Creative Beautiful Cakes

One of the things I would love to be able to do someday is create beautiful cakes like those seen on the television show Ace of Cakes. I'm working on accomplishing this goal, and I'll post the cakes here. So, hopefully the quality of the cakes will represent my progress along the way.

I originally began the learning process to achieve this goal in April 2009 without any lessons for my sister and her boyfriend's Easter birthday celebration. This cake is what led to my sister buying me lessons for my birthday, since she saw how much I loved decorating the cake.

I looked up a recipe and made a marshmallow fondant (which is like an edible clay that can be cut, sculpted, or molded), and dyed it a golden yellow. Then I cut the fondant and draped two pieces over the cake. I sculpted a bow, and I had a nice cake shaped like a birthday present.

The inside of the cake was three layers of yellow cake with peanut butter frosting between the layers. The top of the cake was covered with a mixture of store-bought Confetti frosting and homemade vanilla frosting.

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As I said above, my sister bought me cake decorating lessons for my birthday in 2010, so once I took the classes in April of that year I was one step closer to my dream. :)

I did take my cake class in April. I made a cake for each class, except for the last because I was incredibly sick during the class. I still intend to work on the flowers that we learned that last week, I'll just have to work on them at my own pace.

We didn't do a cake in class for the first week, but we were given a butter cream frosting recipe and shown how to use the frosting tips. My sister's birthday was the day before my second class, and her boyfriend's birthday was the day before that. So, I decided to take what I learned in class and make a birthday cake for them. They both love The Emperor's New Groove, and especially the character Kronk, so I made a Kronk Cake for them. :)

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In my second class, we learned how to use the star tip. We were given a choice to make a rainbow cake from the book or a character cake, so I chose to make a cake of The Cheat from Homestar Runner. It was a more time consuming cake, and I didn't have time to completely finish it in class, so I finished it up at home. I'm glad I chose the more difficult cake though, since the result came out really nice. I even e-mailed the picture of it to "The Brothers Chaps", the creators of Homestar Runner. I hope they get a kick out of it. :)

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I was in the Emergency Room for 11 hours on the day of my 3rd class, so I missed the in-class lesson. I still created the project of the day, clown cupcakes. The cupcake heads were supposed to be plastic, but the teacher told us not to worry about using them since the store didn't have any in stock. She said we could just make clowns without heads. I made headless clowns, but my sister thought it was morbid, so I made some clown heads out of the marshmallow fondant recipe that I used on my sister's birthday last year.

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As I said, I didn't make a cake during my last class. I hadn't yet been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, but I know now that's what was going on (either that or my colitis (which I also wasn't yet diagnosed with), or both). It makes things tougher, since it's gotten worse over time and I've been diagnosed with spinal stenosis and degenerative disk disease on top of it. I wanted to take the other classes they offered, but my sickness prevents it.

I still plan on working on my cakes though. I'll just have to work on them at my own pace, and maybe buy the books for the other classes and learn on my own.

In March 2011, I created some pacifier cupcakes for my sister's baby shower. I made them with mint lifesavers (I had to be careful on what I got because my sister is allergic to wintermint), jellybeans, and melted white chocolate to act like a glue to hold them together in pacifier form. The frosting was made with store bought vanilla frosting mixed with whipped cream and colored with the food color gel I bought for cake class.

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I also made a "labor day :)" cake for her using the same frosting. We were running out of time since I made the cake on the day of the baby shower, so we bought the icing for the words at the store in tube form. Unfortunately, it was Cake-Mate icing and wouldn't fit on my Wilson tips, so I had to hold the tip on the tube with my hands. It got all over my hands and it was a pain cleaning it off. But, surprisingly, the letters turned out fine on the cake.

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In March 2012, I made a cake of the Great Red Dragon from the Bone comics, to celebrate the Year of the Dragon. I first cut out the dragon's body, as I had with my cake of The Cheat previously. This one was a lot harder, as it had small areas that were close to the other areas of the cake that made it had to frost. Because of my fibromyalgia, I was only able to bake, cut and give him a base frost on the first day. I planned on doing the next part the next day, but my mom ate his back end since she didn't know I wasn't done with it yet (and had no idea what it was supposed to be at that point). I had to bake another cake and patch his back end, but I think it turned out fine. The frosting is a simple powdered sugar and milk frosting with peanut butter, and again colored with my cake class gel colors. I opted to do this one with a cartoon-style outline. I think that was the right choice, as that is what really makes it The Great Red Dragon as opposed to just a dragon cake. :)

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