo is black on yellow. She was (thankfully) thrilled with it.
Other than that I tried out cake lace for the first time. I have a post about that (cake lace success :-) ) if you are interested in reading it. I buggered up my finger playing soccer today (I play nets) so don't want to type out all the details again.
At some point this weekend I am hoping to channel @MBalaska and try some gumpaste sunflowers. Friends are getting married next month and I am making the cake. Her flowers are going to be sunflowers so I'd like to have some on the cake but I've never made them before.
Hope you're all having a nice weekend :-)
Kelly
Nothing to show as the cakes are in "stages"
- Working on a Dolphin Theme BD Cake for a 7 year old. The fondant dolphins are drying. Her cake is filled and iced and in the freezer. A couple of days before her birthday, I'll thaw and finish up the fondant decorations and name plaque. She recently told me "I'm not a big fan of fondant," but she loves SMBC.
- Her Dad's birthday is the next day and he is getting a smaller Gnome House on a Tree Stump. The basis of the gnome house in fondant is done, but it needs some vines or flowers or something. I don't know what yet.
- Did two sheet cakes for funeral luncheons at church - of course, they are merely iced, not decorated. Our pastor loves Lemon Cake; the second was chocolate.
- Baked several 8" rounds and popped them in the freezer for some orders next month.
kstevens - I love your lace and I will probably do some testing this week on a musical scale mold. The Music and Roses cake is not due until November, so I have plenty of time to try to get it right. And what a story about the Minion Cake - poor little boy. Your kayak cake turned out pretty awesome, too.
catlharper - amazing "roundness" - I've never tried a ball cake.
hep275 - can you take me in for the cake tasting? Your flavors sound wonderful.
@kstevens my sons birthday is in October I may have to make him a kayak on his cookie cake. Him and his wife love kayaking. Love the lace.
@Nana52 can't wait to see the dolphin cake. The gnome cake should be cute to.
@catlharper I can't see any droopy fondant just a perfect golf ball! Never made a ball cake myself. Is it easy to get it so perfectly round? Did you carve it or use a ball tin?
@kstevens The kayak looks so real and I love the water! Saw your post about the lace. Good job! I love lace as it looks so elegant on a cake.
@nana52 Can't wait to see your dolphin cake. Am working on a similar cake right now but with a Marlin instead.
I had a 3 tier wedding cake this weekend, 10-8-6 with all extended tiers, chocolate cake, vanilla smbc and white fondant. They brides mom decorated it with silk roses after I delivered it which I was really relieved about because initially they wanted to use real roses. Flowers are widely available here and very cheap bit I was concerned about the chemicals used to spray them touching the cake/fondant and talked them out of it. There are no organic roses available here and when the cake gets moved from the A/C room to the garden i knew it would sweat a bit since it's around 90'F here at the moment. So removing fresh flowers would be tricky. What are your thoughts everyone?
@julia1812 The easiest thing to do is use flower picks. Those are small tubes that hold a stem or two of flowers and a bit of water. You insert them into the cake and then just take them out before cutting. This way the flowers don't ever touch the cake. The other way is to wrap the stem with plastic wrap, leaving just a bit to cover the bottom of the flower and keep it from touching the cake and then place them into the cake. One last way. Cut out small pieces of fondant, the same color as the bottom of the flowers. Snip the real stem, cover with the fondant "leaves" and then insert a toothpick and then insert that into the cake. The fondant, if colored correctly, cannot be seen and the toothpick holds the flower securely into the cake. Hope any of these suggestions help you in the future! BTW...amazingly clean cake!
Cat
Quote by @julia1812 on 12 minutes ago
@catlharper I can't see any droopy fondant just a perfect golf ball! Never made a ball cake myself. Is it easy to get it so perfectly round? Did you carve it or use a ball tin?
Julia, I used a ball tin. The hardest part is always the crumbcoating to get it smooth enough. I even chilled the cake before using the fondant but it just couldn't stand up to the humidity. Glad it looks good to you all! LOL! It wasn't hard, only took about an hour from start to finish after the chill.
Cat
Quote by @catlharper on 20 minutes ago
@julia1812 The easiest thing to do is use flower picks. Those are small tubes that hold a stem or two of flowers and a bit of water. You insert them into the cake and then just take them out before cutting. This way the flowers don't ever touch the cake. The other way is to wrap the stem with plastic wrap, leaving just a bit to cover the bottom of the flower and keep it from touching the cake and then place them into the cake. One last way. Cut out small pieces of fondant, the same color as the bottom of the flowers. Snip the real stem, cover with the fondant "leaves" and then insert a toothpick and then insert that into the cake. The fondant, if colored correctly, cannot be seen and the toothpick holds the flower securely into the cake. Hope any of these suggestions help you in the future! BTW...amazingly clean cake!
Cat
I made this cake for a celebration of life for my husband's aunt. She was 90 when she passed. I set up the cake and got her oldest daughter to see it. She was wearing dark glasses so I couldn't tell what she thought. She just sort of stood there saying nothing and then I realized she was crying. I hugged her and she said her mom would have loved it. A few minutes later her younger sister came out and looked at it and then she started crying. I hugged her as well and she said she loved it and her mom would have too. I've never had a cake experience like that, it was very sweet.
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What a beautiful cake @Pastrybaglady
I can understand that they cried!
Love the handwriting/-piping on the sides. It looks so clean and neat!
@catlharper fun golf cake, it looks great. I’d never even attempt a round cake.
@kstevens the sunflower took time, but was not too difficult – just big and cumbersome so best wishes on yours. It’s really nice the way you not only made waves in your ocean, but gave the colors movement on the sides.
@julia1812 the sides of your cake and the edges are supremely smooth, amazing.
@pastrybaglady you’ve created a very attractive floral display on a lovely cake. I’m sure it was greatly appreciated.
toothpick roses was my experiment for this week. Watched a few youtube tutorials and gave it a go.
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MBalaska - such pretty cookies - I've never been very good with royal - hands are not steady enough
Pastrybaglady - what a wonderful story and such a pretty bouquet
julia1812 - I want to be YOU and create those smooth barrels
Oooh @MBalaska, those cookies are gorgeous! The roses look amazing.
@kstevens, what a cool cake! there's just something about the sharp sides and the waves on top that is so intriguing.
@catlharper, what's so amazing about your golfball is how straight and perfect all the indents are!
Pastrybaglady this is gonna sound goofy but I paint my nails twice a week for work using dots so I think I'm use to making them in straight lines! LOL! .
As for your cake...I would have cried too! What a sweet story!
Cat
Pastrybaglady that is such a sweet and lovely story and a lovely cake too.
My efforts this week were a tad more on the frivolous side... a young lady wanted Deadpool's bottom in cake for her 21st birthday party. The pic is in my gallery but I won't post it here in case bottoms offend anyone :)
Hi all. Sorry about the duplicate lace photo post. The site was glitchy when I was on is what I figure happened and am just realizing now.
@Nana52 looking forward to seeing your finished creations.
@julia1812 your cake is perfect! What clean work.
@Pastrybaglady your cake is beautiful! I wish I could pipe like that. Sounds as though it really touched everyone.
@MBalaska your cookies are beautiful! Not sure what toothpick roses are, I'll have to Google it. Thanks for the compliment on the kayak cake. I initially had the waves around the sides of the cake too but it was too much so I smoothed them out and was much happier with the esthetic of the cake.
@me_me1 your cake is priceless! Not at all offended :-)
In addition to my cake lace I did another little test this weekend that we finally taste tested tonight. I tried out a gluten free vanilla cake recipe. I've never made one before but a friend has requested one so I wanted to test it out before doing her cake. I halved the recipe and made a little two layer cake. I decided to decorate it with the leftover blue buttercream from my kayak cake and some of the extra fondant flowers I have on hand after doing the cupcakes last weekend. Ideally it should have been baked an additional few minutes but other than that, no complaints. It has a nice texture and taste and baked higher than I expected of a gluten free cake. Because it was only for me I didn't trim the bottom of the cakes off to make it look all pretty when cut.
Special thanks to @MsGF for her help :-)
The colors are all really nice together on your cake @kstevens, the cut photo shows a perfectly put together cake, well done.
Nothing looks more delicious and inviting as a nice buttercream cake.
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