Baking Cakes to Relax

Space Shuttle

A couple of years ago I started making cakes for birthdays, anniversaries and various end of year parties. The cakes that we were purchasing from the local bakery(s) were buried in an inch or more of sickly sweet icing covering a dry, tasteless cake.

The first few cakes are kind of plain, but I got a little better (plus I got better tools) as time went one.

Oklahoma State University Cake

Play on the MasterCard Commercials

Made the wife's cake playing off the MasterCard: Priceless commercials. She wanted all the stuff listed, but all she got was this delicious cake.

Land of the Lost

 Everything except the dinosaurs was hand made. The dinosaurs where given to the kids as part of the goodie bags.

 The volcano is several layers of cake and was a real pain to build. This is actually one of the first cakes I did. I have learned several tricks that would have made this cake sooooo much easier.

Dr. Seuss Book

This cake was done a local librarian. Dr. Seuss is one of her favorite authors of children's books. They requested a copy of the book shown. The character is cut from fondant and then hand painted.

Free Hand Painting/Drawing

This was a practice cake I made to see how free-hand painting the fondant would work. I learned the colors bleed quite a bit and you have to work slowly. Oh, and low humidity is better for the painting, but high humidity is better for the cake.

Rice crispy treat players

 The players are made out of rice crispy treats and covered with marsh mellow fondant and then hand painted. I can never get the fondant to a dark color when I make the fondant a color.

Someone forgot to water the infield

Dark green for the infield was hard to make and once it dried over night it was almost black. Not sure what I learned there, but it tasted good!

Basketball

A "simple" request. Half a basketball. The letters and lines are all hand cut fondant. I like the taste of it, so I use it when I can. Started using a marsh mellow fondant which is easier to work with and the rest of the family likes to eat.