BIG Chocolate Birthday Cake

Was this a LOT of cake for a Birthday? You betcha. BUT, this was a very special Birthday - my Dad's 75th. Made even MORE special because earlier this year, after the scare of a pretty massive stroke...we weren't sure we'd get to celebrate this day with him. Blessings on top of blessings on Top of Blessings to be able to spend this momentous day with my sweet Daddy! I asked him what flavor he wanted for his cake and he smiled and replied "Chocolate!" so I wanted to deliver in a big way :) Chocolate cake, with chocolate swiss meringue buttercream and chocolate ganache drizzle, accented with some chocolate cake crumbles. I think he was happy and we felt like WE were the ones receiving the present - of more days with Him! <3 p="">

Gold Wedding Cupcakes

So here I am, yet again - posting work I did long ago (back in December to be exact!) This was a lovely, lovely wedding I provided cupcakes and a cutting cake for, held at The King's Daughters Inn in Durham, NC. Everything was decorated so beautifully and they were truly a joy to work with. The cupcake flavors were red velvet with vanilla swiss meringue and vanilla bean with vanilla swiss meringue. We accented some of the cupcakes with glittering gold heart picks and others simply with gold sprinkles. I hand made a golden gum paste topper for the couples' small cutting cake at the top of the stand.

Valentine's Day Wedding

Can't say enough how much I enjoyed working on this lovely Valentine's Day wedding cake - my first ever! I'll admit to being nervous when working on square cakes (hello, edges!!) but was quite pleased with how this one turned out. Vanilla cake, strawberry swiss meingue buttercream filling, covered with fondant and hand painted zebra stripes. Silk roses and black grosgrain ribbon put the finishing touches on this beauty!

Rustic Buttercream Wedding Cake

Loved, loved, loved working on this sweet couple's wedding cake & cupcakes! Wedding cake flavors were: chocolate with oreo buttercream, red velvet with vanilla cream cheese, pumpkin spice with cinnamon cream cheese and vanilla with vanilla bean buttercream. Cupcakes were mocha with caramel buttercream and vanilla bean caramel drizzle, sprinkled with sea salt.

2014 North Carolina State Fair Competition Cake

I always struggle SO much with deciding on a design to attempt for my State Fair cake - I like to use my competition cake as a way of pushing myself and trying new things and I just always have so many techniques or things on my "cake decorating bucket list" that it's just so hard to choose! Thankfully this idea wasn't too hard to settle on! I've slowly been working my way through learning various sugar flowers and thought it would be fun to really create a lot of them to go on a cake - certainly more than I've ever attempted to make & place before! I also wanted to attempt some wood grain and can't even begin to say how excited I am with the outcome there - most folks don't realize the bottom tier is fondant as well until I tell them, so taking that as a good sign. It's hard to see in my photos, but I also made one of the white tiers slightly different - when kneading my fondant, I mixed in some pumpkin pie spice to give it little "flecks" that almost resemble linen! My family will be visiting the Fair on Monday, so we'll see if my attempts garnered a ribbon then :)

Navy & Coral Wedding Cake (And an Exceptional Location!)

I had the pleasure of not only making this lovely bride's wedding cake, but also attending her wedding - set at Willow Oaks Plantation in Eden, NC. And let me just say...the drive was worth it! With the sun setting just as the couple completed their vows - it was truly magical! The couple selected several flavors, their favorite being quite a popular choice this time of year, pumpkin spice with cinnamon cream cheese filling. They also chose chocolate with caramel swiss meringue, vanilla with vanilla swiss meringue and red velvet with vanilla cream cheese. The cake was covered in fondant with piped scrollwork and a ribbon at the base of each tier. I created coral pink peonies from gum paste to top everything off - loved working on those!

Well hi, there! Long time no post?!

Well...I have not been held captive, not kidnapped by aliens and not taken some time to "find myself"! I have to admit that I did *slightly* forget about my blog for a time...shameful, I know! I AM trying to not over-schedule myself with cake projects though - I'm trying, really I am! So even though I am posting now, just know that my posts will probably not be as frequent as they had been in the past! So, on to cakes!

For now, I'm just going with one of my favorite cakes from 2013 - my entry for the North Carolina State Fair Decorated Cakes competition - my entry was for the "Decorated for Wedding" category. I have always enjoyed looking at all the entries - even before I started "playing" with cakes! It's just so much fun to see what everyone brings. I tried to go with a slightly "North Carolina" themed cake using our state flower, the dogwood, as the main feature of my cake. These were my first attempt at making dogwood blossoms out of gum paste and I really enjoyed using petal dust to make them come to life! I also had a lot of fun working on the ruffled layers - it was a time consuming technique, but a fun one as well! I was so very excited to find a blue ribbon on my cake when we visited the Fair and as usual - I'm already enjoying thinking about what I'd like to attempt next time! :)

Elegant White Wedding Cake

Well, here's the monster of a wedding cake I survived! ;) Wedding cake for my Cousin's outdoor reception (that had me hyperventilating alone) - alternating tiers of chocolate cake with chocolate ganache filling and lemon blueberry cake with cream cheese filling, covered in fondant with fondant details and gum paste hydrangeas. The lace and hydrangeas were to coordinate with their wedding colors and they loved cakes that had fondant draping and the "C" for their newly shared last name. I really was so pleased with how everything came together and the fact that I (and the cake) survived the delivery!!

Gold Rose Petal 50th Anniversary

This was a request for a special couple's 50th wedding anniversary - vanilla buttermilk cake with vanilla buttercream filling and frosting and golden fondant rose petals :)

Fall Themed Cupcake Wedding at Crenshaw Hall

Lovely setup at Crenshaw Hall in Wake Forest for an elegant Fall wedding! Cupcake flavors were: Pumpkin Spice Latte, Vanilla with Raspberry Curd Filling and Raspberry Swiss Meringue Buttercream, Espresso Mocha with Vanilla Bean Latte Swiss Meringue Buttercream and S'Mores. I also made a rich, German Chocolate cutting cake for the bride and groom :)

Vintage Romance Wedding Cake

This was a challenging cake, true - but I so enjoyed pulling this look together one cake tier at a time! Flavors were pumpkin spice with cinnamon cream cheese filling, red velvet with cream cheese filling, vanilla buttermilk with lemon swiss meringue filling and chocolate with vanilla swiss meringue filling, all covered with fondant, with fondant and hand painted details. The roses atop the cake were purchased silk flowers to match the ones decorating the table.

Woodland Wedding Cake

Oh my, was this a fun challenge! Before attempting this cake, I'd never made any of these gum paste flowers so it was a learning experience to be sure! Alternating layers of red velvet cake with cream cheese filling and pumpkin spice cake with cinnamon cream cheese filling, covered in fondant with hand made gum paste flowers. Loved the finished work!

2012 NC State Fair Entry - Brown Hydrangea Wedding Cake

So, I had the most difficult time deciding what I wanted to attempt for this year's State Fair entry!! I had so many ideas rumbling around in my head! When I finally decided to attempt hydrangeas using Petalsweet's wonderful three-part tutorial (and they thankfully turned out decently enough!) my mind was made up. I covered my styrofoam layers with dark brown chocolate fondant (which was a workout!!), then placed two hydrangea bunches on alternating sides of my cake and edged each tier with a brown ribbon. It might've been simple, but I was so pleased with how it came out and very happy to have learned something new along the way! :) I was also beyond thrilled to learn I had won a 3rd place ribbon for my simple little cake!

New Orleans Cupcakes

These were fun cupcakes to celebrate a friend's upcoming move to New Orleans! Chocolate espresso with vanilla buttercream and red velvet with cream cheese frosting (not pictured). Gum paste fleur de lis symbols were perfect in black and gold :)

White Ruffled Wedding Cake

I think I have a new favorite cake (of the moment!) Oh, how I truly loved the way this cake came together! Just lovely! All vanilla buttermilk cake with vanilla bean buttercream filling, covered in fondant with fondant ruffles and modeling chocolate roses. There were quite a few firsts for me with this cake - first time attempting this type of ruffling, first time making white modeling chocolate and my first time sculpting modeling chocolate roses - so glad all those worked out! :)

Red, Black & Ivory Cupcake Wedding

I so enjoyed making these cupcakes for this wedding - my very first attempt at wedding cupcakes! :) There were three different cupcake flavors featured: chocolate, vanilla and red velvet. I used mainly vanilla buttercream (a few of the vanilla had chocolate buttercream) to ice the cupcakes and even though I did not manage to get photos of them I also had some cupcakes decorated with fondant flowers in the wedding colors as well. The bride and groom had a cutting cake made of fluffy vanilla with ivory vanilla buttercream and fondant accent flowers in the wedding colors of red and black. This was a challenge for me as these were the most cupcakes I've baked and decorated at one time, but I really and truly enjoyed it!

Fireman Wedding

Oh, my. I ADORED working on this wedding, but felt like I needed a full days' worth of sleep after finishing it! :) There were just so many cake, filling and frosting flavors going on, combined with the complexity of the figure modeling - wow! The Bride-to-Be picked out a lovely design by Pink Cake Box and this was my attempt at doing it some kind of justice! The top tier of the wedding cake was fresh strawberry cake with chocolate ganache filling, the middle tier was fresh peach cake with vanilla bean cream cheese filling and the bottom tier was brown sugar cake with key lime curd filling, all covered in fondant with fondant ribbons in tangerine and hot pink. The fire truck grooms cake was chocolate cake with cherry buttercream filling, covered in fondant with all fondant details. I hand formed the bride and groom using a fondant/gum paste mixture and was quite pleased with how well they both turned out! There was also a chocolate sheet cake with vanilla buttercream frosting in reserve, but alas - no picture of that! (I'm fortunate I had my iPhone with me, or there would have been no photo of the cake itself!!)

Pink and Brown Polka Dot Wedding Reception

Such a lovely color combination for a wedding reception! The bride requested the same design I'd used on an earlier cake, but in her colors of pink and brown, then I made cupcake toppers to continue that color scheme! The cake was fresh strawberry with white chocolate buttercream filling, covered in fondant, with a gum paste topper and fondant details. Half the cupcakes were fresh strawberry with cream cheese frosting, the other half were vanilla with chocolate buttercream frosting, both with fondant toppers.

Ivory Ruffles and Sequins Wedding Cake

So, here it is! My completed entry for the "Decorated for Wedding" decorated cakes competition using "Fondant/Gum Paste" for the 2011 North Carolina State Fair :) I cannot claim inspiration on this design - I used a lovely design by "Sweet Pudgy Panda" and built on it! She had posted a photo of a breathtaking two-tier design using the fondant ruffles, sequins and ruffled flower and I just thought it would make such a lovely four-tiered wedding cake (not to mention I was dying to give it a try!!) so I went for it! Have to be honest, not sure how practical it would be to cover an actual four-tier cake using this method, as my cake used styrofoam cake dummy layers and was still so heavy!! Just can't imagine how much heavier it would be adding in the weight of real cake and filling...yikes!! Still, an all together lovely image :) Very happy with how it turned out! Now I just have to deal with the ordeal of getting it to the Fairgrounds...

Funky Pink and Black Wedding Cake

I actually had the pleasure of working on this wedding cake back in May, but have been anxiously awaiting the photographer's views of the cake as I was so focused on getting the cake and all my gear to the venue that I forgot my own camera!! I loved, loved, loved the colors, design - just the free spirit that both the Bride-to-be and her cake embodied! :) Bottom tier was white vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream filling, next tier was chocolate cake with chocolate ganache filling, next tier was vanilla buttermilk cake with vanilla buttercream filling and finally the top tier for the Bride and Groom was white vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream filling. All layers were covered with white fondant and all the detail work was black or hot pink fondant. The Bride-to-be provided the beautiful brushed metal toppers which couldn't have been designed to match the cake any better or so I thought! :) Many thanks to the talented Stephanie's Creative Photography for the wonderful photos!