Dylan's Birthday

  My oldest son Dylan, who turned 18, asked me to make a Shadow Hawk cake for his birthday. I am very use to getting strange requests from him, and always of some type of very unique vehicle that most people have never heard of. Last year I made 3 crazy vehicles for his cake so I'm thankful he only asked for one this year. 

So what is a Shadow Hawk? Well, I can't really tell you, but here is a picture of it. Everytime I refer to it as a car I am very quickly corrected.  

Here is my version. I had drawn this car/ tank/ thingy, out on paper much better. My design gets lost in translation somewhere from the paper to the cake. I'm thinking I will just stick with drawing. On the cake, my vehicle turned out more like a hot rod than a shadow hawk, but Dylan liked it so I was happy.

  I was dealing with a migraine for the most part of working on this cake. At one point I had to go rest on the couch for a little while because I was just feeling too bad. Faith says to me, "I have an idea! How about you rest and I can finish the cake?" lol   The scary part is that I actually considered it. She is only 4, so if I had we would be seeing very different looking pictures right now.  

                       We had some speed bumps on our road and the speed limit was of course 18 mph.

And here's the birthday boy. Happy Birthday Dylan! I love you more than I can even say and I hope you had a GREAT birthday!

My Cake Hobby

I was in a local craft store and had turned down the cake supply isle, standing there were these two women, who were both just staring at all the stuff on the shelves, not saying a word. They had this deer in the headlights kind of look about them. I politely reached around them to get the couple of items I needed. But right before I walked away, one of them said to the other, "no wonder cakes are so expensive".  The other one says," yeah, maybe we would be better off to just pay someone else to make this thing after all". I thought to myself, "yes you would!"

It is very hard to actually make money on these outrageous custom detailed cakes. That is why cake making is now just an occasional hobby for me. It is way tooo expensive not to even mention time-consuming. I will always make my kids birthday cakes and I'm sure other personal treats here and there. I am preparing for my oldest son's birthday right now. My kids birthdays are very special to me and I want to make them as special as I can for them too. Pictures will be posted of course, of whatever we come up with.

But for anyone who may not understand why I don't make cakes anymore, I suggest just trying to make one of them for yourself. You probably will change your mind when you see everything you need to purchase even before all the work can begin. Crazy!!
    

 

New Blog

I have a new blog and it is NOT about cake.
www.ddthelifeilive.blogspot.com

Angry Birds!

Thanks to my brother, my son is addicted to this game. So this year, when it came time to plan Gavin's birthday party, he decided on an Angry Birds cake. He had been talking about a snake cake so I should be very grateful for the Angry Birds. He says we will make the snake next year.
Note to self: Come up with a cool idea for Gavin's cake next year so you don't have to make a gross snake!

The 3 little birds on the cakeboard were made by Gavin himself!

My birthday boy!

The birds and pigs are made out of cake balls and then covered in fondant. Everything else is made from rice crispy treats.

Gavin had a pool party and while we were swimming, we noticed this perfect cross in the clouds. By the time I got my camera, the tail of it had started to go away, but you can still see it pretty well. We had a beautiful day!!! 
Thankyou Lord for prayers answered and more sweet memories made!

One More Cake



I decided to do just one more cake and of course if I am going to put in all that hard work, then I am going to post pics of my end result. Besides, I had a little redeeming to do after my last one and this seemed to do the trick. 

This was for a beautiful little girl who was turning 5. She loves cats so we decided to make a bunch of kitties playing in a garden. The cats and all of the little details are made from fondant. I made alot of flowers and added some snails and butterflies and mushrooms to the garden as well.  



This was a white chocolate cake with cookies and cream filling.

Back of the cake.

When my 4 yr old daughter saw me first making the little cats she asked me if I was making this cake for CatWoman, lol. But she loved this cake and wanted to know all about the little girl who was going to be getting it. 
The kitty on the right was made to look like one of the birthday girl's favorite stuffed animal kitty's named Ginger.

Happy Birthday Lindsey!! Thankyou for letting me make your birthday cake and I hope it put a big smile on your face!!!

My Last Cake

So I have finally had to make the decision to completely give up cake decorating. It is just not something I can do right now and still be able to give my family everything they need from me. It has caused too much stress for them and as a mom, I have to put them first. Unless you have experience in cake decorating, you really cannot appreciate the amount of time this takes. And that is for anyone who makes cakes, not just me. I also never figured out how to actually make a profit from this type of work. In fact, I went backwards most of the time. So I could in no way justify continuing to make cakes even if I did enjoy the work. There are also some other projects I have begun and have now fallen in love with, and I'm wanting to be able to devote some more time to as well. I am sure there will be pictures posted sometime in the near future.  

I would have liked to have ended this on a high note instead of with a major BOMB. And man was it a big one! I've actually never bombed so big on a cake in my life. I was asked to make a topsy turvy cake which I have never made before. I accepted the challenge and studied up on how to do it and really felt pretty knowledgeable about what I was attempting. And well, I will now show you the result of all my knowledge. So here it is ...the good, the bad, and the....please don't hit the floor!!   

This is the front of the cake and this is actually the good side. I worked sooo hard on all the little fondant details. All of the candy is made from fondant, none of it was real candy.

The left side of the top tier that the arrow is pointing to, should be up higher just like it is on the bottom tier. When I first put the cake together it all looked good. After a little while, I looked at the cake and the top tier was just about to slide right off onto the counter. So I took it apart, and added some small pieces of cake board underneath the top tier to keep it from falling. All seemed good at that point, but just wait.....  

Still focusing on the good here. More of the fondant details.

This cake was for an adorable and super sweet little girl who turned 5. She had a candy themed party. I had different little messages and words on the little candy hearts that were all over the cake.

And... here's the bad. And boy was it bad! I thought all was well after I had added the extra pieces of cakeboard to lift up the side of the top tier that was falling. Then I looked at the cake and one side of the bottom tier had actually caved in and was falling also causing the top tier to fall in that direction as well. So now I have a new problem,...and this was about midnight on day 3 now of working on this cake, and I had been working non-stop at this point since about 10:00a.m.  

You are looking at the side of the cake here. The sides should be even or level. The only part of the cake that should look topsy turvy should be the front and the back. 

I had to take this cake apart about 5 different times trying to do everything I could think of to solve the problem. I put many more dowels on the side that was falling, but once the bottom tier had started to cave in there was nothing I could do to get this cake level again. It was all over! Now it was time to pray, "please Lord don't let it hit the floor"! And let me tell you, I do not know if there has ever been a cake more prayed over than this one. Well, prayer works because I am happy to say, and this is the only good thing I can say about this cake, but it stayed together through the party. Praise the Lord!!!   

Here you see where the top tier was cracking, and trying to fall off. I just kept filling in all the cracks with royal icing hoping it would not only hide those hideous cracks but also adhere this cake together a little.  What a nightmare!
I still cannot believe I delivered a cake that looked like this. I wish I could post pictures of the beautiful decorations this little girl's mom had made for her party. It was like walking into a sweet little girly candy land,......so creative! After getting there and seeing all of that, it made me want even more to be able to give her a cake that was worthy of such a beautiful setting. They were very kind and understanding of what happened with the cake and I really appreciated it. I just hope miss Jada wasn't too disappointed! I know I am very disappointed in myself but nothing can be done about it now. So I just have to accept my failure and try and let it go.