Christmas Cake

This was a cake I made for a Christmas party for one of John's cousins. The debate over the flavor of the cake led to the bottom being a white cake with cream cheese frosting and strawberries, and the top layer being a chocolate cake with fudge and toffee bit filling. Yum! For some reason, the green square came out bumpy with the fondant, which was a little aggravating, but the bottom layer came out really smooth.

Overnight!

I just looked at the page ticker and realized that I got almost 100 views overnight! Who's looking? Anyone interested in ordering? Become a follower! It's really easy...on the right-hand side click the follow button, and if you have a yahoo! or gmail account it's really easy! Feel free to comment on the posts, too! Do you have any questions? Comments? Anything!?!? I'd like to know that I'm not just posting for myself! I know that there are plenty of you who have asked me tons of questions, so here are your answers. Follow me to let me know that I'm answering your questions!

Three Cakes for Three Kids

John has three cousins that all come from the same family and all have birthday in the November/December range. The family has one party for the three of them, and sure enough, they all had different ideas for a cake. The oldest is a football player, so I made him a football cake with his team's colors. It was a white cake with strawberry filling. The two girls wanted ice cream cakes. For these, I bought the aluminum, disposable cake tins and filled them with my homemade ice cream. One wanted chocolate, and the other wanted vanilla. For the chocolate cake, it was filled with chocolate sauce, toffee bits, and caramel, almost like a turtle cake. The vanilla cake was filled with crushed oreos and chocolate sauce, almost like a cookies and cream cake. For the chocolate cake, lime green and pink polka dots were the request for decoration. The pink candles were also a must. I was told that the vanilla cake needed to have roses, but I was later informed by the four year old designer of the cake that I got it all wrong and it was supposed to be a rose. I failed poor Emma!

Happy 80th Birthday, Papa!

John's grandfather had his eightieth birthday this past November, and we had a wonderful surprise party to celebrate his life. I have only known Papa for a little over four years, and all I can say is that he is truly an amazing man! He came over from Italy at nineteen years old with nothing. He worked long hours doing hard manual labor to support himself, and later to support his wife and his four children. To know a man with this determination in life, and further to know the love that he has for his family is incredible. I felt so special when I heard him refer to me as his granddaughter, and I feel blessed to have both Nana and Papa in my life. I only pray that my children will come to appreciate Nana and Papa, as well as the love that is in this wonderful family!With family being the center of Papa's life, I felt it fitting to create a "family tree" of sorts for his birthday cake. Since he is Italian, and has made wine, I decided to make a family grapevine. On the top of the cake was a wine bottle that said "Claudio" By Corrado & Maria. From that bottle of wine were four vines, representing his four children. From each vine was a bunch of grapes, one for each family member. On each of the tiny, one inch grapes, I piped the name of every family member. Twenty three little grapes in total!! The leaves on the vine were made with a fondant press and the bottle was hand sculpted, as were the grapes.

Reptile Party!

While working at the daycare, there was a student who was celebrating a birthday. This little boy had seen a couple of cakes that I made, and he asked his mom if I could make his birthday cake. As it turns out, this little boy had an older brother with a birthday very close as well. The two boys were having a combined reptile birthday party. They each had different favorite reptiles, as well as different flavors of cake that they liked. The older brother wanted a lizard that was chocolate cake with chocolate mousse as frosting. The younger brother wanted a snake with white cake and chocolate fudge frosting. I used crushed up oreos to simulate the dirt around the cakes. I cut the shapes by hand and tried as best as I could to mold the shapes of the animals.

Engagement Cake

After making the baby cakes for my co-workers at the daycare, one of my coworkers asked me to make a cake for her daughter's engagement. This was the first cake that I actually got paid for making! I did a cut-out for both cakes by hand...there were no shaped pans! They were two different flavors, but I don't exactly recall the fillings! The design came from remembering those interlocking hearts that everyone used to draw in middle school without lifting your pencil from the paper! The high heel was WAY harder than I thought it would be to cut-out, but it ended up looking okay. The tie was pretty easy and I even put in some lines to look like stripes! The silver shimmer was created using Wilton pearl dust.   

Happy Retirement

Last year, the Diomede family celebrated the retirement of a loved husband, father, grandfather, uncle, brother, and friend. After working for the US Postal Service for many years, he finally retired with a grand celebration filled with family and friends! For this party, I made a two tiered cake that used the theme of the post office for the bottom layer, complete with mail truck and the road, and a "motown" type theme for the top of the cake. I did freehand cutouts of the truck, a house, a mailbox, a letter, and the sun for the bottom of the cake. The top layer features records, star shapes, and music notes all reminiscent of typical fifties motown style. This was a white cake filled with cream cheese frosting and strawberries.

More Baby Shower Cakes

At the daycare where I was working in the fall of 2009, there were two new grandmas! One of them was supposed to be in Arizona for the birth of her grand baby, but the baby had other plans and was born early! So, we had a "Grandma Shower" at the daycare, and I made a baby rattle cake. We knew it was a girl, so I made a pink rattle with a white handle, pink bow, and pink and white pacifier! The cake is a reduced sugar chocolate with reduced sugar frosting and a raspberry filling. (We really like raspberries here in NJ!) I used two round cakes, one cut smaller for the bottom of the rattle. I used a hollow, plastic dowel to connect the two cakes. The only problem is that I now realized how awful foil looked under my cakes. I definitely felt like this was the best cake I had made yet! What do you think??

On the same day, I made a smaller cake for another new grandma in the daycare, because I didn't want her to feel like her grand baby wasn't special. So, I used pieces of the rattle cake I had made to make a baby bottle in blue, since she now had a grandson.

If we jump to this fall, in September of 2010, I made the best cake every, in my opinion, haha! This was yet another baby shower cake, but from a non-traditional standpoint! From talking to the mom-to-be's sister in law, I had my idea confirmed as a good one, and got an idea of the flavors I needed to incorporate! The cake was made using the Wilton soccer ball pan, one nine inch round, and two large cupcakes. After everything was baked, I sliced the soccer ball in half. Each layer was filled with cannoli cream, strawberries, and banana slices. I did use a dam of butter cream frosting to hold in the cannoli cream. The nine inch round was on the bottom, followed by the bottom half of the soccer ball, followed by the top part of the soccer ball. I added the two cupcakes to look like the bosom on top of the pregnant belly. After frosting the whole shape, I draped it in white fondant. The polka dot colors collaborated with the colors of the baby shower, since we still don't know if the baby is a boy or a girl! We also decorated the funfetti cupcakes with vanilla icing and Necco wafers to mimic the polka dots.    

Birthday Cake

My next cake was a birthday cake for a thirteen year old girl. I didn't want to do anything too girly, since she was now a teenager, but I did want the cake to still look pretty cool! I made a polka dot cake with purple as a base. The inside of this cake was lemon chiffon with the vanilla butter cream and raspberry, since it was such a hit at the baby shower! I found the candles at The Christmas Tree Shop and have since reused them. It was a nice way to add more visual interest to the cake without having to write on the cake! 

Pretty In Pink

The next few cakes that I made were for a few of the Diomede ladies! First was a baby shower cake for the Johnson family where I had my first experience making bows out of fondant. This was a lemon chiffon cake with vanilla butter cream and raspberry filling. The cake was covered in pink fondant with white fondant ribbon and a white fondant bow. The tag was also made out of fondant and read, "To: The Johnson Family  Love: God."

The next cake was a dedication cake for the newest baby Diomede. A beautiful pink cross that was chocolate cake with vanilla frosting. I don't think there was a single slice of cake left to spare!?! This was the first time that I felt my fondant looked like it should! It was smooth and gave the cake a very clean look. I also made an ice cream cake for this party that was almost the same recipe as the graduation ice cream cake. Only this time, the bottom layer of the ice cream cake was regular chocolate ice cream instead of the fudge bar recipe. This time, the ice cream cake was a tremendous success!

My First Cake

I had been decorating cakes for a while using butter cream frosting like my mom had shown me after taking the Wilton Classes. I started to feel limited in what I could do with butter cream, and after watching shows like Amazing Cakes and Cake Boss, I decided to try my hand at fondant. The first opportunity to make a cake with fondant that came up was a graduation cake for Christopher, John, and myself. It was two tiers and had three chocolate covered cupcakes that I made into graduation caps.  In no terms of exaggeration, the cake was pretty much a disaster. It was about 90 degrees outside with almost 100% humidity and the fondant just drooped everywhere! It was harder than I thought to write on the side of this cake, too! I suppose everyone needs their "first cake" so I didn't worry too much, plus it tasted delicious!

I also decided to make an ice cream cake for the graduation party, since it was June and we had just gotten an ice cream maker. It was chocolate ice cream on the top layer, reese's bits, chocolate crumbs, and chocolate fudge in the middle layer, and the bottom layer was a chocolate pudding mixture that John wanted to use because it sounded like a dessert his Grandma used to make. Little did we know that it was a recipe for fudge bars that did not defrost enough to cut through, or even hammer through for that matter! We all ate the top part of the cake, and at least that part was really good!

The top of the cake was a chocolate fudge frosting with reese's bits and chocolate chips. I had made this cake in a spring form pan like my mom used to do with her ice cream cakes, but I have since graduated to free form ice cream cakes...pictures to come!

Inspiration

There have been so many people that have been asking me about what I've been doing, in terms of cake making, recipes, decorating ideas, and other kitchen related items. I also have people looking for music lessons or offering performance/teaching opportunities, so I wanted to have a place to sort of centralize everything going on in my life. I will be posting previous cakes and recipes, as well as all new cakes and recipes. If you would like me to post something specific, feel free to comment and leave exactly what you would like to see. If you would like a cake made for you, orders can be e-mailed in at cakesbybeth321@yahoo.com. I will respond to the e-mail with a design idea or recommendation for a consultation to be able to provide exactly the cake that you are envisioning! Keep checking back for all of the cakes and pictures to come!