Liv's Strawberry Shortcake Cake

6"-8"

Liv's mom had a Strawberry Shortcake cake for her birthday when she was a little girl, so she wanted Liv to have one as well. =) She provided the toys for the cake. This is one of my favorite cakes now! Here is the adorable cake table that Liv's mom and grandma set up...

Baby Genesis

 4"-6"

Here is another version of one of my most popular designs. For her name, I used the purple letter molds by Wilton. Genesis is such an adorable name! =)

Snoopy & Woodstock Baby Shower Cake

4"-6"

This was my first time making Snoopy & Woodstock characters, clearly! My figure modeling skills need some work for sure! Haha The little name plaque was made using a cookie cutter that I purchased online and the little stars were made using plunge cutters by PME Sugarcraft. 

Trey's Halloween Birthday Cake

6"-8"

Trey is a Halloween baby and so his mom wanted a non-scary Halloween cake for his 2nd birthday. She sent me a picture of the treat bags that she bought for the party...one of them was a jack-o-lantern and the other was Frankenstein. So I used that as inspiration for the cake. =)

Bethany's 31st Birthday

3"-4"-6"

Here is another one of my mini 3 tier cakes for my sister, Bethany. =) Her only request for her birthday cakes is pink, pink, pink! Here she is with her cake...

 

Isabella Alina

6"-8"

This is a replica of a design that I've made before. Baby Isabella will be baby number 3 and the first girl for her parents. =D

Jungle Themed Baby Shower Cake

4"-6"

I was sent pictures of baby shower cakes with a jungle theme and asked to use them for inspiration for this cake. I had never made a jungle themed cake with animal print patterns and I thought it was really cute so I picked that one out of the batch and made it. I'm not sure who to give credit to for the original design, but I like it. =)

Baby Yschelle

Cassidy Turns 17

 6"-8"-10"-12"

This is the first 4 tier cake that I've made and I wasn't sure how I was going to go about transporting it. I was going to either stack all 4 tiers and transport it that way, or stack only the bottom two tiers and add the top two at the venue. I did lots of research and it seemed that more often, people choose to transport the cake with just the bottom tiers stacked and assemble the rest on site. I contacted 2 of my cake maker friends and one of them transports their 4 tier cakes already stacked and the other one assembles on site. I went back and forth sooo many times trying to figure out what to do. I decided to stack all 4 tiers and I used the little wooden dowels in each tier for support. The next morning when I got up, I checked on the cake and the bottom tier had started to buckle a little bit and within a few hours, it had buckled more and now the second tier from the bottom had started to crack from sinking into the bottom tier. =( So I had to disassemble the whole cake, cut the fondant off of the bottom 2 tiers, re-iced them and covered them in fondant again. I went to Hobby Lobby and got the thick plastic dowels for support. This time when I stacked the tiers, there was no buckling! PHEW! Then it came time for transporting it. The venue was 30 min away. I drove while my mom sat in the back seat to keep an eye on the cake. We drove on semi bumpy roads and over a set of railroad tracks and I was so tense the whole time! The cake made it safely to it's destination...such a relief!! I'm seriously considering removing 4 tier cakes from my menu just because it's scary to drive around with such a tall cake! The picture above was taken with my iPhone before the cake was delivered. I brought my DSLR camera with me so that I could take pictures of it at the venue. The customer provided the cake topper and I wanted to photograph the cake with the topper on. The lighting in the room wasn't great for photos and it kept making my pictures look kind of yellow. So here is one picture that I took at the venue, once the topper had been added...

Suit Cake

8"

The request that I got for this cake was to use the colors brown & yellow, add a "63" and for the name to be "Rev". My first thought was to make a round cake with yellow and brown stripes. I didn't like the way it looked in my head so I got online and searched for ideas. I came across some cakes made to look like suits and I thought that would be perfect for a reverend! =)

Happy 21st Birthday Charity Paige!

 3"-4"-6"

This is the smallest three tier cake that I've ever made! I love mini 3 tier cakes! My baby sister wanted a little two tier cake for her birthday and she told me how she wanted it decorated. I had recently purchased little 3" pans and I'd been wanting to use them so I asked her if I could make her cake 3 tiers instead. Of course, she said yes. =) She wanted a sexy, burlesque kinda cake so together, we came up with this. She designed the bottom 2 tiers and the top tier was my idea. I think we make a pretty good team. =) Here is my beautiful sister with her cake...

And here is a pic to show the size of the cake. It's a little shorter than a 2 liter bottle without the topper.

Hailey's Tangled Cake

4"-6"

Hailey's mom wanted a Tangled cake for her birthday and she left the design up to me. I searched for ideas for about a month and pretty much every Tangled cake that I came across had the tall tower made of either PVC pipe or rice crispy treats. I wasn't sure how easily a cake with a tall skinny "tower" would travel and more importantly, I had no idea how to go about making it and having it be stable. So I made this cake the best way that I knew how. I used three 4" rounds for the tower and then made the roof out of rice crispy treats. =)

Hayden Turns 3

6"-8"

 Hayden's mom sent me a picture of a cake that she wanted so I copied it but made a few changes. She purchased toy characters that were added for the party. =)

Soleivi

6"-8"

I was asked to recreate a cake design that I've made a few times before. Red and yellow are the birthday girl's favorite colors so we had to go with those colors. =)

Baby Khloe

 4"-6"

Khloe's mom sent me pics of the decorations that were going to be used at her baby shower and they were pink, purple and gray. Her must-have's were a quilted tier and the pink giraffe and the rest was up to me. Here are the pics that she sent me...well, minus the picture of the cake that I made! Haha

Happy Birthday Ariana!

6"-8"-10"

Ariana wanted a birthday cake with lots of fun colors. She specified the colors that she wanted...hot pink, purple, orange, lime green and turquoise. So cute together I think! This cake was originally going to be topsy turvy and due to certain circumstances, we will just call it "cake decorator error", it had to be completely revamped and turned into a regular tiered cake. I'm talking about having to disasemble the cake, cut the fondant off of all 3 tiers, carve the slanted tops off and make them flat and then re-icing and covering in fondant, etc. It all could have easily been avoided but I was in a hurry and had to suffer the consequences of my earlier actions. The top 2 tiers had ganache under the fondant but the bottom tier was iced in Swiss meringue buttercream. That stuff is awesome to work with, but once it's on a cake, the cake has to stay in a cool environment. I learned this the hard way the day before, when I put a cake iced with SMBC under the fondant, in a warm car to deliver it. So I knew that this cake needed to be kept cool during delivery without a doubt! I didn't know how to go about doing it so I called my mom and she came to Houston along with 2 of my sisters and my dad, to help me figure out how to deliver it without any mishaps. It was a 2 hour drive for them to come...I seriously think they love me! So what we did was get a sturdy cardboard box and taped ice packs to the sides of the box to keep that bottom tier cool in transit. We started the car ahead of time too so that it would be nice and cold in there when the cake went in. I was so worried about the cake handling the 40 min drive to the venue, that I rode in the cargo part of my little SUV with the cake to keep a close eye, and hand on the cake. The cake made it and I was so relieved!! My family and I celebrated by going to the Cheesecake Factory...one of our most favorite restaurants. We love the food and we ALWAYS have to get cheesecake. One of my sisters and I shared a slice of white chocolate macadamia nut cheesecake and to tell you it was delicious would be an understatement! I've decided to get that kind from now on....I think. So here is what the cake looked like when it was in it's little refrigerated box and then me riding in the back with the cake...the "3" was taken off of the cake for transit because I was worried that it might break and I didn't want to take that chance.

 

Baby Ibrahim

8"-10"

I was sent a baby shower invitation as inspiration for this cake. The colors on the invitation were brown, tan, orange and turquoise and she wanted to add green as well. She left the design up to me but she definitely wanted the jungle animals on the cake. All of the animals were made using fondant with a little tylose powder added to it.

Here is what the invitation looked like, although this is just a generic one, not her real one so I didn't blur anything out. ;-)

 

Jazleen Alexa's 1st Birthday

6"-8"-10"

Jazleen's mom sent me a picture of a cake made by The Pink Cake Box and she wanted me to make one like it for her 1st birthday. The design is the same but with a couple of tweaks. I iced this cake with swiss meringue buttercream under the fondant, which was a dream to work with! However, at no time at all should a cake frosted with SMBC be put into a warm vehicle for delivery. Lesson learned! (the hard way)

Mildred Turns 30

8"

Mildred wanted a leopard print cake with either a high heel or a handbag on top and I decided to go with...well, you already know! And I guess that's all I have to say about that! =)



Welcome Baby Ilianna

 

6"-8"-10"

I received a request for this cake, with a picture of a cake made by Sandra's Cakes. How many times should the word "cake" be used in a sentence? Anyway, the cake was super cute but a few changes were requested such as the birds and the egg in the nest topper. It's a really good thing that my cakes are whimsical because a lot can be gotten away with under the "whimsical" hat. For instance, no one can convince me that the tiny little mama bird laid that ginormous egg. But hey, the cake is "whimsical" so it doesn't matter. Maybe the daddy bird laid the egg? When it came time for the cake's photo shoot, I picked out this pink leopard print (or leppid print, as my sister calls it) and started snapping away. Then I thought maybe I should use a less...busy background just in case this one would hurt the eyes of the viewers. So I did. I chose a sort of robins egg blue, solid background that wouldn't take away from the cake at all. I then sent the pictures with both backgrounds to my sisters and asked them which they preferred and guess what? They both chose this one! I knew they were my sisters for a reason! I actually have 3 sisters but I guess 1 was busy because I only got a response from 2 of them. That doesn't make sister #3 any less cool, as I'm sure she would have chosen the leppid background as well.  As it turns out, the solid blue background took away from the cake and this pink leppid background made the cake even better! =D

Wilson is 1!

8"-10"

Wilson's mom (I LOVE the name Wilson) wanted a nautical/shark themed cake for his first birthday. She sent me his invitation and it had a chevron pattern on it which I love! So I definitely wanted to incorporate that but I heard from a reliable source that it's not an easy task to make a chevron pattern for an entire tier. That's why I just used it for the name plaque...I thought it would be cute and also it saved me from some un-needed stress. =) I also needed a shark because lets face it, you can't have a shark themed cake without a shark. How cute would it have been to make a whimsical 3D shark topper? Super cute! Well, this one just ended up being a 2D shark. He has a fin that sticks out of the cake so that makes him 2D. Then I added a few other little sea creatures like a crab, sting ray, jelly fish and an octopus. Actually, he's more like a quadropus...quadopus? He's a 4 legged pus. Haha! Oh and I added that little life saver thing because the party plates had that on them. I made it from "memory" and then after I put it on the cake, I looked it up and they actually have 4 red stripe thingys and mine only has 3. My memory didn't serve me too well with that one! Oh well, I think you still know what it was meant to be. Here is Wilson's cute little invitation...

No, she didn't send out smudged invitations and no, the shark wasn't drinking blue koolaide. I smudged out the address so that no strangers show up at Wilson's house unexpectedly with a towel to swim and eat cake. =)

Purple & Damask Baby Shower Cake

4"-6"-8"

This cake is basically a replica of the cake that I made with the pram stroller on top. Only that one was pink and this one is purple and black. (obviously) I just switched out the pram for the baby shoes. For the damask print, I used a stencil and some royal icing. I'm still learning how to do this! I thought for sure that it would be pretty easy to accomplish but for me, it's not. There are lots of different techniques that people use to stencil on their cakes and I've tried a few of them but nothing works very well for this girl. I kinda just hold the stencil on the cake and stencil little sections at a time and move my fingers to hold it in a different spot as I move along. Fool proof method? Nope. But it's the only way that I can achieve this for now! =)

Happy Birthday Nicolle!

8"

This cake is for a sweet lady that wanted a corset cake and left all of the details up to me. =) I chose purple and pink because they are 2 of my favorite colors. I've been experimenting with taller tiers. You can't tell from the picture, but this cake is 6" tall. It kinda looks like just a 6" round because of the height. Haha Actually, I made a quick little collage of the 4 cakes that I made this weekend and you can't really tell at all that the tiers are all different heights. They all pretty much look the same!

Oh well...in person, you can see the difference. If the 4 cakes were photographed in 1 picture together, you'd definitely notice! All of the cakes except for the purple/black damask cake have 3 layers of cake and 2 layers of filling. The damask cake just has 2 layers of cake and 1 layer of filling. Nicolle's corset cake is 6" tall and Ilianna & Wilson's cakes have tiers that are roughly 5" tall. The damask cake has tiers that are about 3.5-4" tall. This doesn't really seem like a big deal...the cakes are still cute and fun even with shorter tiers! I just really like them a little taller. =)

Ayvah's 1st Birthday

4"-6"-8"

When Ayvah's mom asked me to make a topsy turvy cake for her 1st birthday, I was a little nervous! The last topsy turvy cake that I made was in 2010 and I didn't really know what I was doing and the cake didn't come out the way I wanted it to at ALL. It looked short and squaty and like it was going to fall over, maybe?  So I wasn't thrilled about having to make another one. I knew for certain that I didn't want this one to turn out like my last one did! So I did some research. A lot of research, actually. One of the things that made me VERY happy was the fact that the cake in the inspiration picture that she sent me didn't have the inverted tapered sides that some topsy turvys have...PHEW! So anyway, I'm much happier with the way that this one turned out. =) I did have a problem with the cupcake on the top though. It's made with rice crispy treats. It was a little heavy but I used ganache under the fondant to help make the cake more sturdy so I didn't think that I would need to put supports under the cupcake. Well, I was wrong. About 5 hours after I put the cupcake on, I noticed that it had started to kind of sink into the cake on the low side. GRRRRR! So I had to get a knife and pry it off of the cake because it had been "glued" on with melted chocolate...then I added some supports under the low side of the cupcake and glued it back on again. This time it stayed up like it was supposed to...yay! Other than that, I didn't have any major issues so I can say that this one was a success. =)
Oh and this is the picture of the party plates that she sent me for color inspiration...