schwammrs's Cake Central Gallery

For A Rusticly Elegant Bride And Groom

I made this cake as a wedding gift for my brother, Al, and his beautiful bride, Mary, who both love nature... and hate fondant. From the top: 6inch - 8inch - 10inch - pillars - 10inch - 12inch. Top and middle cakes were Betty Crocker Yellow, rest were Betty Crocker Devils Food; covered in all-shortening vanilla buttercream - which held up beautifully in the hot outdoor setting. Flowers and leaves cut freehand from gumpaste, then outlined with chocolate buttercream. (Before outlining, I painted some luster dust into the middles of the flowers.) And now for my Twilight Zone experience while working on this cake: after I had decided on my final design of the jagged piping on the sides and the flat, sketchy-outlined flowers, using greens and browns (the wedding colors), my cousins and I were browsing through wedding cakes on theknot.com and we saw the VERY SAME idea already done! And here I thought I was being somewhat original! Oh well, I guess not. :) (If you want to see it, I posted a photo of it in a forum question here: http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopicp-6905623-.html , cake done by Truli Confectionary Arts in Philadelphia.) I ran into many obstacles along the way -- being in an unfamiliar kitchen, having to bake at a higher altitude, mismeasuring ingredients (seriously?!?), dealing with pillar supports that didnt match the holes I had left for them, running out of icing -- but it all turned out OK in the end, and the couple loved their cake. Yay! I am SO glad I had this site to turn to for advice before attempting any of this!

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Ahg Kick-Off Cake2

This was the other cake we made for our AHG Kick-Off Night. It was huge (in comparison to usual 8"-round cakes)! Two 9x12x2 side by side, with two more stacked on top. The letters and stars are MMF (marshmallow fondant). The top is iced with buttercream, the sides with MMF. Not sure why we did it that way, other than it was late and we were tired and we didn't relish the thought of trying to roll out a piece of fondant that was 20" x 26" or larger! Why we didn't just buttercream the sides, I have no idea anymore either. : )

schwammrs

Ahg Kick-Off Cake 1

Yellow cake with fondant icing. Sliced the cake in half at an angle, then twisted the top around 180 degrees to get the tilt. Originally, this was going to be on top of a larger rectangular base cake, but we didn't have dowels etc and were afraid it would be too heavy, plus didn't want the headache of having to disassemble it before we served it. We put it in the fridge since the event was still two days away -- made the fondant a little bit shiny, but nobody seemed to care.

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Wow Mom!

From one direction, it says 'Mom." From the other, "Wow" which is what one says when one has a great mom and thinks of all she's done for one. Chocolate cake with green buttercream and (gasp, dare I admit this) store-bought chocolate icing (I was in a time crunch, with no more powdered sugar left!). The color scheme makes me think the cake would taste minty. It didn't. : )

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Blue's Clues Inspired Cake

My daughter LOVED Blue's Clues and finding the paw prints. So I used that as my design guide for her two-year-old birthday cake. Chocolate cake with buttercream.

schwammrs

Two-Person Birthday Cake

My daughter was born just days before my father-in-law's birthday, so when they were coming for a visit around the one-year mark, I made this cake celebrating both of them.

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Clothesline Congratulations

I had so much fun with this cake -- had just recently received a dozen food color jars from a friend, so mixed up lots and lots of colors! I got the design idea from the napkins and plates being used at the shower. For the little clothespegs, I used wooden skewers, cut into short lengths and sanded a bit to get rid of the sharp slivers at the ends. For the border, I used each color, making small dots every so often with the first color, then making more dots randomly with the second color, and so on til there was no more room for more dots. Then piped a line on either side to match the design on the plates. The cake was a big hit!

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For An Avid Scrapbooker

I didn't have my usual cake pans for this, and the pan I used gave me really sloped sides. Which made me think of the pages of a book, which made me think of this design for my friend who loves to scrapbook. I cut the cake a little off center so that when I stacked it, the "page edges" would line up. I covered both sides of a long piece of cardboard, bent at the right places to form the cover. For the rings of the "scrapbook", I used whatever wire I could find; if I were to do it again, I think I'd used some strips of aluminum foil to make the rings more substantial - you could hardly see them. The picture of her is just printed on paper and laid on the cake, not ideal, but all I had time for.

schwammrs

A And M's Engagement

My brother and his fiancee asked me to make the cake for their upcoming wedding in August. So when they were out visiting at Thanksgiving and after we'd talked about some design ideas, I made them this little cake, partly to test out the design we'd talked about (swirls on the wedding cake might be green and brown) and partly just to celebrate their engagement. These swirls are made of MMF; not sure what I'll use for the wedding cake yet, since the swirls were time-consuming to cut out. Chocolate (I'm getting streaking in the colors shapes I've tried)? Royal icing, flooded (never done that before; does it taste good)? Something else?

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Gender Reveal Cake

Though it's not technically a "baby shower" cake, this seemed the best album for it. The mom of a pregnant friend of mine really wanted to know the gender of the baby, so my friend decided to surprise her with this cake. Actually, first she gave her an ultrasound photo where the technician had added the text "Grandma, what's my favorite color?" and then she invited her mom to cut the cake. Which was pink in this case. We got the idea for the design from a cake on flickr ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/cakejunkie/4385154585/ ). I made my dots out of colored chocolate (anyone know why my first ones were solid-colored but the ones I did last had white streaks throughout). I tried a new buttercream recipe (trying to find one that's smoother than the one I use now) -- it was smooth all right, but it tasted HORRIBLE!!! (2+ cups of fat to only 3 cups sugar ?!? I should've known something was wrong but it was in a published cake book that looked incredible!!!) So I doctored it up a ton... and ended up with my typical smoothing problems. Actually, this time was even worse. Hopefully, I'll find a good recipe here at CC. (Just came across this site yesterday - how have I missed it all these years?!?)

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