Thanksgiving

HAPPY THANKSGIVING EVERYONE!

I hope all of you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and were able to spend time with your loved ones.

Thanksgiving is my all time favorite holiday. It's great because there is no pressure with buying people the right gift, I love just being able to spend the whole day with my family, cooking and baking, and especially eating.... a lot. We eat, play some games, eat, lay around, drink, and eat some more then we usually watch a good Christmas movie, the last several years we've watched Elf. Love that movie!

This year I made some carrot cake. I know, pie is the traditional Thanksgiving dessert, but that's my Mom's job. Really, she's the pie lady in our family... I don't even dare going there. One year, I tried, and it' wasn't pretty... I mean, I am sure the pies would have been alright, if my Mom would've even let me make them. She's very particular about her pies, and that's just what she does. So I let her. Plus, I'm the cake lady anyway so it's fine.

So I made carrot cake. My Great-Grandfather whom I made the Navy Ship Cake for last year, (here) loves carrot cake so I decided that I'd make him his own mini cake special just for him, to take home and eat it all up himself. He loved it, but couldn't figure out why I made it just for him, because "it's not my Birthday or anything" so cute!

And since I was already making a mini cake... I decided to make another mini cake so everyone could have some, along with the pie.

I decided to decorate the cakes very simple. I made little acorns out of fondant and I found these adorable rice paper autumn leaves from this cute little shop on Etsy, oh how I love Etsy! The shop is called Sweet Deja Vu and lucky for me, is actually located right here in SLC so I ordered the leaves and met the owner of the shop, Lena, to pick them up. She's super sweet and really does amazing work. She has a lot of other items, like butterflies, flowers, and even snowflakes too! So go check out her shop, and order something!

So, even though it wasn't my Mom's pie, the cakes still were a hit... I might just do this again.

Nightmare Before Christmas

Jack Skellington cake from the Nightmare Before Christmas for a 17th birthday. The cake is chocolate stout and vanilla bean marble with vanilla Swiss butter cream, which by the way, is the greatest thing since the invention of cake. I'm in love with Swiss butter cream.

Pumpkin & Chocolate

Very tall birthday cake. Pumpkin & Chocolate.

Halloween

This is a little late, but better late than never right? Right!

I was asked to make a "scary" jack-o-lantern cake that should look "somewhat real" for a halloween party. Of course if you know me, having never made anything like this before it sounded like quite the challenge, and like it would also be super fun... plus halloween is like my favorite time of year! Cake + halloween = awesomeness!
Now, I think I say this a lot... which means either 1) I must be having more and more fun with each cake I do or 2) I am getting better with each cake (I think it's a little bit of both) but this was by far the coolest cake cake I think I have ever done. Also each step of the process got me more and more excited to see the finished product, I had a lot of fun doing this one! Although it was several days of long hours and late nights it was SO worth it!

Seriously, this is cool.... right?

It was made up of 5 layers of cake: pumpkin cake layered with cinnamon infused cream cheese frosting; then a chocolate stout cake layered with baileys irish cream buttercream; and last a hazelnut cake with chocolate & whisky fudge frosting.

The fondant is home-made. I decided the best route for covering the cake in fondant would be to cut out measured pieces and layer them on one-by-one, it was a long process but I think overall in the end gave it that pumpkin look I was looking for.
I layered one section (the part where the face would end up) of the orange fondant over a thin layer of black fondant I had put on first. I then carved the eyes, nose and mouth out of the orange fondant to reveal the black below, just like a real pumpkin (sort of)!
The stem is made from fondant I colored a very light green while it was still in the liquid state, then once I shaped it and put the lines in I colored it using a dry brush technique with dark green and brown gel-paste food coloring. I also used the dry brush technique on the pumpkin, by adding shading between each layer to give it some depth and dimension. 

Here are a few photo's of the process:

    

Autumn

In honor of Autumn, my favorite time of year, I've been making a lot of pumpkin cakes, carrot cakes, and cupcakes.

Here's a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting, crushed walnuts and candied shredded carrots on top.

 Pumpkin whisky cake with cinnamon and whiskey infused whipped cream.

Carrot cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, gold sugar pearls and toasted candied carrots on top.

I also made a replica of a cake my mom and uncle shared as kids in the 1970's, their birthday's are one day apart and they requested it. It's a giant sheet cake made to look like two cakes put together. It was carrot cake (which they requested) with cream cheese frosting.

The birthday "kids", my mom and uncle.