The Creative Cake Maker

Kingdom Hearts 2 Keyblade Cake

2011-12-23T11:36:00.002-07:00

When it comes to cake designs, I usually get a lot of notice before a birthday. In this case, Tristan gave me a week. One...week. I thought he would want Link or Mario or some other video game character, but he had been playing a lot of Kingdom Hearts 2 lately and decided he wanted a cake in the shape of the Keyblade (Mickey is holding it in the photo below). Okay...at least it's better than his brother who wanted the actual Keyblade for his birthday ("But Mom...it's only $500!").

Looking at the Keyblade, I knew I would need fondant - and lots of it. Maybe even some chocolate. I also knew I would need to make sure I had enough of my silver and gold Pearl Dust. I then thought maybe I should just forgo baking a cake and use Twinkies instead, lining them end to end...nah.

Thank heaven there weren't too many details - although did you notice the chain at the end with the Mickey silhouette? That's the first thing I noticed since I had to figure out how to make it :)

I started by sketching out the design. I folded a piece of paper into thirds and drew it out. It was easier for me to keep the scale right with the paper folded.

It really is a simple design if you're drawing it. I have to admit all the corners and crevices intimidated me.

The cake is cut out of a 13 x 9" cake. It looks like a big cake, but it really only uses about half of the actual cake.

I used the whole top strip and part of the second strip. The bottom left corner piece was used to make the handle and the bottom center piece was used to make the blade.

For the handle, the square cake piece needs to be rounded out on one side and the center is cut out (creating a large "D" shape).

From the inner cut-out section of the handle, the center is cut out to be used. The side pieces can be discarded.

The pieces (except the blade) were then lined up on my "cake board".

The cake board was made from a sheet of wrapping paper covered in contact paper and sitting on a large airbake cookie sheet.

The handle was then removed (to make icing easier) and the rest of the cake was iced with vanilla using a large size 789 Wilton icing tip.

Then the icing was smoothed down. If you plan to use the marshmallow fondant like I did, you don't have to worry about getting the icing really smooth.

I covered the whole sword with marshmallow fondant (the whole project took half a recipe). Small round cylinders made of fondant were placed vertically at the tips of the handle before they were covered with fondant. This created the protruding edges. At the top center of the handle, an extra piece of fondant was placed beneath the top layer to jut out the top handle more.

I then wrapped the inner handle (the piece that was previously removed for icing) with marshmallow fondant, cut it down to size and put the piece in place. Then strips of fondant were added to cover the ugly seams and more details were added (ridges in the handle).

The "blade" part of the keyblade was one of the more challenging parts of the cake. I decided to make it "just good enough". I apologize for not having many pictures of this part of the process.

I had originally carved the blade piece just as my sketch dictated. But I later removed the rounded tips and used fondant for those pieces because the cake would just crumble and fall apart with so small a detail.

With the carved piece of cake, I molded two round cylinders and placed them at two tips of the blade. I then lightly iced the edges and wrapped it in fondant. I chose to wrap the sides in fondant and then cut out a more detailed top piece of fondant to just place on top.

With the final touch of the keyblade in place, I started painting.

I tried making a shimmery gold/yellow paint from yellow food coloring, almond extract and gold pearl dust but in the final product, the gold shimmer just doesn't come through very much. The "silver color" was a mixture of silver pearl dust, almond extract and a smidgen of black food coloring. Once the silver areas were done, I made a stronger black to paint the inner handle.

For the top chain hook, I rolled marshmallow fondant into a rope and created a "corkscrew" to go into the end of the cake, attached a "clasp" to the corkscrew, and then attached the base of the "clasp" to a chain link.

Fir the Mickey Mouse head, I rolled out marshmallow fondant to about 1/4 inch thick, lightly pressed a 2" biscuit cutter into the fondant for the main part of the head and a smaller circle (I used a bottle cap from a sprinkles jar) for the ears. Just lightly press the circles into the fondant. Don't push all the way through. Then cut out the Mickey Mouse head.

Once I cut it out, I thought something was off. Then I realized that Mickey's ears were really almost full circles just barely attached to his head so I molded the fondant ears to make them more full circles. It looked less like a bear head then.

The hole in the top was created using a size 12 round decorating tip.

For the chain, marshmallow fondant was rolled into ropes and formed into the rectangular chain links. I went ahead and closed the links at this time even though they weren't linked together. All the chain pieces were painted yellow gold.

Once the paint had dried, I cut a hole into the end of the cake, inserted the corkscrew chain piece, cut one end of each chain link and began connecting the pieces ending with the Mickey Mouse head.

With the chain completed, the cake was finished!

Hubby's First Cake Decorating Attempt

2011-10-18T16:53:00.002-06:00

Will decided he would make a decorated cake for my birthday. He has baked cakes for me before but never stepped into the realm of cake decorating. This was a first. This is truly an amateur cake!

I had recently picked up crocheting again and have also started to take in interest in knitting. In fact, with this new hobby, a corner of out living room has been overtaken by balls of yarn. He decided to make my cake in the shape of a skein of yarn.

He bought a jelly roll at the grocery store bakery and a couple cans of white icing. To one can of icing, he added some blue coloring gel and mixed it in with the electric mixer.

Then he trimmed the edges of the jelly roll to round them out a bit.

With a little bit of instruction, he filled a decorating bag with icing, attached a round tip, and went to town on the cake. He filled the 2 sides with the blue "yarn" icing and left the middle blank.

He used some of the white icing in the 2nd can to fill in the middle as the yarn "label". He left it to sit and dry some so he could smooth out the seams.

Once the white icing was "cleaned up" a bit, he added some additional blue "yarn" near the edges of the white. and then did his writing on the "label". He placed chopsticks on the plate and created some yarn coming of the skein to wrap around the chopstick "knitting needles".

I think he did a great job! He might even decide to do more cake decorating in the future!

Kirby and His Star Car Cake

2011-10-08T23:40:00.001-06:00

I was recently going through some family photos and came across two cakes from 2009 that I had not previously posted to the blog. The first was the Rockin Rubber Duck cake I made for my best friend's fiance. The second, later that same year, was a cake for my husband, Kirby and his Star Car.

The reason my husband got a Kirby cake is because my children love to play Kirby on their Game Cube with him. It's one of the things they do for "Quality Time" (don't worry, they have other quality time activities that don't involve video games). When it came time to make a birthday cake, the children decided their daddy needed a Kirby cake. So he got one. Kirby, in all his pink glory, on his star car...

It's been awhile since I made this cake so I've got to pull the instructions from the dusty corners of my mind before I can relay them to you. I will say that his eyes and mouth are made from rolled out marshmallow fondant and painted. The star car is made from an 8" round cake that has been carved into a star and the feet (dark pink) and arms (light pink) are made from the trimmed off pieces of the star. The icing is buttercream.

Rockin Rubber Duck Cake

2011-10-08T00:11:00.033-06:00

When my son received his Electric Guitar Cake back in 2009, it became an instant hit with family and friends. My best friend's fiance, David, wanted one. But the guitar cake took so much time to make that I didn't have the time available to make another for his birthday the following month. In fact, time was so limited then that like the Kirby and His Star Car Cake, the Rockin Rubber Duck Cake that David requested instead was never posted to this blog. It's about time ol' "Rock" gets his big break!

The cake was modeled after one of the rubber ducks displayed beneath the cake stand. He is actually the one that looked the most like David (and David plays the electric guitar among other instruments).

The entire outside is marshmallow fondant. The duck's bill is all fondant - and let me tell you, that is WAY too much weight to have hanging off the side of the cake without adequate support! The sides of the duck bill started to droop and ol' "Rock" looked like he was frowning by the time we cut the cake!

As with the Kirby Cake, it's been awhile since I made this cake so I've got to pull the instructions from the dusty corners of my mind before I can relay them to you.

"Fade In" Movie Script Cake

2011-10-07T22:10:00.001-06:00

Recently, Will asked me to make a cake for an event put on by the new screenwriting club at the college. The club's name is "Fade In" and he requested the cake look like a movie script. I had made a movie script cake for his birthday before and knew I wanted to improve on it if I ever made one again. Here was my chance.

The original cake was much too rounded to look like a stack of pages. I wanted this one to look more rectangular. That was an easy fix. I changed the pan I baked it in.
I also had problems with the icing drying too quickly before I could get it smoothed. That cake was made using buttercream icing. With this new one, I would use canned Pillsbury icing. Canned icing takes longer to dry out.
The black decorator gel on the original cake bugged me. The color tended to "run" on the snowy white icing. This time I would use black colored icing.

To begin, I prepared one box of Pillsbury Yellow cake mix. The only adjustment I made was to use the high altitude directions (I am in Colorado). I baked it in a 13x9 AirBake pan since it was the one 13x9 pan that had the least rounded corners.

Once the cake cooled for about 10 minutes, I turned it out onto a cooling rack to cool completely. I actually turn the cake out onto the rack and then flipped to make the rounded top face up. I've found that the easiest way to flip cake is to sandwich it between 2 baking racks, hold the racks together and then flip quickly.

Using a long length of dental floss (un-flavored), I leveled the top of the cake. My kids love to munch on cake crust (as do I) so I save those pieces for them whenever I can.

Trim the rounded top off the cake

I covered the base of my cake carrier with foil and flipped the cake onto it so the bottom of the cake was now facing up (It keeps you from having to deal with all those crumbs from the trimmed side).

The bottom of the cake is now facing up

At this point the cake can be completely covered in white icing. I used Pillsbury Classic White since the vanilla has an off-white color. The sides should be generously iced and the top should be smoothed out as much as possible.

I used an Icing Sculptor to make the sides look more like pages. I would not recommend an icing sculptor. I had nothing but problems with it. I would instead recommend using a much more inexpensive tool such as a decorating comb. You could also just wait for the icing to dry slightly and make grooves on the side with a knife or the side of your metal spatula.

I let the white icing dry a bit before moving on to the black text. Because this is canned icing, the area in which you live can make a big difference in drying time. When I was in North Carolina, the higher humidity would make icing take longer to form a crust. In the summer, the icing never would crust. But here in Colorado with the air so dry, the canned icing formed a sufficient crust within ten minutes.

Once a crust has formed, gently press in any irregular areas around the top edges. You can also VERY LIGHTLY brush your hand across the top of the cake in sweeping motions from edge to edge to smooth the surface of the cake. Be careful doing this. Too much pressure will damage the crust and you'll have to play the waiting game again while your crust re-forms before you can continue. If you live in an area where the crust just doesn't seem to form, smooth the top of the icing as best you can with a spatula or other long straight edged tool. I have yet to achieve a perfectly smoothed iced cake top. It bugs me, but then, I don't sell my cakes so I don't fret too much over it :)

For the text, use a toothpick to trace out where you want the letters to go (I should have done this with the smaller letters as well, but I didn't). This will help you keep the piped letters straight and even.

To create the black icing for the text, I started with Pillsbury Chocolate Fudge icing and added black color gel.. You can use whatever brand or flavor icing you want, but I start with some variation of chocolate icing to achieve a black color more quickly using less color gel.

Mix the icing thoroughly and place into your decorating bag. I chose to use a decorating bag with a coupler. I was going to make text in 2 sizes so by using the coupler, I could easily change out the icing tips from the larger round tip for the large text to the smaller round tip for the small text. If you don't have decorating bags or icing tips or couplers, you can always place the black icing in two Ziploc bags. Cut a small hole in the bottom corner of one bag and cut an even smaller hole in the bottom corner of the other bag. Instant piping bags!

Using a coupler with your icing tips lets you quickly and easily change out decorating tips so you can continue to use the same bag of icing.

For the gold brads, I cut a miniature marshmallow in half and pressed them into rounded discs. Using a dampened decorating brush, I painted on gold colored Pearl Dust.

The painted brads were placed along one side of the cake top (see the main cake image for placement).

All done! Display, slice, serve and enjoy!

Will took the cake to the club function the next day. Apparently, it was very well received. Most of the cake was gone when it came back home and I hear the brownies they had available (supplied by the school) were hardly touched. Maybe they just weren't a brownie crowd...I like to think it was a very tasty cake.

Changes

2011-10-05T17:30:00.001-06:00

I'm making changes to the template and layout of the blog, adding larger images and filling in instructions on some of the cakes that are missing them so if you run into a strangely formatted post, know I'm working to fix it :) Thanks, and happy decorating!

Ferret Shaped Cake

2011-09-09T11:27:00.050-06:00

Among other out-of-the-ordinary-for-a-girl-her-age things, Tia loves ferrets. I can't stress that enough. She LOVES ferrets and all things ferret related. It started with a trip to the pet store one day when she decided she wanted a rabbit (we were just going to look at them, not buy one) and I pointed out the ferrets. There were two in the cage - as cute as could be and romping and playing around. Tia instantly fell in love. But, since daddy is allergic, she knows she can't have one until she grows up. That was two years ago.

Now Tia has a small collection of ferret things - toys, stuffed animals, a puppet, drawings, calendars, magazines, and even a pet store catalog that usually has an entire 3-4 pages dedicated to ferret items (cages, toys, beds, food, etc). Her favorite is "Coco", her well loved and worn Webkins ferret. In fact, Tia is our resident expert on the care and feeding of ferrets. I was quite prepared when she requested a ferret shaped cake for her 8th birthday (she's already 8?).

I had an idea about how to go about making her cake but I wanted more concrete plans. A search online didn't help much and I wound up patterning her cake after one I found on Cake Central, though that one had airbrushing on it - something I was not going to get into.

If you're unfamiliar with my cakes, I just have to mention that I try to make things as easy as possible. I like made-from-scratch cakes as much as the next person, but I spend a lot of time on decorating the cakes so when it comes to a cake project, I simply use boxed cake mix and canned icing - something anyone can just pick up at the store. You could certainly make your cake and icing from scratch and go from there but the results you see in the pictures, unless otherwise noted, are from boxed cake mix and canned icing (usually Pillsbury brand).

I realized I could just carve out the cake and ice it with a Grass and Hair decorating tip (Wilton Tip 233).

To start, I baked an entire box of cake mix in a 10 inch round cake pan. I added 1/4 cup additional flour to the mix because a) the altitude in Colorado and b) to make a denser cake (easier to carve without falling apart). I baked it for the amount of time a 13 x 9 cake calls for. It certainly rose enough...

I used the additional height to my advantage. It would mean less carving and piecing together to make the rounded body of the ferret.

I carved out the body and tail in one piece, then the head and the legs and pieced them all together. The pieces don't have to be carved perfectly. The icing has a way of rounding everything out. The leg pieces are also there to just add "bulk" to those areas and define parts.

To ice the body, I didn't want to use just plain brown. A ferret's fur, like many animals, is a mixture of several shades. I knew I didn't want to do the airbrushing. I also only wanted a hint of color change - and something that was quick and easy to do (sometimes I can be a very lazy decorator).

I decided to mix a small amount of vanilla icing into the brown chocolate icing.

I didn't want to mix it too much because I wanted there to be a hint of color change. I just marbled the two icings together.

Then I filled my decorating bag (with Tip #233) with the icing. This may seem like a lot of trouble, but it did make a big difference (I think) in the outcome of the cake.

It helps to practice a little with the Grass & Hair tip before you actually start decorating. I found that if I place the tip close to the cake surface, add pressure to the bag to start the icing flow and pull out slowly while still applying pressure (releasing the pressure once you have the "fur" the length you want), the "fur" tends to look better.

I removed the additional cake "parts" (the head and legs) and started icing the ferret cake at the tip of the tail working my way up the body. As I iced, I directed the "fur" toward the tail and toward the base instead of straight up off the cake so the ferret would look like it had fur instead of spiky hair. As I got to the place where a leg should go, I iced the area on the body and then lightly pressed the cake part into the side. Then I iced over the leg. Once I got to the neck area, I used some icing to "glue" the head to the neck.

Tia wanted a sable ferret with a mask. I only have one Grass & Hair decorating tip (who knew having 2 of them would ever come in handy) so I completed all of the brown icing fur before moving on to the white on the face. For the ears, I used a bag with no tip - just the very end snipped off - and piped them on. Basically, the ears are 2 "C" shapes. Ferrets have small ears so there didn't seem to be a need to do much else with them. I didn't have anything else on hand, so I used chocolate chips for the eyes (placed into the icing with the flat side out) and a cinnamon candy for the nose. I would have preferred mini M&Ms for the eyes or even shiny black decorating gel but this is what I had. I also was NOT going to whip up pink icing just for the little nose, though I think it would have looked better. Still, the birthday girl who stood by me the whole time the cake was being made, was happy.

Lego Mini-figure Cake

2011-01-05T02:46:00.015-07:00

Tristan knew exactly what he wanted as his birthday cake this year. He has been so engrossed in Legos for the last three years and recently began creating Lego "videos" (stop motion photography) so it came as no surprise when he blurted out his wishes at the dinner table one night. "I want a Lego Mini figure cake! But I want the original face. No eyebrows."

"How odd," I thought, "for him to be specific about the eyebrows." But, that's Tristan. And a mini-figure cake he got! He even put together one for me with the eyes (no eyebrows), pants and shirt he wanted out of his Lego pieces. Lucky for me, he wanted a very basic "original looking" Lego man.

Tristan told me about this cake well in advance. I thought about it well in advance...then forgot about it for a couple of weeks. It's a mini-figure...how hard could it be?

I scanned for cakes having anything to do with Lego. I found a black and white drawing of a mini-figure that I downloaded and enlarge to a 8x10 size. I would use it as a template to cut out the cake pieces so at least our Lego guy would be proportional.

A couple days before his birthday, I baked a 13x9 cake and cut out the pieces using my "template". I didn't mind that the template was only 8x10. The Lego minifigure isn't flat so I planned to use some cake "scraps" to give him bulk where he needed it - mainly his head and his toes. Besides, that's PLENTY of cake to eat. The less cake we had left over, the better.

I found out the morning before his birthday as I was putting it together and trying to ice it that I had not quite planned out the creation of this cake enough.

Will emailed asking how the cake was coming along. "The cake looks like crap," was all I said about it. Icing was glopping everywhere and would NOT make a nice edge. And since I had to cut the cake so much, there were crumbs EVERYWHERE! I had only gotten the legs iced when I KNEW this was not going to work. I had to resort to the marshmallow fondant and I had to do it in a hurry! I had bought 2 bags of marshmallows just in case this happened and luckily, Tia (the marshmallow disposal system) hadn't found them. I didn't mind doing the marshmallow fondant (and actually had a sneaking suspicion it would look a lot better with fondant) but I really hoped I could get it done quickly with icing.

I had just enough time to make the fondant and put it in the fridge to rest before I had to leave to get the kids from school.

That afternoon I set to work covering the cake with fondant. The arms were wrapped separately and set next to the rest of the cake. The hands were made from rectangles of fondant that were shaped around a bottle then secured with a toothpick to the arms. It wasn't long before the kids knew what a ghost mini-figure would look like (no color).

That evening, I started painting the cake. Tristan had asked for basic colors (blue, red and of course, Lego man yellow). I wasn't too worried at this point about how he would look. The cake was coming along beautifully. The only thing that worried me was the face. It had to look perfect. I decided to make it using scraps of fondant colored black.

The areas where the mini-figure's waist and neck were looked pretty rough (the seams where the pants and shirt met and the head and shirt met) so I created a belt (and buckle) for the waist and a scarf for the neck area.

I was pretty pleased with the final product - especially considering the mess I started out with. Tristan was thrilled with the results, and that's what really mattered the most.

Tiki Man Cake

2010-03-19T12:55:00.004-06:00

Last minute cake ideas usually do NOT turn out well. However, this one most certainly did. My son, now 17, decided he wanted to have several friends over for a bonfire for his birthday. No problem! We had the fire pit, could order pizzas, have a cooler full of drinks...but what about the cake? Well, the bonfire led to the Tiki idea. Tiki torches, oil lamps, etc (no grass skirts, though).

This guy was made from a 13x9" cake. Once the cake was baked, he took under an hour to decorate. I've posted some photos of the decorating process below.

Once your cake has baked and cooled, round it out by trimming the upper edges forming the cake into a half log shape. Place it on your serving board. (I usually just use my cake carrier for this since that's it's final resting spot)
Ice the cake completely with chocolate icing. You don't have to worry too much about getting icing on your surface. It will be covered up later. Keep your strokes going vertical - to somewhat resemble tree bark.
Use a toothpick, knife, chopstick or whatever you have handy to trace the design of your tiki man's face. Don't worry about adding details at this point. You just want to be sure you have the basic design centered on the cake surface.
Now comes the fun part - coloring it in! Try to stay in the lines. Fill in all your base colors first, then do your outlining. The icing colors were made with a couple cans of vanilla icing and neon food coloring.
The teeth were made with marshmallow fondant. I rolled out a sheet, cut out 2 strips and indented them to look like teeth.
Continue coloring in the areas and add details (like the zig-zagging and the headband feathers).

The final touch was the nose - made of tootsie rolls. The tootsie rolls (about 6 minis) were warmed in the microwave and molded into 3 balls (2 small and one large). The large ball was rolled into a cone shape and the smaller balls were attached to either side.
The entire base of the cake was surrounded with graham cracker crumbs to resemble sand.
And there you have it! A quick, easy (and Yummy) last minute Tiki Man birthday cake!

Nintendo Super Mario Mushroom Cake

2009-12-19T13:36:00.001-07:00

Having kids usually means having video games and having video games usually means "Super Mario" and "Nintendo" are common household words. So it came as no suprise when my son came up to me before his 10th birthday, showed me his little mushroom shaped tin of sour candies, and told me "This is what I want my birthday cake to be!" Noooo Problem! What better use of my Betty Crocker Bake N' Fill pan than a mushroom!

Once my cake was baked and cooled, placed it on a round cake board (cut down to size) and set it on top of a wedding cake stand. I coated the cake in a (generous) layer of icing and smoothed marshmallow fondant over the top, tucking it in underneath.

The green was painted on with a mixture of food coloring gel and vanilla extract. The 5 large round circles were cut out of marshmallow fondant and placed on the cake.

To cover the wedding cake tower, I cut out a strip of paper, drew the eyes on it, and surrounded the base of the cake, taping it closed.

Unicorn Cake

2009-09-06T23:16:00.120-06:00

Tia has a thing for unicorns this year. Unicorn this and unicorn that. "Find a story about unicorns!" Guess what...she wanted a UNICORN CAKE! So she got one...

I knew I didn't want to end up with a unicorn with a non-existent muzzle like the Prancing Pony Cake, but I needn't have worried. I found inspiration in the party decor!

I scanned the catalog page, enlarged it, and used the picture as a template for cutting out the unicorn's head.

The unicorn cake is a 2 layer cake carved from a single 9x13 cake (I used Pillsbury white cake mix). This could also be turned into a horse cake - simply leave off the horn!

I first cut out the head, keeping the cut out section as far to one side as possible (since the remaining cake would form the neck and base, supporting the head). The ear should also be part of this piece. The head piece was then carved and rounded to resemble a unicorn head. It doesn't need to be very detailed. Icing will help to round out most of the cut edges and can also be used to add details later.
With the remaining cake, shape the neck area. You need to be sure to keep a large enough piece of cake to go beneath the head, supporting it and creating a 2-layer cake section. I placed the head template on the cake and cut around it adding the neck as I went so the top and left sides of the cake would match the head piece perfectly.
You can't see it in the photo, but I also made a second ear part of this base piece. It sits more forward on the head than the first ear and helps to support the horn.
Place the base piece onto your serving plate and cover completely with icing. I used canned Pillsbury vanilla icing.
Place the head piece on top of the base piece and arrange it toward the top left of the cake aligning the top of the head and the left side of the head.
Ice the top layer and all the sides. Your cake should now be completely covered in icing. If you like, you can make a icing border along the base. It's only needed at the bottom of the neck and along the left side of the cake. The rest will be covered in icing from the mane.
Color a can of vanilla icing pink. Place it in a decorating bag with a large star tip and pipe on the mane. Start at the base of the cake and work your way up. Bring the mane up over the forehead in curls.
Use a small butter knife or spatula to spread a little icing in the ear.
I drew on the eye with black decorating gel and painted in the iris with blue food coloring gel (slightly watered down).
For the nose, I made an indent in the icing and the same blue color used on the eye was swiped on with a paintbrush just at the top of the nostril.
The unicorn's horn was made from marshmallow fondant. I mixed up a batch, rolled it into a long rope with a tapered end and twisted it around half of a bamboo skewer. Start at the end of the skewer with the tapered end and twist keeping the fondant tightly wrapped until you run out of fondant or get to the middle of the skewer - whichever comes first. The entire horn was then dusted with silver Pearl Dust - edible metallic decorating powder.
Insert the uncovered end of the skewer into the unicorn's head just above the ear on the bottom layer but as close to the seam between the cake layer as possible. The horn is heavy. The bottom ear, the length of the skewer and the weight of the top layer of cake all help to hold the horn in place.

Bridal Shower Mini Cupcakes

2009-04-27T14:03:00.004-06:00

Mmmmm...Cupcakes! And mini cupcakes are even better! They don't come with as much guilt! So when my best friend started taking about desserts for her bridal shower (mini eclairs and such) I was quick to mention mini cupcakes. Of course, I didn't think of how I would transport them before I said I could make them, but I didn't mind the thought of eating the ones that didn't travel well...

I knew well in advance what cupcakes I would make. See below for the different varieties and how to make each.

Chocolate Raspberry was first on the list. I thought of making a chocolate cake with raspberry mousse icing but figured that might not be enough chocolate in one bite for most of this crowd.

I made devils food cake and piped raspberry jam in the middle of each one. That made for a delicious surprise!

Chocolate Raspberry filled - make mini chocolate cupcakes as normal. Once cooled, fill a piping bag with raspberry jam. Going through the tops of the cupcakes, squeeze about a teaspoon of jam into the center of each cupcake. Mix chocolate icing and raspberry flavoring together (how much you use is just a matter of taste). If you plan to pipe the icing onto the cupcakes in peaks, you will need to add powdered sugar to make a stiff consistency.

Lemon - There's nothing fancy about the cupcakes themselves. It's lemon flavored box cake mix. However, the icing is made with lemon juice, lemon peel, cool whip and Knox unflavored gelatin (one envelope dissolved in 1/4 cup cold water). Once the icing is piped on, place in the refrigerator to cool. The gelatin in the icing helps to set it. These would be fantastic on a summer day!

Pink - the easiest of all the cupcakes. This one is yellow cake mix, baked according to package directions. The icing is canned vanilla icing colored pink and made stiff with the addition of some powdered sugar.

Rock 'N Roll Electric Guitar Birthday Cake

2009-03-22T21:05:00.006-06:00

Sweet Sixteen is a big birthday, but I was not buying a car. No way! My son did say he wanted a guitar, so I got him one - all covered in icing and - (egads!) - FONDANT!

I said I would never use fondant. It tastes HORRIBLE! But this is no ordinary fondant. It is marshmallow fondant make in my own kitchen and flavored with almond. I found the recipe online at What's Cooking America and tried a small batch. Then I tried another small batch. Then I said "the heck with it" and used the rest of the marshmallows up!

Now, there are some guidelines to using fondant. Let me tell you that you should follow those guidelines. I can't tell you how many times I had to peel (scrape) fondant off my rolling mat only to start over. I noticed that as long as I was working with the fondant and didn't let it sit, it stayed moist and did not dry out. I did not use as much Crisco as was suggested. Only when I was actually mixing the marshmallows and sugar together did I add some Crisco to my spatula and my hands. Once the fondant formed a ball, I coated my hands and my work surface with cornstarch (powdered sugar did NOT work) and kneaded the ball.

To make this cake, I first had to create the template. I traced a guitar. It took 4 sheets of 8x11 paper. I scanned the tracings, put them together and shrunk the base of the guitar to fit on one 8x11 sheet of paper. (There was no way I was going to make a life-sized guitar for only 15 people!) The template was in 3 parts - the body, the neck and the head (where the tuning keys are).

I baked and cooled a regular box cake as normal in a 9 x 13" pan.

I placed my template pieces over the cake. I did have to put it together like a puzzle in some places (the cake wasn't wide enough to accommodate the guitar horns so I had to cut those out separately).

Once the cake pieces were together and arranged on my board, I used a piece of regular clean floss to cut the cake in half. It cuts much more cleanly than a serrated knife. I lifted the top layer off (carefully!) and iced the entire middle with store bought chocolate icing.

After replacing the top layers, I iced the top and sides with store bought vanilla icing to seal in the crumbs and level out the cake surface.

This is where the new stuff starts -- the marshmallow fondant. I had already made plenty of fondant. I flavored it with almond flavoring (use in place of the water in the marshmallow fondant recipe). I formed the knobs and tuning keys and other parts of the cake. Some of them were "painted" with Pearl Dust (edible metallic decorating powder) mixed with flavoring and set aside to dry.

I rolled out a large sheet of marshmallow fondant (and after several tries, actually got the sheet to come off the rolling mat without sticking) and placed it over the base of the cake.

The fondant started to mold itself to the cake. I smoothed down the top and gradually started to work my way down the sides doing small sections at a time. The only place that needed some difficult adjusting was the concave areas around the guitar horns. Once the fondant was pressed to the cake, I used my small spatula to trim off the excess fondant.

I repeated the steps for the second sheet of fondant that was used to cover the neck and head of the guitar cake then I tucked the bottom edge of the fondant underneath the cake to create a smooth bottom.

I chose not to color the fondant because after my experiences with red and black colored icing (ladybug cake and grill cake) and the steps I took to make sure the marshmallow fondant TASTED good, I didn't want to ruin it by mixing in a huge amount of horrible tasting food coloring. I decided I would "paint" the color onto the guitar. I had no idea how this would work or what my own results would be. I saw a picture of a guitar cake online where the creator had mixed food coloring and water and painted the guitar to have a wood grain look. I also watched Ace Of Cakes create a guitar cake and they airbrushed the black onto the cake. That was do-able since there are now spray cans of cake coloring on the market at craft stores, but I thought that might be too messy (and just one more thing I'd have to buy).

I mixed some red food coloring gel with some vanilla extract , grabbed a brush and started painting. Note: keep the strokes going in the same direction. I only brushed on the red the first night and let it dry overnight. I put a second coat of red on the next day and it really made the red a lot brighter! The black went on a bit thicker so it didn't need a second coat.

Once the cake was painted, I added the frets, rolled out a sheet of fondant and cut it out for the guitar face, and placed everything that belonged below the strings. The silver balls you see are silver dragees. They can be hard to find but many grocery stores and places that offer cake decorating supplies still carry them.

For the strings, I used silver embroidery floss. I had intended to use beading wire but that just was NOT going to work. I couldn't get it to straighten out and it moved around so much while I worked with it that I thought it may gouge out part of the cake.

I tied ends of the embroidery floss to toothpicks I had cut in half and pressed the toothpicks into the cake. I made the strings a bit longer than I needed so I was able to tighten them once they were in the cake by twisting the toothpicks. Once the strings were in place, I placed a dab of icing on the end of each to act as glue. I had fondant pieces that went over the ends of each string so the toothpicks were not showing.

The rest of the cake went together smoothly and quickly. I glued down the knobs and other pieces with icing and used toothpicks to insert tuning keys and such. It was a great looking cake!

Final Notes: Only one person did not like the fondant. Others kept pulling pieces off the cake to eat like candy. I iced the middle of the cake because I was worried the fondant wouldn't lend enough "moistness" to the cake like icing does (and my group is a bunch of icing fanatics).

I rolled the marshmallow fondant about 1/8 inch thick. It did really well and kept its shape. I think I used a bit too much cornstarch when I was rolling it out because you could see some "dry" areas of the fondant as I painted it. The color REALLY brought out the flaws. Maybe there was too much cornstarch because I had to keep re-rolling the fondant. Experts say to keep turning your fondant as you roll it so it won't stick. Listen to them. They are right.

Working with Marshmallow Fondant

2009-03-22T20:48:00.006-06:00

I knew at some point I would have to face it...I would come across a cake that would just be easier, and look better, if I used fondant. My son's sixteenth birthday was fast approaching and I planned to make him a guitar cake.

The problem is, I don't like the taste of fondant. It's like a chewy, blah tasting ball of clay. But I was browsing through cake decorating forums online and saw several posts about Marshmallow Fondant and how people prefer using it to the traditional fondant. I searched for Marshmallow Fondant, found a recipe at What's Cooking America, and decided to try it. I had all the ingredients (3), and it looked simple and quick to make. I also found a small batch recipe in the Wilton online forum very similar to this large batch recipe so I could just try it out.

Marshmallow Fondant Recipe - large batch (as posted on the What's Cooking America website)
16 ounces white mini-marshmallows (use a good quality brand)
2 to 5 tablespoons water
2 pounds icing sugar (please use C&H Cane Powdered Sugar for the best results)
½ cup Crisco shortening (you will be digging into it so place in a very easily accessed bowl)

NOTE: Please be careful, this first stage can get hot.

Melt marshmallows and 2 tablespoons of water in a microwave or double boiler: Put the bowl in the microwave for 30 seconds, open microwave and stir, back in microwave for 30 seconds more, open microwave and stir again, and continue doing this until melted. It usually takes about 2 ½ minutes total. Place 3/4 of the powdered sugar on the top of the melted marshmallow mix.

Now grease your hands GENEROUSLY (palms, backs, and in between fingers), then heavily grease the counter you will be using and dump the bowl of marshmallow/sugar mixture in the middle. (By the way, this recipe is also good for your hands. When I’m done, they are baby soft.)

Start kneading like you would bread dough. You will immediately see why you have greased your hands. If you have children in the room they will either laugh at you or look at you with a questioning expression. You might even hear a muttered, “What are you doing?”

Keep kneading, this stuff is sticky at this stage! Add the rest of the powdered sugar and knead some more. Re-grease your hands and counter when the fondant is sticking. If the mix is tearing easily, it is to dry, so add water (about ½ tablespoon at a time then knead it in). It usually takes me about 8 minutes to get a firm smooth elastic ball so that it will stretch without tearing when you apply it to the cake.

It's best if you can let it sit, double wrapped, overnight (but you can use it right away if there are no tiny bits of dry powdered sugar). If you do see them, you will need to knead and maybe add a few more drops of water.

Prepare the fondant for storing by coating it with a good layer of Crisco shortening, wrap in a plastic-type wrap product and then put it in a re-sealable or Ziploc bag. Squeeze out as much air as possible.

MM Fondant will hold very well in the refrigerator for weeks. If I know that I have a cake to decorate, I usually make two (2) batches on a free night during the week so it is ready when I need it. Take advantage of the fact that this fondant can be prepared well in advance.

Now for my own personal notes: There are some guidelines to using fondant. Let me tell you that you should follow those guidelines. I can't tell you how many times I had to peel (scrape) fondant off my rolling mat only to start over. I noticed that as long as I was working with the fondant and didn't let it sit, it stayed moist and did not dry out. I have read that you can zap it in the microwave to soften it out but I did not have to do that (I have to admit I was a bit scared I would ruin it if I microwaved it anymore).

I did not use as much crisco as was suggested. Only when I was actually mixing the marshmallows and sugar together did I add some crisco to my spatula and my hands. Once the fondant formed a ball, I coated my hands and my work surface with cornstarch (powdered sugar did NOT work) and kneaded the ball.

The first couple batches I made were not flavored. They didn't taste bad, but they did taste like overly sweet marshmallows. I added some almond flavoring to the last batch and kneaded all the batches together. It tasted really good!

If you have any left over, place it in a ziploc bag and keep it refrigerated.

Only one person did not like the fondant. Others kept pulling pieces off the cake to eat like candy.
I iced the middle of the cake because I was worried the fondant wouldn't lend enough "moistness" to the cake like icing does (and my group is a bunch of icing fanatics).
I rolled the marshmallow fondant about 1/8 inch thick. It did really well and kept its shape. I think I used a bit too much cornstarch when I was rolling it out because you could see some "dry" areas of the fondant as I painted it. The color REALLY brought out the flaws. Maybe there was too much cornstarch because I had to keep re-rolling the fondant. Experts say to keep turning your fondant as you roll it so it won't stick. Listen to them. They are right.
If you have any Marshmallow Fondant tips to share, please post them in the comments section!

Added 07/12/2011:

I just wanted to note that I made a large batch of the marshmallow fondant and kneaded it for a LONG time (about 10 minutes straight). Then I put it in a large ziploc bag and let it sit for about an hour before I pulled it out and kneaded it again for another 5 minutes. The fondant turned out to be much more smooth and elastic afterwards and was MUCH easier to work with. It didn't tear or crack. It stretched nicely.

Life Sized Car Cake

2009-01-26T21:30:00.005-07:00

Wow! To be able to create this in my oven...

Blue's Clues a Big Hit

2008-09-29T19:37:00.005-06:00

Of course, every year I have to run through weeks of "What do you want for your birthday?" with the kids. But I'm not asking about what present they want. I'm asking what CAKE they want.

This year, my daughter, soon to be 5 years old started out with Jack Skellington. Then it changed to Batman (with a boomerang). Then it changed to Hello Kitty. Then Happy Feet (I was actually looking forward to making penguin cupcakes) and then, finally, she settled on Blue's Clues.

The problem with making cartoon characters for the kids is that I HAVE to get them to look just like the character. Not that the kids care. I think as long as it's close...or even has the same coloring and is made with tons of sugar, they are happy. But me, I have to make the character look so close to the real thing, the cake should be licensed. Otherwise I think...eh, it could be better. Why do I have to make it so hard...

If you've read many of these posts, you know I like working with Candy Melts. I use them in all colors and for all things. Well, for this year's Blue's Clues birthday party, I lucked out. Nick, Jr had a recipe for Blue's Clues Cupcakes that were just my speed. Plain cupcakes with their edges rolled in sprinkles and topped with "Blue" made from melted light blue (and dark blue) Candy Melts. They couldn't have been cuter! You can fnd the instructions and a template on Nick,Jr.

I couldn't stop there, though. I switched up the colors and made Magenta out of pink and purple Candy Melts. Then I made a template on wax paper for the Thinking Chair - which suprisingly, turned out to be a very popular cupcake. I used red and dark blue for those.

We also found some paw print chocolate lollipop molds at the craft store and made some to go in the party favor boxes. Those were really a hit!

Once we learned Blue's Birthday Candle Dance and had paw print stickers eveywhere (she stuck them EVERYWHERE), we were ready for a party!

TIP #1: These are very time consuming so you may want to spread it out over a 3 or 4 days/afternoons/evenings. The cupcakes are a snap to put together so save the baking and icing for last. Start with the spots and the head. Then do the eyes, nose and mouth. This gives everythng plenty of time to harden.

TIP #2: I made Blue by first making her dark blue spots then filling in the template with the light blue. This way, once the chocolate candy dried, I could peel it off the wax paper and flip it over revealing a smooth face with spots. The reverse side was so lumpy, it looked awful.

TIP #3: Be VERY careful when removing the hardened chocolate from the waxed paper. The spot where Blue's ears meet her head are very thin and break VERY easily. I had to doctor quite a few ears before I placed them on the cupcake.

TIP #4: To get the sprinkles only on the edges of the cupcake, pour some sprinkles into a generous pile on a plate. Take a FRESHLY iced cupcake and roll the edge through the sprinkles. Fresh icing is still "sticky" allowing sprinkles to stick to it.

"Conan's Atlantean Sword"

2008-06-21T18:45:00.011-06:00

When I asked my husband what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday, he said a sheet cake. I just shot him a look. Then he said "Plankton". That's his favorite Spongebob character (with Mr. Krabs following in a close 2nd). We watch a bunch of Spongebob around here. I agreed to Plankton. Then out of the blue he thought of the Atlantean Sword. He said if we ever had 3 grand to blow he'd get one. Well, he got one but not quite the kind he was hoping for. He was pleased with it, though.

This was made by cutting apart and piecing together a 13x9 cake. The finished cake is 20" long - half the length of the actual Atlantean sword.

All you need to make this cake is 1 box of cake mix - baked in a 13x9 pan and cooled and 2 cans of ready made white icing, and black, brown and yellow food coloring gels. You also need a surface large enough for a 20" cake. You can make it longer if you want - there is enough cake to do it, but I did not have the surface area to transport it on.

I colored some white icing with a dab of black gel to get the blade color. Then added more black and some brown gel for the bottom. The handle of the actual Atlantean sword is wrapped in some twine/leather looking stuff (my husband isn't here right now to elaborate on the exactmaterial) so I added some yellow and white to my leftover dark brassy icing and piped on the handle.

The coloring was not very appetizing but it certainly made it look more real. My husband was afraid it would turn out looking too "cartoony" so he was very happy to see this!

Sombrero Cake for your Fiesta!

2008-03-02T20:05:00.008-07:00

Once again, my best friend wanted a cake for her birthday party. This time it wasn't going to be just my family having her over for dinner, though. It was my family and about 20 other guests having her over for a Mexican Fiesta party. What a great idea that was!

Around here, it's hard to find someone who DOESN'T like Mexican food. We went to the international grocery store to do our shopping. We bought jalapenos by the dozen, many pounds of queso, about 180 corn tortillas...we even got several of the Jarritos brand soda made in Mexico. Those turned out to be adored by the kids!

I kept thinking about the cake. A chili pepper cake? Maracas? A margarita cake? I settled on the sombrero cake. I'll get to the other ones some other time. The deciding factor was finding one of my really big aluminum serving trays that was perfect for the sombrero's brim...

The middle of the cake was made using a Betty Crocker Bake-n-Fill dome pan. This is one time I used Duncan Hines cake mix - remember, I "always" use Pillsbury. Duncan Hines was on sale for $1 a box so I thought I'd go ahead and use it. Never have I had so much trouble with a cakemix before! It was dry and crumbly. It didn't want to release from the pan. It didn't have any spring to it. But, I managed to "glue" the cake together with some icing and complete the job.

I placed the cake in the middle of the large aluminum serving tray and coated the whole thing, including the tray, in yellow icing. I tinted the icing with yellow and brown food coloring gel to get more of a straw color rather than a bright neon yellow. It still looks bright in the photo.

I did the writing big and loopy around the edge of the brim to make it more like the fancy sombreros you see in the Mexican restaurants. Then I just made the trim around the middle of the sombrero very bright and colorful.

The colorful "pom-pom balls" around the edge of the cake are supposed to resemble the fabric pom-pom trim from decades ago. I think Cheech and Chong had some in their car in their movie Up In Smoke.

We got crazy spiral candles for the top of the cake. The cake got rave reviews, but I think the best thing was the Fiesta theme itself. I would love to have another one of these! The food was great, everyone had a good time, the decorations were loud and fun (we even played themed music). We had people here ages 3 to 60+. The only thing missing was a pinata but I couldn't bear the thought of a bunch of kids swinging sticks in my house. We'll save that for warmer weather when they can do it outside.

Bowling Themed Cake

2007-12-15T20:53:00.003-07:00

I love it (sometimes) when the kids decide what type of cake they want. It forces me to get creative. My son has been saying for months that he wanted a bowling party. I've known for months that he wanted a bowling cake. I was thinking bowling BALL. He was thinking bowling PIN. I found this out the day before I was to make the cake.

I wound up making the ball AND the pin. The cake theme didn't take alot of creativity. I did know I wanted to stay away from a black bowling ball. After the grill cake, I knew I didn't want to offer black icing to everyone. The creativity came about when I realized I was going to have to drive across town with the cake to the bowling alley where we were having this party...

I had originally thought about making a dome ball until my son informed me he wanted a bowling PIN. Then I shifted to an oversized bowling pin. I could make a 13x9 cake, cut it lengthwise and set the short ends together. But How would I transport it?

I could make a double decker bowling pin cake and carve it into something 3-D. I thought it might look a bit odd. I decided to make a single layer cake. from a 13x9 cake, I cut out a bowling pin shape. The kids munched on the rest. I also made 2 9" round cakes. One layer went into the freezer for another cake. The other was trimmed to fit next to the bowling pin so I appeared to look like a bowling ball slightly behind the bowling pin.

The pin was iced with white canned icing. I reserved a little white from that can to color red for the stripes. I colored 1/2 can of icing purple and the other 1/2 can blue. I put both colors into a decorating bag and covered the cake. Then I gently smoothed the icing over the cake to create a slightly marbled effect. The leftover marbled icing was used to do the writing. If anyone can think of some better bowling birthday verses, let me know. My teenager decided he wanted to do the Extreme bowling party in March (when the bowling alley turns out the lights and the laser lights come on).

Cookie Christmas Tree

2007-12-10T12:41:00.006-07:00

Recently, one of my co-workers saw this blog and decided I could definitely contribute to this years company Christmas Party.

On one of her shopping excursions, she found a "Cookie Tree Kit" produced by Wilton. It was a set of 10 plastic star-shaped cookie cutters in graduated sizes from small to large, along with two decorating tips, 2 plastic piping bags and a booklet of recipes and instructions for each of the trees pictured on the package. I had never seen this kit (which surprised me because I am a frequent visitor to the Wilton website) and was certainly up for the challenge.

The kit had several design ideas on the package and my co-worker had already picked out the design she wanted. I was told to make it blue, white and silver (or any combination of the three colors) so the tree would coordinate with the decorations.

I knew just by looking at the picture that I would need to make this tree in stages. Baking, icing, stacking and icing again. This was fine because my regular work day begins at 7:30 am and ends at 7 pm. That doesn't leave a lot of time to play around in the kitchen.

The party was to be held on Saturday evening. The Monday before the party, I pulled out the Cookie Tree Kit and read over everything. When you are told to read over all the instructions carefully, it's for a reason. I should have read over the instructions twice.

The booklet contains 2 recipes for the Cookie Tree. One for sugar cookies and the other for gingerbread cookies. I needed sugar cookies for the tree I was to make. It turns out you need to make 2 batches of the sugar cookie recipe to make one tree (the same thing goes for the gingerbread cookie recipe if you plan to make that one). This would normally not be a problem, but, as I stated earlier, this was Monday. My husband had just come back from the grocery store, it was 9 o'clock at night and I realized I needed another 2 sticks of butter to even begin making the cookies!

I didn't get started on this project until Wednesday night and it took a combined total of 6 hours to complete (not including cooling and drying time). This is definitely not a last minute project. You could, however, try making the gelatin tree or crisped rice tree in less time. Instructions for these two items are also included in the kit.

I made the blue icing a poured it over the cookies. It dried with a nice shiny coating. I then piped each cookie with a white criss-cross star and stacked them on top of each other. You need to be sure the cookies are evenly stacked to keep the tree from toppling over. I placed a dab of icing in the center of each cookie to act as "glue" for the one above it.

To finish, I used a star decorating tip to pipe "snow" on the tips of each cookie. The I placed a silver dragee on the top of the "snow".

A simple silver bow with ribbon curling down finished the tree.

It was beautiful! It took awhile for people to start eating the cookie tree, but when we finally did, it tasted great, too!

A Change Of Pace

2007-11-22T21:26:00.002-07:00

Once in awhile I do make a dessert that is not covered in icing. I love baking so cookies, muffins, pies, etc all come out of my kitchen. I've already been asked if I was going to make buckeyes this Christmas. They are the peanut butter balls coated in chocolate and look like buckeyes. If you've never had one, try one. They're excellent!

This particular dessert was made for Thanksgiving. It is a double chocolate pumpkin cheesecake. I'm posting it because people thought I just bought the darn thing. That's funny. My husband, while we were shopping for the cheesecakes ingredients, said, "Mrs. Smith's pies are buy-one-get-one-free. Why don't you just get that for Thanksgiving?" I just shot him a look. I don't buy food for thanksgiving. I make food for Thanksgiving. Well, except for the jellied cranberry sauce. I LOVE that stuff!

Unusual Halloween Cupcake Design Ideas

2007-10-01T20:24:00.001-06:00

Halloween is almost here! Gear up for the holiday this month by whipping up a batch or two of Halloween themed cupcakes! Take them to work or send them to school with the kids. You won’t get too many people turning you down!

Usually, when it comes to making cupcakes, once the icing is on, many people have trouble coming up with ideas for decorating them. They wind up with a few colored sprinkles or pre-made themed candies.

While I wouldn’t turn down a cupcake of any kind (as long as it wasn’t truly revolting), there are many wonderful cupcake decorating ideas out there to try this Halloween. Lots of ghosts, candy pumpkins on top of mounds of icing, the usual black cat or spooky black blob of a spider are the mainstream of what you’ll find searching the web. However, this collection of ideas showcases the unusual and/or “too cute to pass by” cupcakes. They had some thought put into them. They are fairly original. Each of the following links will take you to the image and the recipe or directions for how to create the cupcake.

The Gross and the Scary

The following might have youngsters squealing “eeewww” until they realize they are staring at a sugary concoction:

For starters, try these “Brain Cupcakes” from for a gory treat.

What could be spookier than “Eyeball Cupcakes” staring at you? ? Here is another “Eyeball Cupcake” version.

Older goblins might enjoy these “Skull Cupcakes” more than smaller trick-or-treaters.

These “Werewolf Cupcakes” may be scary for the little ones, but the older kids will love them.

You’ll need to scroll down a bit for these “Revolting Rodent Cupcakes”, but you’ll also find many other Halloween delicacies to create for your party.

While the vampire has long been a staple of Halloween, these Vampire Cupcakes are new on the scene. Some may think he belongs in the Cute Cupcake section below, but this one was a bit too pale and icky for my taste.

The Cute

The following cupcakes are definitely for the younger crowd – although I certainly enjoy these cute cupcakes, too.

How about scaring up a batch of “Mini Monster Cupcakes” – sure to bring a smile.

While you’re thinking about monsters, try these “Sweet Monster Cupcakes” to delight your own sweet monsters.

Kids will love this Mummy Cupcake for Halloween! Or, if you want a bigger mummy, try these Yummy Mummy Cupcakes.

These Goofy Goblin Cupcakes are really cute!

These creatures are definitely not my favorite when found in the backyard. But when sitting on a plate like this Bat on the top of a cupcake, I can’t help but smile.

These Spider Cupcakes couldn’t be passed by. It’s the eyes that got me.

These ideas should be enough to get you started. And remember, they are only ideas. Don’t worry about making them look just like the pictures. Use what you have on hand. Create your own ideas or just modify these. Even if you really make a mess of them, they'll look perfect for Halloween!

Picture, by earl53, obtained from Morguefile.com

Eyeball Cupcakes

2007-09-21T22:04:00.001-06:00

eyeball cupcakes
Originally uploaded by creative cake maker

These cupcakes were made during the same cupcake-a-thon as the previous turtle cupcake. Unfortunately, the kids really thought it was a hoot! They all wanted one. I have three kids...and as you can see, only 2 eyeball cupcakes. More had to be made...soon.

These were pretty easy. I used white for the base, then made the green circle. I left a hole in the circle for the chocolate. I have seen these made elsewhere using lifesavers instead of icing. I think it was in the latest Kraft Food & Family magazine. Then, I used red piping gel to create the "veins". I don't see why the kids got a kick out of eating these...

Turtle Cupcake

2007-09-21T21:29:00.000-06:00

Okay, so here's the deal. I made a big batch of cupcakes, and the kids and I started playing with them. We decorated them with all kinds of designs. The icing was piled high (it looked bad but I heard it tasted wonderful) and the kids got to try their hand at piping the icing out of the bag. That's the night the "Mike Wasowski" and "Jack Skellington" cupcakes were created. I was playing around with some leftover icing (there wasn't much) and a blank cupcake and made this turtle.

He wasn't too difficult to make, but I don't think I'd like to make a lot of them at once. It wiuld be WAY too time consuming.

First, I piped the chocolate design on his back. Then I filled in the spaces with dark green piping gel (it can get a bit runny so be careful). Next, I piped on a head, tail and four legs around th eedge of the cupcake. Be sure the icing you use is stiff. The icing we had was store-bought and kept wanting to slide down. Finally, I piped the whites for the turtles eyes and dabbed chocolate dots on them.

He's a bit messy, but kinda cute, too. The kids wanted to eat him before I could take a picture.

Cupcake Keychain

2007-09-21T15:37:00.000-06:00

"Want Some?" Cupcake Keychain
by
trishhicks

Get this custom keychain at Zazzle

I recently set up an account with Zazzle.com so I could make cake and cupcake themed items. This is the first of what will hopefully be many. The same cake creativity without all the calories and dishes. This might hold me over til the next birthday...

Where can I get ideas for my cakes?

2007-09-17T18:22:00.000-06:00

The answer is ANYWHERE! I know that may not be the answer you wanted, but it's true! You can get ideas anywhere.

Search Online: If you want an easy start, look online. There are many people out there just like me who are showcasing their cake desings in blogs and in online photo galleries. When I wanted to make kitty cat cupcakes, I had a basic idea of what I wanted to do, but I wasn't sure how to go about creating them. So I searched Google for images of "cat cupcakes" and "kitty cupcakes" and any variation of "cat" and "cupcake". I found a lot of ideas from people who had previously made cat cupcakes. I also found images of cats that were simple enough to be made into a stencil/template for my chocolate "kitties" that topped some of the cupcakes.

Books/Magazines: Look in cake decorating books and in magazines. I know Family Fun Magazine has several issues a year with cake ideas. I have also gotten ideas from other decorators and modified their cake designs to fit my own need and my own degree of experience (see Baby Dragon Cake). Debbie Brown makes wonderful sugarpaste creations. I also recently purchased Wilton's Cupcake Fun book which has over 150 ideas for cupcakes and other treats.

Cartoons/Comics: Get your inspiration from familiar characters. I use my children's picture books and DVD covers (see Monster's, Inc cupcakes) for ideas. The model for the Jack Skellington cupcakes came from a poster. Hmmm...Charlie Brown's head would fit perfectly on a cupcake! I'll have to work on that one next...

Check out the world around you: Many times I see a design and think, "Why didn't I think of that?" The answer...because it was so simple. Don't overthink it. At this moment, my daughter is shoving a lollipop in my face trying to get my attention and saying, "Mommy, I'm eating a heart lollipop." There is an idea. A lollipop. A heart lollipop. A kid with a heart lollipop. A princess with a heart shaped wand...

If you let your imagination go with the flow, the ideas present themselves. Just remember to have fun with it.

Monsters, Inc. - Mike Wasowski Cupcakes

2007-09-17T18:16:00.000-06:00

I don't know why, but I think it's so cute in the movie, Monster's, Inc. when Boo says, "Mike Wasowski!" And although the connection between Boo and Sully makes a person want to say "aaawwwww", I love the character Mike Wasowski. So in tribute, here are some Mike Wasowski cupcakes.

I came up with the idea for these on the same day I dreamed up Jack Skellington cupcakes. I was sitting at the kitchen table drawing circles on a piece of paper and "designing" cupcakes. I looked to my kids' DVD collection for inspiration. Kids are wonderful that way. If they can recognize a favorite character, the cupcake becomes so much more special to them (and they'll overlook the mistakes).

The Nightmare Before Christmas - Jack Skellington Cupcakes

2007-09-17T18:13:00.004-06:00

The last thing I ever thought I'd be making for my 4-year old daughter was Jack Skellington cupcakes. But there I was, at work, dreaming up cupcake ideas. This was during my daughter's 4-month stretch where The Nightmare Before Christmas was her favorite movie ever.

Now, keep in mind, I prefer making cupcakes that ARE something rather than cupcakes with something on top. (For instance, the cupcake is a balloon rather than a cupcake with balloons on top.) So I was thinking, "What is round? I already did a ladybug...Jack's head is round! That would be perfect!"

As soon as I got home, I pulled out some paper and started drawing "cupcake" circles. The first circle was for Jack Skellington. I was pretty happy with the results - especially when my daughter came over to see what I was doing and immediately recognized "Jack". She staked claim on the 1st cupcake I completed.

The hard part was getting the facial features just right. It had to look like "Jack"...not just any ol' skeleton. Once the drawing was done and I had a good idea about the design, I started to make them.

These were very easy to make. The most difficult part was the bat collar (or spider or whatever - my daughter would know). I made that with melted chocolate candy wafers. Melt some wafers til smooth and place in a Ziploc bag. Snip off a tiny bit of the bottom corner and "draw" the collar onto the shiny side of some wax paper. Basically, it is a circle with "wings" coming off it. They don't take long to set, but it's a good idea to do these first.

Ice the cupcakes in white, pipe on the facial features with chocolate icing (because black icing tastes TERRIBLE). I say pipe on the features because it is so much easier than spreading the chocolate around to get the eyes right. If you're making a lot of these, you'll want the simplest way possible.

Add the bat collar to the cupcake (hold it in place with a dab of icing) and you're done! Enjoy!

Kitty Cat Cupcakes

2007-09-09T20:44:00.000-06:00

When my daughter finally decided on "The Cat" for her birthday theme (she loves cats) I immediately thought about the cake. Should it be "Hello Kitty"? or "Tom & Jerry" or her beanie baby kittens? or our kittens? or just any cat? What should it look like? White? Black? Calico?

I decided I couldn't make just one cat cake. Cupcakes would do nicely. So here we are. Lots of kitty cat cupcakes. The main cupcakes have cat faces made out of chocolate candy melts and a few of them are an attempt at making cats entirely out of icing. The latter was dreamed up a few days before the party and a search online for something similar brought on ideas for how to go about making them. I thought the icing cats were a complete disaster but the girls (and my husband) thought they turned out great. In fact, they were the first to disappear!

For the chocolate candy cat faces, I first drew a template of the cat face I wanted - simple enough to do quickly with not a lot of details. I placed the picture underneath a sheet of wax paper. Once I had my chocolate candy wafers melted, I put some in a plastic sandwich bag and traced the outline of the picture. You can see a video tutorial on how to do this. Once the chocolate was cooled and set, I filled in the rest with another color of melted candy wafers. After that hardened, I peeled the cat faces off the wax paper and placed them in the refrigerator until I was ready to assemble the cupcakes.

Once the cupcakes were baked and cooled, I iced a large mound of vanilla icing onto each then sprinkled stars on them. I then placed a kitty face upright in each cupcake.

The icing cats were a bit more difficult, and until I perfect them, I think it's best not to share the technique (seeing as how I don't even HAVE a technique for them yet). Just look at the picture and maybe you can visualize what I was trying to achieve. Or, you can see the ones I was trying to model them after at Sweet Tease's blog on blogger and ooh and ahhh over those. This creative person did an excellent job! I'll just have to find more cake decorating opportunities so I can practice more!

"Prancing Pony" Cake

2007-06-30T21:59:00.001-06:00

My niece loves horses and ponies. She collected "My Little Pony" almost as long as my son collected "Power Rangers" (not that he would admit it now days). So, of course, when her birthday came along, I suggested a horse for her cake. She loved it! Especially the mane which is nothing but icing. I was pleased with the results, but felt the muzzle could have been a bit longer.

I had originally planned to post instructions for this cake here but decided against it. Instead, if you want a pony, horse or unicorn cake, see the Unicorn Cake.

If you still want to make this cake, I suggest improving it by finding a medium sized mixing bowl and a small mixing bowl. Turn them both upside down empty, put them together and see if the sizes will work for your cake. Meaning, can you see it as a horse?

In this case, the larger bowl was much too large for the smaller bowl. Perhaps if I had made 2 smaller bowl cakes to go with the one large cake and extended the muzzle out farther instead of just making it bigger...

Hmmm...I may have to revisit this cake...

Movie Script Cake

2007-06-20T22:07:00.001-06:00

My husband, better known as "Dada" by the kids, has another love in his life. Sigh. His other love is writing. Screenwriting, to be specific. What better way to celebrate his birthday than to have a cake shaped like one of his movie scripts.

He was quite pleased with this script...err...this cake. I was quite disappointed...in the cake...not the script. The icing kept wanting to dry before I could get it smooth enough so I spent a LOT of time fussing over it. It still had ridges in it. I would have preferred the cake having corners that were more squared, but the pan had rounded corners. My husband always tells me I am my worst critic - especially when it comes to my cakes - so I figure, even if I don't like it but I can still live with it, everything is fine. Otherwise, the cake itself is very easy to make.

The script cake is a simple 9x13 cake leveled off on top and iced white. The sides have markings to resemble "pages" of the script. The "text" is simple black decorator gel. If you plan on making this, I would recommend skipping the decorator gel. Use black colored icing instead. Gel can get runny. Icing probably wouldn't. Lastly, I placed real (clean) brads along the edge.

I think my main problem with it is the absence of color. That's why I had the shiny foil and bright yellow star cut-outs under the cake. It cake it more of a "Hollywood" feel.

Oh, and FYI, a script is only supposed to have 2 brads in it...not three. A major faux pas, I hear.

Tia had fun with the stars, though...

Review of "Wilton" Silicone Baking Cups

2007-05-17T21:25:00.000-06:00

I love baking cupcakes, even more than baking them, I love decorating them. Even more than me decorating them, my kids love to eat them. They oooh and aaah over the cupcakes. They pick out the biggest and best looking one they can find. Then they smash it into their mouths and smear all that pretty icing. They love to eat cupcakes.

Because I make a lot of cupcakes, I need a lot of cupcake liners. I usually have a couple containers of the paper ones hanging around the kitchen. Recently, I ran across a sale at AC Moore (the local craft store chain in this area). The Wilton brand silicone baking cups were half off. Of course, I didn't hesitate to buy them. Reusable baking cups? I could save a fortune by not having to buy the paper ones anymore.

Wilton's online store has this to say about them:

"Discover the convenience and easy release of flexible silicone bakeware!
Exceptional baking performance for your favorite recipes
Freezer, refrigerator, oven, microwave and dishwasher safe
Resists stains and odors
Oven safe to 500°F
Easy and convenient storage
Limited lifetime warranty No muffin pan needed! Bake and serve in these reusable oven-safe cups."

Wow! And only $9.99 for a set of 12. $4.99 on sale. Well, a part of my brain still said, "yikes - that's a lot for muffin cups." But they were reusable and they were on sale. So I bought them.

I tried these out the first chance I got. I could put the cups in a muffin pan, or, I could just place the cups on a regular cookie sheet and fill them. I chose to put them in a muffin pan. I wasn't going to take any chances and wind up with batter all over the bottom of my oven. I did spray them a bit with some cooking spray because I read on another brand of silicone bakeware, "for best results, coat lightly with cooking spray".

The cupcakes baked beautifully! And the silicone cups can be coordinated to match your decorating scheme. However, although the kids (at this time, ages 3 and 7) liked trying something new, especially with a cupcake in it, they soon tired of it. They had a difficult time removing the cupcakes from the cup without making a mess. The silicone cups were not flexible enough. The paper liners are much easier for them to handle.

Would I recomend them? Yes...unless you're making cupcakes for the kids. For a cupcake alternative, I have a silicone muffin pan than I put cupcake liners in when making cupcakes - it works great with muffins!

So why buy the individual liners in the first place? Well, Wilton has several alternatives - all of which I need to find time to do.

One idea is to make gelatin in them. Lightly spray the mold with oil and pour your gelatin in it. When the gelatin has set, unmold, set on a plate and "ice" the gelatin cupcake with whipped cream. Add sprinkles and/or a cherry on top for a cool summer treat!

Another idea is to melt down some candy melts and generously brush the melted candy all over the bottom and up the sides of the mold. Once the candy hardens, gently unmold the candy shell and fill with whipped cream, fruit, chocolate mousse, or any number of things!

Book: Wallace and Gromit Cracking Celebration Cakes

2007-05-17T20:55:00.000-06:00

Although I don't currently use fondant/sugarpaste for my cakes, I love to look through cake books by Debbie Brown. Her cakes provide some wonderful inspiration for my own creations (as seen with my Baby Dragon cake). I recently visited her website to see a list of her publications and came across a new book, Wallace and Gromit Cracking Celebration Cakes: Over 20 Cake Projects for Special Occasions (Hardcover).

As a huge Wallace & Gromit fan, and an amateur cake decorator, I had to get this book. It was just one of those "Gotta Have It" moments that wouldn't stop. My kids, who also love the Wallace & Gromit short films, couldn't believe they could actually have a Gromit cake! Unfortunately, Amazon.com did not carry this title, so I ordered it from www.amazon.co.uk.

It is a wonderful collection of Wallace & Gromit themed cakes! There are several for the beginner and others for the more experienced (such as the cake pictured on the cover). And there are plenty of detailed instructions and color photos to assist you through the decorating process. There are also simple fairy/cup cakes and mini cakes. You'll find cakes from all the Wallace & Gromit short films as well as from the recently released "Curse of the Wererabbit".

I have yet to make one of the "Cracking Good" cakes, but in the meantime, it is definately a fun cake book to look through. Watch out, though...if you are a Wallace and Gromit fan/cake decorator like me, this is one book that may cause you to have a "gotta have it" moment, too.

Baby Dragon Cake

2007-03-24T20:35:00.000-06:00

After my previous Dragon Cake, my oldest son decided HE wanted a dragon cake as well. I looked through all sorts of design books and one day my son came up to me with a design by Debbie Brown in her Magical Cakes book. That was the inspiration for this baby dragon cake.

The main difference between the two is the lack (actually a complete absence) of fondant (sugarpaste) in my cake, but you can definately see the similarities.

This cake was made with a box of cake mix, buttercream icing, Wilton Candy Melts, Candy Clay, a marshmallow (large) and some black gel decorator's icing. The marshmallow was trimmed down a bit, so what you see as the eyes is really one piece of marshmallow.

My son wanted his dragon to be blue, so I colored it with a cornflower blue gel.

Instructions to follow...

Dad's Cookout (Grill Cake)

2007-03-18T19:31:00.001-06:00

Once again, the cake making opportunity strikes. I should call this cake "Grandpop's Cookout" since it was for my father-in-law and 9 times out of ten, during the summer months, he's grilling dinner. But, this idea came straight from Wilton.com, so I am keeping their name on it and including the link to the recipe and assembly instructions. Whatever you do, please do not compare my version to theirs. I AM still an amateur decorator. And I AM proud of my cake - even though it started to drive me nuts aroud 9pm the night before the party...

I used buttercream icing on the entire cake and a cake recipe I got from my old 1967 copy of The Joy of Cooking (which, by the way, was a GREAT recipe). I have also decided that I dislike black icing almost as much as red.

I would like to note that the burger patties are formed using a heavily scrubbed Playdoh mold. Tristan loved this cake because he thought the "flames" were actually grilled shrimp - and he loves his shrimp!

I didn't actually get to go to my father-in-law's birthday party (had to work) so Will got to drive the cake to their house and worry about having the cake slide around the floorboard of the car the whole way there (in it's carrying container, of course). I heard it arrived just fine and everyone loved it.

Bumblebee Cupcakes

2007-03-14T21:00:00.000-06:00

Nothing could be cuter than a swarm of bumblebee cupcakes at your party! These cupcakes are quick and easy. They don’t take much more than a box of cake mix, some colored icing and marshmallows. If you want to add the wings, you’ll need some vanilla candy wafers or some white chocolate to melt down.

Ingredients:

1 standard box of cake mix (whatever flavor you prefer), baked in 48 cupcake liners and cooled. If you need assistance in baking and cooling your cake, please refer to these video tutorials on “How To Bake A Cake”.
How To Bake A Cake (Part 1): Preparing Your Baking Pans
How To Bake A Cake (Part 2): Mixing & Baking Your Cake
How To Bake A Cake (Part 3): Testing, Removing and Cooling Your Cake
Yellow gel coloring or food coloring
1 container of chocolate icing (or black colored icing)
1 container of vanilla/white icing, colored yellow using the yellow coloring
48 miniature marshmallows – each one cut in half
Vanilla flavored Candy Wafers or White Chocolate (optional if you want to add wings)

Tools:

3 sandwich sized zipper sealed bags
Spoon
Scissors
Wax Paper - (if making wings)
Microwave-safe bowl or Double Boiler - (if making wings)

If you have not already done so, bake your cupcakes according to package directions and cool completely. If they not cooled, your icing will start to melt and slide off the cupcakes.

First, fill one Ziploc sandwich bag (or similar brand) 1/3 full with some chocolate icing. Push the icing toward one of the bottom corners of the bag. Snip a small hole in the corner of the bag with your scissors. Twist the excess bag to create a decorating “piping bag”. Place the “twist” in the joint between your thumb and the rest of your hand. Close your hand over the rest of the bag. View a video tutorial for this step if you are unsure how it should be done. To decorate your cake, you will squeeze the bag. Try it a little on some wax paper to get used to it.

Now, following the design on the picture, “pipe” an outline for the head of the bumblebee. Fill in the head with chocolate icing. Leave a small space and pipe another 2 rows of chocolate icing. Leave a second space and pipe the rest of the way to the edge of the cake with chocolate icing.
Now, fill a sandwich bag 1/3 full with yellow icing. Just as you did with the chocolate icing, push the icing toward one corner and cut a hole in the corner. Fill in all the areas of the cupcake between the chocolate that still have cake exposed.

For the eyes, place 2 halves of a miniature marshmallow close together at the front of the cake on the chocolate “head”. Then, pipe chocolate "eyes" onto the marshmallows.

For the wings (optional), melt down your candy wafers or your white chocolate. This can be done in a double boiler or in a microwave. Place the melted chocolate in a sandwich bag and snip off a tiny hole in the bottom corner. Using the melted white chocolate, “draw or outline” pairs of wings (separately) on a piece of wax paper. They should look like the letter “B” or a sideways “heart”. Do not fill in the wings as this will make the wings very heavy. A simple outline of wings will do.

Allow the wings to cool and harden. Gently remove them from the wax paper and place upright in your cupcakes.

With the wings done, your cupcakes are finished!

Bumblebee Cake

2007-03-14T20:50:00.000-06:00

After making the ladybug cake, I had to keep going. But, there is only so much cake this family can safely eat without developing eating disorders or high-tailing it off to Weight Watchers...so I had to wait.

Even though we have 4 March birthdays to celebrate in this family, I couldn't wait much longer to make another fast and easy round googly eyed cake like the ladybug...

Introducing the Bumblebee...instructions coming soon...

Dragon Cake

2007-02-28T21:59:00.000-07:00

I have to give credit for this idea to "The Children's Party Handbook" by Alison Boteler. This was a fun cake to make. It was made from two 8" round cakes. Had I followed my own rules, using store bought cake mix and icing, it would have been easier. But, this cake was for my best friend who wanted buttercream icing. It's thicker and harder to spread than store-bought canned icing. And since buttercream icing is too sweet for a box cake mix like my beloved Pillsbury, I made the cake from scratch. Ahh, the things I do because I love my friends. She DID help me ice it. And then swore she would never request a dragon cake again. Details for this cake are coming soon, but for now, I leave you with the gargantuan picture (the dragon measured a good two feet across!)

Ladybug Cake

2007-01-27T18:20:00.009-07:00

This adorable cake kept me in giggles. Every time I'd look at it, and at it's counterparts, the ladybug cupcakes, I couldn't help but to smile. One of my nieces got this cake for her 3rd birthday.

It was very easy to decorate and it didn't take much more than a box of cake mix, some colored icing and a marshmallow.

As you can see, I didn't use red icing. The darker red the icing got, the more bitter the taste became. So I stopped at a more "deep pink" color. I also used chocolate icing instead of black. It seemed to go well with the pink color anyway.

Ingredients:
1 standard box of cake mix (whatever flavor you prefer), baked and cooled. You will only need one round layer for this cake so I usually make 12 cupcakes with the extra cake mix.
Red gel coloring or food coloring - I recommend using Wilton no-taste red icing gel coloring. The gel coloring is more concentrated so you get a deeper hue without using all your coloring. The red color also tends to be bitter so the no-taste red helps to combat that.
1 container of chocolate icing (or black colored icing)
1 container of vanilla/white icing, colored red using the red coloring
1 large marshmallow
1 red Twizzler – optional for antennae
2 miniature marshmallows – optional for antennae

Tools:
2 sandwich sized zipper sealed bags
Scissors
Knife (if making antennae)
Sharp pointed knife or a chopstick (if making antennae)
Large plate, cake stand, or cake board for displaying your finished cake
If you have not already done so, bake your round layer cake according to package directions and cool it completely. If it is not cooled, your icing will start to melt and slide off the cake.
Place your cake right side up on the plate you will display it on. If you prefer, you can place your cake on a cake board and move it to it’s permanent home once it is completed. However, most of us don’t have cake boards handy. The cake pictured here is resting on a paper plate.

First, fill one Ziploc sandwich bag (or similar brand) 1/3 full with some chocolate icing. Push the icing toward one of the bottom corners of the bag. Snip a small hole in the corner of the bag with your scissors. Twist the excess bag to create a decorating “piping bag”. Place the “twist” in the joint between your thumb and the rest of your hand. Close your hand over the rest of the bag. To decorate your cake, you will squeeze the bag. Try it a little on some wax paper to get used to it.

Now, “pipe” an outline for the head and under-body parts of the ladybug. These are the areas you would normally color black on a ladybug. Next, fill in the areas. I filled in the head area with swirls and the back area with lines.

Then, Fill a Ziploc bag 1/3 full with red icing. Just as you did with the chocolate icing, push the icing toward one corner and cut a hole in the corner. This time, cut a larger hole. Make little “blobs” of red icing – about dime sized – all over the remainder of the cake. You could simply smooth on the red with a spatula, but I feel it is easier and less messy for me to pipe it onto the cake.

Once the red area is done, pick up your chocolate icing bag again and pipe spiraled circles onto the back of the ladybug. They don't have to be symmetrical and there doesn’t need to be a lot. Six 1-inch circles should be plenty.

For the eyes, cut the ends off a large marshmallow and press them close together at the front of the cake on the chocolate “head”. Then, pipe chocolate "eyes" onto the marshmallows. Suddenly, with the eyes done, the cake becomes a giggle grabber.

For the antennae (optional), cut strips out of a length of a red Twizzler and push one end of each down into the cake just above the eyes. I cut a 3 or 4 inch length off and cut it into 4 strips, using only 2 for the cake. On the exposed end of each, I attach a miniature marshmallow. It's easier if you make a hole in the miniature marshmallow first with a knife, then push it onto the Twizzler piece.

With the antennae done, your cake is finished! You can put candles in the cake and enjoy!

Ladybug Cupcakes

2007-01-27T18:10:00.000-07:00

Imagine the smiles you'll see when you serve these at your next party! These ladybug cupcakes are quick and easy. They don't take much more than a box of cake mix, some colored icing and marshmallows. And, as an added bonus, they are perfect for the beginning cake decorator.

Ingredients:
1 standard box of cake mix (whatever flavor you prefer) baked in 24 cupcake liners and cooled. If you need assistance in baking and cooling your cake, please refer to these video tutorials on "How To Bake A Cake".
How To Bake A Cake (Part 1): Preparing Your Baking Pans
How To Bake A Cake (Part 2): Mixing & Baking Your Cake
How To Bake A Cake (Part 3): Testing, Removing and Cooling Your Cake
1 container of chocolate icing
1 container of vanilla/white icingRed gel coloring or food coloring - I recommend using Wilton no-taste red icing gel coloring. The gel coloring is more concentrated so you get a deeper hue without using all the coloring. The red color also tends to be bitter so the no-taste red helps to combat that.
48 miniature marshmallows - each one cut in half

Tools:
2 sandwich sized zipper sealed bags
Spoon
Scissors

If you have not already done so, bake your cupcakes according to package directions and cool completely. If they not cooled, your icing will start to melt and slide off the cupcakes.

First, fill one sandwich bag 1/3 full with some chocolate icing. Push the icing toward one of the bottom corners of the bag. Snip a small hole in the corner of the bag with your scissors. Twist the excess bag to create a decorating "piping bag". Place the "twist" in the joint between your thumb and the rest of your hand. Close your hand over the rest of the bag. View a video tutorial for this step if you are unsure how it should be done. To decorate your cupcake, you will squeeze the bag. Try it a little on some wax paper to get used to it.

Now, following the picture, "pipe" the outlines for the ladybug. Fill in the head and tail areas with chocolate icing.

Next, color your white/vanilla icing red using the food coloring or no-taste red gel coloring. Let the icing sit for a bit to allow the color to deepen. Fill a sandwich bag 1/3 full with red icing. Just as you did with the chocolate icing, push the icing toward one corner and cut a hole in the tip of the corner. Fill in all the remaining areas of the cupcake.

For the eyes, place 2 halves of a miniature marshmallow close together at the front of the cake on the chocolate "head". Then, pipe chocolate "eyes" onto the marshmallows.

With the eyes completed, your cupcakes are finished!

Butterfly Cake and Flower Cupcakes

2007-01-24T20:29:00.000-07:00

I have to give credit for this Butterfly Cake to Birthday Express. I found out the day before that I needed a cake for my niece's birthday party (we were trying to coordinate schedules). I am the cake lady so, naturally, I volunteered to make the cake. Especially since it was mentioned we could always BUY a cake. I couldn't allow THAT. I was looking for ideas for a simple cake. One I could bake, cool, and decorate in about 2 hours. This one looked like it fit the bill. It only uses one 8" or 9" round cake pan, so I used the rest of the cake batter and icing to make the Flower Cupcakes. I added Wilton Color Gel (Sky Blue and Christmas Red) to make the purple icing. It actually had a satiny sheen to it.

Game Cube "Pikmin" Birthday Cake

2006-12-17T20:02:00.000-07:00

This cake is probably the most interesting to date. My son was turning 7 years old. For two months I heard him tell me he wanted a "Pikmin" party. "Pikmin" is a video game for the Nintendo Game Cube. He loves it! If you have ever played the game, you would understand the cake a little better.
My problem was, there isn't a party store that sells "Pikmin" party ware. What is a mother to do? I downloaded a picture of "Pikmin" and made postcard invitations on the computer. I went to Kinko's to make glossy copies of them to mail out. I also used the photo to make name tags for the favor bags.
Since "Pikmin" products are not sold in the US, I went on eBay and found "Pikmin" figurines on sale. They were shipped straight from Japan in record time (2 days). I used these little guys on the cake. I know, some collector is probably going to freak out over it, but they DO look adorable all over this cake.

Cinderella Carriage Cake

2006-09-10T20:00:00.000-06:00

"I'm having a Princess Cake!"

My daughter, for her 3rd birthday, knew she was going to have a princess cake. She was so deep into the Disney Princess movies. I knew she was going to have a princess cake, but I didn't know how she was going to get it. I had already made the "Princess" Cake for my best friend earlier in the year. I also knew I wanted to make Cinderella's carriage for her. But how was I to do it?

Once again, I pulled out my Betty Crocker Bake 'N Fill dome cake pan. This is another cake where, in hindsight, I should have used a more dense cake batter. I had one Bake 'N Fill dome on top of another to create the "carriage" and the weight of the cake started to make the whole thing "sink". Luckily, we got through the party and ate that cake before it started to LOOK like something was going wrong.

The horses and carriage wheels are made with Rice Krispies treats I cut out into horse and wheel shapes. To make sure they would stand up, I anchored them in melted Wilton green candy wafers. Then I sprinkled the candy with decorating stars while it was still warm. This was to resemble flowers on the path. I did the same thing to anchor the wheels, fence, anything, besides the cake, that was going to be standing up.

To make the writing, I typed out the words in a font I liked on the computer and made them the size I wanted. After printing it out, I placed a sheet of wax paper on top of it and traced the letters with pink melted Wilton candy melts (Place the melted wafers in a Ziploc bag and cut a hole in the corner). After the candy hardens, you can remove the letters gently with a spatula and place wherever you want.

Basketball Cake

2006-03-26T16:49:00.000-07:00

This cake went along with my son's present. We took him to see the Harlem Globetrotters for his 13th birthday. It was great and he had a blast. I had even considered making the cake look like an official Globetrotters ball.
Once again, I pulled out my Betty Crocker Bake N' Fill dome cake pan. This time I decided to fill it...with cookies and cream pudding! I colored some icing orange (obviously) and covered the whole thing. Then, I used the tip of a butter knife to make the grooves in the "ball" where the lines would go. That way, If I messed up the placement, I could just smooth out the orange icing and start all over again. The grooves made it easier to keep the "lines" in the right spot.
Once again, I didn't know what to do with the candles, so I made dots of icing all around the cake and placed candles in them. It made blowing out the candles much more interesting.

"Princess" Cake

2006-02-26T19:43:00.003-07:00

This “Princess” birthday cake is a fun cake-decorating project that doesn’t take much more than cake mix, some store bought icing and a tiara from the dollar store.

I knew my cake decorating skills had reached some sort of family success when my best friend, a very picky woman, told me all she wanted for her birthday from me this year was a "Princess Cake". I had to oblige. This one turned out looking like a playmobil anime figure.

I received a Betty Crocker Bake 'N Fill dome cake mold the previous Christmas and had been trying to figure out what I could make with it that was a little bit unusual. I didn't fill this one with pudding or cream. I made the layer cake option.

Ingredients:

1 standard box of cake mix (whatever flavor you prefer), baked. You will only need one round layer for this cake so I usually make 12 cupcakes with the extra cake mix.
3 containers of vanilla/white icing – one container colored the desired skin tone, one container colored the desired hair color, and the remaining container will be made into an assortment of colors for the eyes, lips, and any message you may want to write on the cake. Leave about 2 tablespoons of icing white.
Gel coloring or liquid food coloring - The gel coloring is more concentrated so you get a deeper hue without using all the coloring. For lighter shades, the regular liquid food coloring is fine

Tools:

Betty Crocker Bake N’ Fill Pan with dome pan

Flat spatula
Sandwich sized zipper sealed bags
Scissors
Tiara (you can usually find one at your local dollar store – it makes a nice “present” for the birthday girl after the cake is gone)
Large plate, cake stand, or cake board for displaying your finished cake

If you have not already done so, bake your dome cake according to the pan directions. The cake shown is made using the layered cake instructions. You can also choose to use the filled cake instructions. Cool your cake completely. If it is not cooled, your icing will start to melt and slide off the cake.

Ice the layers together or fill the cake as directed on the pan instructions. Place your cake right side up (dome side up) on the plate you will display it on. If you prefer, you can place your cake on a cake board and move it to it’s permanent home once it is completed. However, most of us don’t have cake boards handy. The cake pictured here is resting directly on a large glass serving plate.

To decorate, first ice the entire dome with the skin colored icing. I made the skin tone shown in the picture using yellow coloring with just a touch of red. Try to smooth the icing out as best you can.

I used an hors d’oeuvre maker to pump out the hair. It made "spaghetti" looking curls all over the head. You could use a sandwich bag to make continuous single curls everywhere. To do this, fill a Ziploc sandwich bag (or similar brand) 1/3 full with some icing. Push the icing toward one of the bottom corners of the bag. Snip a small hole in the corner of the bag with your scissors. Twist the excess bag to create a decorating “piping bag”. Place the “twist” in the joint between your thumb and the rest of your hand. Close your hand over the rest of the bag. To decorate your cake, you will squeeze the bag. Try it a little on some wax paper to get used to it.

To make the task of piping the “hair” onto the cake easier, I just went with plain yellow hair. I thought about putting some chocolate icing in the bag, to give the hair a more "highlighted" look. Get creative with it. If you are making your princess a brunette, add a little yellow or red to the icing to create highlights.

To outline the eyes and make the nose and beauty mark, use a sandwich bag with a small hole cut in one bottom corner. Fill it with brown or some other color slightly darker than the skin tone color. If you have some of the skin toned icing left over, add some coloring to it to achieve the shade you want.

For the lips, color a small amount (about a tablespoon) of icing a shade of red or pink. Outline the lips first and remember to start small. It is easier to add fullness to the lips rather than to make them less full. You can also you’re the same color to add a ruffled collar at the base of the cake on the plate, however, you will need to have additional icing colored for it.

When filling in the eyes, start with the iris color. Blue seemed like a nice color that would brighten up the cake. Green or violet would have worked, too. Outline the area you want colored first. Then fill it in. Once you have the iris made, you can fill in the pupil with black. For my black color, I started adding some of my leftover colors together until a dark gray, almost black shade was made. Fill in the remainder of the eyes with white.

Because this cake does not have a lot of room for messages, I wrote the message with extra icing around the cake on the plate.

The tiara is the final addition to your princess cake. Be sure to wash it well in hot soapy water and rinse thoroughly before placing it on the cake.

If you are making this for a pre-teen or someone else older than a few years, you could use a crown of candles instead of a tiara. Another possibility is to make dollops of icing going around the cake and put candles in them. Place the candles in the icing before it hardens.

Castle Cake

2006-01-28T19:53:00.000-07:00

After making this cake, I decided if I ever made another castle cake, I would probably use a denser cake. I love Pillsbury cake, but it's so moist that it doesn't perform well for taller cakes.
For this castle cake, I made a standard 13"x9" cake. After cooling it completely, I cut the cake into thirds crosswise creating three 4.3" x 9" pieces. I iced one of the pieces and stacked another on top, forming the main section of the castle. I cut a 1"x4" slice off the end of the remaining section and set it aside. The rest of the remaining section was cut into thirds crosswise making three 2"x4" pieces. Each of those were cut in half to create a total of six 2"x2" pieces. These were used to make the two towers. Here is the basic order for assembly:

Ice the sides of the main section
stack three tower pieces together (with icing between layers) and place it on one side of the cake.
repeat with the remaining three tower pieces and place on the other side of the cake.
Ice completely with white icing.
The remaining 1"x4" cake piece goes on top of the main section (in the middle). Ice it over.

The turrets, trees, drawbridge, windows, etc were all made with peanut butter cookies. I cut castle pieces out of the dough and baked as directed. The I assembled using the icing as "glue". I would recommend finding something easier to use for the turrets. Maybe a couple of ice cream sugar cones or something.
The base border of the cake is a series of "rose bushes" made with large blobs of green icing (squeezed out of a ziplock bag with a large hole cut in the corner) and candy decorating hearts.
The doorway is outlined with silver decorating balls and above the doorway are more hearts.
The drawbridge "rope" is simply 2 chocolate covered candy sticks anchored to the "floor" with icing.
I piped some "vines" onto the towers and added more candy hearts as "flowers".
Blue decorating gel finishes it off as the water in the moat.

"I want Mountains, Trucks and Trees"

2005-12-18T21:35:00.000-07:00

"I want Mountains, Trucks and Trees!" That is the response I got when I asked my son what he wanted on his cake for his 6th birthday. I'm lucky he said what he did. I already had a round 2-layer cake baked and iced. All I had left to do was decorate.
I had to think fast of things in the house that could possibly be turned into "Mountains, a Truck and Trees".
While I pondered the possibilities, I made the road...a truck has to have a road, doesn't it? It's made from oreo cookie crumbs. I just happened to have some in the cabinet for making pie crusts.
The truck was easy. I just washed some of my sons trucks.
The trees...well, I has some pretzel sticks left over from making my chocolate dipped pretzel sticks for the holidays. I just piped icing onto them and they became trees! Looking at them now, I think if I ever need to make a Dr. Seuss cake, I'll make the trees the same way except I'll use pink, orange and blue icing. Doesn't it remind you of the Lorax?
As for the mountains, I had some ice cream cones in the cupboard that I covered with brown icing and cookie crumbs. Then I decided to go one step further. I colored small amounts of icing red, orange and yellow and melted them down. Once melted (just until pourable) I poured the icing on one of the mountains letting it run down the sides. First with the red, then the orange and finishing up with the yellow. Ta-daaa! A volcano! Hey, the kids knew it was a volcano and they all wanted THAT part of the cake.
So, if you look around, you can surely find something already in your kitchen that will make a great cake and make a child very happy.

XBOX Controller Cake

2005-07-02T19:38:00.001-06:00

Deciding on appropriate cakes for men can be difficult - especially if they’re not big into golf, football, basketball, or some other sport. However, if the man in your life loves to play video games (like my brother), it's probably safe to make him a video game controller birthday cake. This is a quick, easy cake-decorating project that can be adapted to whatever video game console resides in your home. It doesn’t take much more than a box of cake mix, some store bought icing and assorted candies and, if your brother is like mine, he’ll be happy to dispose of any extra candies for you.

Ingredients:
1 standard box of cake mix (whatever flavor you prefer), baked in a 13”x9” pan and cooled completely - If you need assistance in baking and cooling your cake, please refer to these video tutorials on “How To Bake A Cake”.
How To Bake A Cake (Part 1): Preparing Your Baking Pans
How To Bake A Cake (Part 2): Mixing & Baking Your Cake
How To Bake A Cake (Part 3): Testing, Removing and Cooling Your Cake
1 container of chocolate icing
8 Jelly beans - One white jellybean, 3 black, one yellow, one red, one green, and one blue (or purple)
2 Reese’s Miniature Cups
3 Oreo cookies
A handful of green vanilla flavored candy wafers (can be found in the candy making isle in craft stores)

Tools:
Wax paper – long enough to cover the entire 13”x9” cake
1 sandwich sized zipper sealed bags
Scissors
Spatula (for spreading icing)
Knife (for cutting jelly beans)
Large plate, cake stand, or cake board for displaying your finished cake

Draw and cut a template out of wax paper for the basic shape of the “controller”. Any video game controller will do. My brother just happened to like the XBOX (and this is before the new white XBOX 360 came out). The cake is a standard 13"x9" cake.

If you have not already done so, bake your 13”x9” cake according to package directions. Be sure to grease and flour the pan thoroughly. Baking spray alone won’t do much good for this cake. Once the cake has cooled in the pan for about 10 minutes, remove it from the pan by flipping it out onto a wire cooling rack. The easiest way to do this is to place a wire cooling rack on top of the pan and, using a hand on either side to keep the rack and the pan clamped together, flip the entire pan over. Set the rack down on the counter top and gently lift the cake pan to remove. If some of the cake sticks to the pan, just use a scraper to remove it and place it back on the rest of the cake. It won’t show once the cake is decorated. Continue cooling the cake completely. If it is not cooled, your icing will start to melt and slide off the cake.

Transfer your cake to a large cutting board. Place the template for your controller on top of the cake and carefully cut around it. Set aside the excess cake. You won't need it and you will have something to munch on while you put the cake together. You could save it for later to serve slightly crumbled in a bowl with ice cream and chocolate syrup.

Place your cake right side up on the plate you will display it on. If you prefer, you can place your cake on a cake board (cut to the shape of the cake) and move it to it’s permanent home once it is completed. However, most of us don’t have cake boards handy. The cake pictured here is resting on a large glass plate.

I chose to ice the entire cake in chocolate icing because I wasn't about to try to make that much black icing...and I didn't want to EAT that much black icing. Using your spatula, ice a thin layer of icing all over the cake. Pay particular attention to the sides where you made your cuts. This layer of icing is meant to “seal in” the cake crumbs so they don’t get all over your finished cake. Allow the icing so set and firm up a bit. Ice the entire cake as usual with a nice thick coating.

For this particular cake, use the picture (or an actual XBOX controller) as a reference for where the Oreo cookies should go. Push the Oreo’s into the cake until just the top cookie is above the surface of the cake. Lightly ice over them. For the controller joysticks, unwrap two Reese's peanut butter miniatures and place them upside-down on two of the Oreo cookies.

To create the “outlines” of the controller, fill one sandwich bag 1/3 full with some chocolate icing. Push the icing toward one of the bottom corners of the bag. Snip a small hole in the corner of the bag with your scissors. Twist the excess bag to create a decorating “piping bag”. Place the “twist” in the joint between your thumb and the rest of your hand. Close your hand over the rest of the bag. View a video tutorial for this step if you are unsure how it should be done. To decorate your cake, you will squeeze the bag. Try it a little on some wax paper to get used to it.

Now, take the piping bag and, using the picture as a reference, pipe icing onto the remaining Oreo to create a “directional pad”. Then, pipe icing to outline areas of the controller. In this case, a little bit of piping was all that was needed to draw attention to the XBOX written in the middle of the cake.

Pipe a curling “cord” on the plate coming out of the back of the “controller”.

The buttons are all made of jellybeans. One white jellybean, 3 black, one yellow, one red, one green, and one purple (I didn’t have a blue one). Two black one are used to create the “start” and “back” buttons at the bottom center of the controller. The red, yellow, green, and purple (or blue) ones make up the “A”, “B”, “X”, and “Y” buttons. For the black and white buttons on the controller, since they are slightly smaller, cut both the black and white jellybeans in half before positioning them on the cake.

Melt down some green candy wafers and spoon the melted candy into a sandwich bag. Allow the candy to thicken up a little bit so it will be easier to pipe onto the cake. Cut a hole in the corner of the bag just as you did for the icing. This should be a tiny hole. Then pipe the XBOX “logo” in the center of the cake. You can use any extra melted green candy to write a message to the guest of honor. A good place for this would be directly on the cake plate between the handles of the controller.

Congratulations! You have just completed a cake that men (and boys) would be proud to dig into!

Pumpkin Cake

2005-06-19T19:41:00.000-06:00

I saw this cake as an ad for Kraft Food & Family online (I already subscribe to the magazine - it's free!) and I HAD to go online to find out how to do it. My husband LOVES pumpkins. He say's they are peaceful and happy. In fact, he loves them so much, we have pumpkin pillows, a pumpkin rug, a pumpkin cookie jar, teapot, soup tureen, fruit bowl, salt & pepper shakers...we have a lot of pumpkins in this house. And they aren't jack-o-lanterns. They are unaltered pumpkins. We didn't buy all of it ourselves, some were gifts.

Right around Halloween of last year, I was flipping through my Food & Family Magazine when I saw a picture of this great pumpkin cake. My husbands 40th birthday was coming up (in 8 more months) and what could be a better cake for him than a pumpkin! I wasn't much of a cake decorator. I had managed to throw together cakes for my kids birthdays and I never heard many complaints, but I like to have a "wow" factor at birhday parties.

Welcome Message

2005-06-19T07:26:00.004-06:00

Welcome! This blog is collection of cakes I have decorated. I am trying to include pictures and instructions for each cake.

You don't need to be a professional to make these. If you did, I wouldn't be here...I am NOT a professional. I just like decorating and making something that the kids will smile over.

My first kids cake was a very basic chocolate 2-layer cake with a blue stick figure on it for my oldest son's 1st birthday back in 1994. I insisted on making my children's first cake. Later, when I got sick of the hum-drum too sweet sheet cakes from the store, I decided try something a bit more "fun". I started with the pumpkin design in 2005 for my husband's 40th birthday (he loves pumpkins) and I worked up from there. You won't find these cakes in your grocery store! The kids never ask for anything from the bakery anymore either.

You don't HAVE to attend cake decorating classes. (I didn't) And you don't HAVE to have a lot of tools to get started. All it takes to make these cakes is a little patience and some imagination. If you don't want to bother with the imagination part, just check through the designs listed to the right for something that interests you. I am constantly clipping cake and cupcake pictures from magazines for inspiration. I have seen some really cute stuff out there!

For those of you who are inexperienced when it comes to BAKING a cake, not just decorating one, I have a 3 part video tutorial series on Associated Content online. Check it out!

Cake decorating is a part-time hobby for me. I don't sell cakes or cake products. I only make about 5 or 6 decorated cakes a year and occasionally will decorate cupcakes for a holiday or just for fun. Enjoy the blog! If you have questions, feel free to ask and I'll do my best to help you out. Thanks for coming by!

I am in no way affiliated with Pillsbury, Wilton, Nordicware, or any other company that provides the products I use in my cake baking and cake decorating. Of course, if any of them want to send me their products for review, I'd be happy to try them out (I sure wouldn't mind a KitchenAid Stand Mixer!).