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!

Cat

Hi everyone! Hope you had a great week! Mine was sorta weird because our son had Monday and Tuesday off so this week has felt amazingly short! We went to the Bay Area for my hubby's birthday. It was totally great! My SIL has his own propane company and services Pebble Beach. For years they have been trying to get him to play the course so for my husband's birthday this year he took them out there for a round on Sunday. Dream come true for both of them. Because of the holiday we stayed an extra day there and didn't get home till Monday night but it was worth it so he could play and not have to drive home after. Here is his cake!

He's a huge 9ers fan and his best friend, who is also a big fan, was at his dinner too and they loved it so I guess I got it right. The "client" loved it so that's all that matters! LOL! 

It's all pies and cookies and things made from pumpkin for the next two weeks. Next cake isn't until after the 1st! Hope to see all of your wonderful creations tonight!

Cat

@catlharper your cake is awesome!!!   It would be fun to just sit on the deck and have a drink at Pebble Beach looking out at the ocean.   (ps: your cake matches my "Harbaugh" jersey!)

@MBalaska You can totally DO that! There is a wonderful place called The Bench that looks out over the 18th hole at Pebble. The views are amazing. I'll PM you a photo so you can refine your dream! LOL! Thanks for the compliment on the cake! I'm always SO nervous when making a cake that's not just my imagination...it's harder to fix if something goes wrong. No "I'll just put a flower over that" when you see a mistake! LOL!

Cat

Hiya Cat and all the Cakers that drop by this week. 

Love the helmet cake , it looks great Cat, Our footballers don't wear helmets , so football themes tend to be Jerseys , balls or fields depending on the code. 

My cake is not due til Monday so I am taking it a little easy. It is a Christmas Carousel , that will be the raffle cake for our Cake Club's Shopping Centre Display next week. It is fruitcake so it has  been baked since September. So far I have the three cakes that go into it covered and the horses are made.  

Hi Everyone!

Been a while (okay, feels like an eternity!) since I've been on CC and am excited to have a chance to check out what's going on with the FNCC again! Since the big cakes aren't due until Sunday, I'm glad I can take it a bit easier. Looking forward to getting back into CC and posting on the forums again.

For Sunday, I just have a ruffle wedding cake (with a 1/2 sheet kitchen cake) and a Despicable Me shaped birthday cake as a gift to my niece. All cakes except for kitchen cake are all set up and iced waiting to be decorated tomorrow.

No one has ordered a kitchen cake in a while and I forgot how much I hated baking/filling them!

Question: does anyone else bake their sheet cakes in regular sheet pans (1/2 sheet 1" deep) instead of the 2" deep 1/2 sheet cake pans or am I the only one that does that? (That's how all the sheet cakes were baked at the bakery I worked at here in Sacramento - without an extender. We just stacked the 1" layers then trimmed the edges/cut to size). Just curious?

Wanted to share one of the cakes from last week:

Hi everyone, and welcome back Aileen GP.  I'm just checking in.  Have my brother and wife visiting from the other side of our small world this week so not up to much.  Made the double choc chip cake with the lavender mousse and raspberry cream cheese icing from the Craftsy creative fillings class.  Tried piping rosettes for the first time but ran out of cream cheese icing so smoothed the sides and just left the rosettes on the top of the cake.  Think they were a bit flat looking and was not impressed overall so did not take a picture.  I think I needed to let the icing firm up more because even though I piped generous dams the mousse still managed to leak out and all the layers kept wanting to slide off for hours.  I did not like the lavender mousse and hoped that the raspberry cream cheese would tone it down a bit but it didn't.  I thought the cake was disgusting. (Mind you I don't like lavender, it upsets my sinuses).  Fortunately we all have different taste buds and I had made it for my SIL's birthday and she loved it, especially the mousse.  Son and hubby were like me and didn't like it but 5 out of 8 did like it.  Glad I tried it but would make plain mousse next time and about 1/4 of the recipe.

A[LEFT][/LEFT][IMG ALT=""]http://www.cakecentral.com/content/type/61/id/3305154/width/350/height/700[/IMG] Just got home from my first Christmas craft fair this year and am exhausted! Couldn't wait to sort out the kids (one is sick and through up all over my couch!), and sit down to rest and check out your newest creations

I have a cake being delivered tonight for a Doc McStuffins themed party. It's traveling about 2 hours so the topper will be added on site.

Amelmar02, lovely cake! I just noticed you use the same letter cutters (or however you call that) like me. I find them quiet a pain since it is so difficult to remove them from the mold! Do you have the same problem or can you give me advice?? Maybe I'm doing something wrong?!?

AAwwww gorgeous cakes!! Cat, i am loving your helmet cake! It looks real!! :)

And as a disney princess lover, one of my faves is Mulan! So i am loving the Mulan cake :) The Doc McStuffin is so neat! And i want fo taste the Dulce Leche cake! Never had one :(

Had no cake last week, we went to Las Vegas to attend my sister's wedding. Ohhhh boy, my 9month old did not like Vegas! Lol.. I guess the late night partying was too much for the lil one, so we were back at the hotel by 8pm every night! Hehehe but the wedding was beautiful :)

Here are my cakes! Stayed up till 4am to finish :( long night!

Basketball theme cake [IMG]http://www.cakecentral.com/content/type/61/id/3305197/width/200/height/400[/IMG]

3D Honda Civic cake [IMG]http://www.cakecentral.com/content/type/61/id/3305198/width/200/height/400[/IMG] [IMG]http://www.cakecentral.com/content/type/61/id/3305199/width/200/height/400[/IMG]

A

Do you have the funky letter cutters or mold? If you have the cutters, let your rolled fondant sit for about 5 mins so it's dry and then use the cutter. This helps reduce the stretch and keep your letters intact. Also dust a bit of cornstarch on the cutter and wiggle it a bit when cutting to get nice and clean cuts. :)

AYes, I have the cutters. I always dust with lots of corn starch (never tried waiting 5mins though) and have no problem to cut through, wiggle and separate. But when I lift the plate with the cutter, the letter is IN the cutter, while the rest of the fondant stays on my work surface

This was the first time I used them actually, and I didn't have an issue (knock on wood). I didn't let the fondant sit, but I did rub a ton of corn starch on the letter I wanted first. I didn't roll the fondant paper thin either. It is really cold here right now, so maybe that was in my favor? Hopefully it wasn't just beginners luck.

A[IMG]http://www.cakecentral.com/content/type/61/id/3305299/width/200/height/400[/IMG] I'm just practicing a few ideas for xmas. I love the Christmas jumper cupcake!

A@julia1812, i know right!? Kids take all the fun out! Hahaha j/k :) but it is hard to decorate when you have kids and work full time :( that means a lot of late nights! Hehehe

Oh yah, that happens to me too. The fondant gets stuck in the cutters :( then i have to use a pin to take the letter out. If i use gumpaste it help, it keeps the shape intact. Good luck!

You decorators are so very talented. Beautiful and fun cakes cara1982,mattyeatscakes, melmar02, julia1812, AileenGP.  Thank you for sharing

Wow, awesome work everyone! Great looking cakes!

Rustic / country wedding, whiskey barrel cake table, artificial sunflowers

Birthday cake based on the Beatles song When I'm 64. Fondant for red letters & numbers and cake board, all else buttercream

Joke birthday cake for a lady who always calls her coworkers "wieners"

Well done, everyone! The wiener cake won my heart!

Just posting for pity... I fell on Wednesday and damaged my right rotator cuff. I took the night off and then spent the next two days pulling all nighters to get the work finished. 

I realized during this time that my entire biz relies on my right arm. Seems like a real flaw in my biz plan! LOL

Now I know why bakeries close early on Saturday. I slept until 10 this morning, and I feel like i ran a marathon. No more marathons!

Jen

@ellavanilla: as a person who has slept at a Holiday Inn, may I recommend that you get the $2,000 home fondant sheeter as part of your medical care and physio therapy rehabilitiation.

@autumnwind your joke cake looks pretty convincing. Good job on that cake. very funny!

A wedding cake for a special couple this weekend. Inspired by Sugar Ruffles, UK

  

A cake just for fun last week, to practice my piping skills:

I also did a tie-dye cake (all airbrushing over buttercream) that I think came out nice but I can't get it off my phone at the moment.

So I had a migraine on Saturday so I wasn't able to start decorating my Sunday cakes till almost 8pm on Sat.. but thankfully they turned out really well... and I didn't have to pull an all nighter.. yay!

So here are the cakes from the weekend:

Wedding cake: (with the scariest delivery ever - almost 1 mile up a 25 degree grade which I had no idea existed when I mapped the delivery - apparently nicknamed the Berkeley Death Ride!! Thankfully the cake was only 2 tiers and was refrigerated solid and the super heavy 1/2 sheet kitchen cake was secured with extra non-skid liner - I was having visions of the 1/2 sheet crashing into the delicate ruffles as I was driving up... )

Despicable Me cake (niece's birthday present). The candles were placed on the mini cake itself and she had the whole mini cake (4") for herself.... this was next to the wedding cake and survived the crazy hill too (both ways.. yikes!)

WOW!! Everyone did a great job!! You people rock!!!

I know it is nearly Friday again but this is what I worked on last week, it is a raffle cake for our cake club and annual shopping centre displays. The tickets are selling really well so I am very pleased with that. The money raised goes towards ingredients and boxed and boards we use when we do Christmas cakes for every Police , Fire and Ambulance station in our city. 

AMimimakescakes, I love that one. It's so detailed with the cute horse and everything... Great! And I love the story behind the cake. Christmas is a time to share and help others and - like in your case - appreciate and acknowledge what other do. Me and some other moms in the area are just organizing our fifths annual sharing Xmas party in support of three orphanage in our town. But that has nothing to do with cakes, so I'm not going into detail, lol. Let the Christmas season begin