Baseball Baby Shower Cupcakes

 Baseball themed baby shower for a baby boy!

 

 Half Red Velvet with Cream Cheese Frosting

Half Chocolate with Peanut Butter Frosting

Made with Marshmallow Fondant handmade baseball accents

 

Iowa Smash Cake

Smash cakes are my favorite, especially for little one years you know!

Mr. Wes turned the big One a few weeks ago with an Iowa Hawkeye themes birthday. 

 This time instead of just using Hawkeye colors only, I wanted to included the tiger hawk. Luckily I have a cookie cutter that was the perfect size for this cake that I was able to use as a template.

Happy Birthday Wes! Go Hawks!

Baseball Cake

**I have some catching up to do. I am very behind on keeping this blog up to date and hope to get back on it!

I love making first birthday cakes. Sports themed cakes have been very popular for little boys birthdays since I've been making cakes.

I made this baseball glove out of a double layer 9-inch round cake. The baseball on top of the large cake was made from a small ramekin.

With a round baseball smash cake.

Sports Cake

I love when clients come back! I was lucky enough to make Charlie's first birthday cake, an Iowa Hawkeye theme found here. This year he had a sports ball theme, including basketball, soccer, football, and baseballs. I included all four into one cake!

Football & Princess

Two things that usually don't go together unless your birthday falls on the Super Bowl! I got the chance to make cupcakes for a joint 3rd birthday/super bowl party! Pink Princesses and Football themes cupcakes.

Vanilla cupcakes made with a to die for strawberry buttercream (made with real strawberries!) and topped with pink marshmallow fondant tiara's.

Chocolate cupcakes with a creamy peanut butter frosting, topped with marshmallow fondant footballs and Super Bowl team logos.

Happy Birthday Princess Kennedy!

Cake Auction

Last week Davenport West High School's boosters had a cake auction fundraiser event during the West/Assumption basketball game. Each sports team was asked to participate by donating a cake and a gift basket to be raffled off during the game. As a baseball coaches wife and baker, Head Coach Jones asked me if I would like to donate a baseball themed cake and get my name out there. Of course I'm not going to say no to a fundraiser...or free advertising ;)

For the cake I made a baseball base with the the teams signature "DW"on all their apparel. It's a vanilla cake, with a keylime filling and vanilla buttercream covered in marshmallow fondant.

Unfortunately I still don't know how my cake did but I do know the auction raised nearly $3,000!!!! Now that's pretty amazing!!

Cubs Grooms Cake

This week I made my first grooms cake!!

I'm intimidated by anything wedding related, that's a lot of pressure. I mean there are a lot of people that will see your work and your works going to be photographed which will be looked back on for years and years and years.  Yikes!

The majority of the pressure is put on by myself. But this week I stepped up to the plate (no pun intended :)) and finished my first grooms cake. The bride requested a baseball theme related to the Cubs. She really like the first birthday baseball cake I made earlier this year. I made a White Vanilla cake for the glove with vanilla buttercream and a Triple Chocolate for the base (chocolate cake, chocolate filling with chocolate chips and chocolate buttercream), covered in marshmallow fondant.

A true Cubs fan's most famous line it "There's Always Next Year" so it seems fitting for the bride to tell her groom on his cake "Glad I Didn't Have To Wait Till Next Year!".

10/22/11

Congratulations Sarah and Mattie!  I hope you enjoyed your wedding day, it's was an absolutely beautiful day for a wedding ;)

Double IOWA Birthday

For a joint first birthday and 50th birthday party Jackie and Matt wanted to have a Iowa Hawkeye theme for their son Charlie and Matt's father.  

 For the main cake they picked a Iowa Hawkeye helmet and football.

To go along with the theme I matched Charlie's Smash Cake with Hawkeye colors.

I think this is my favorite smash cake so far!!

For the 50th birthday cupcakes they requested chocolate cupcakes with half peanut butter frosting and half chocolate cream cheese.

Topped with marshmallow fondant black and gold circles of "Happy", "50" and the tigerhawk.

IOWA Football

My dad's birthday is this Friday and he requested a IOWA football cake for him to take to dinner tonight with his friends. Every Wednesday night my parents get together with friends of theirs at a local restaurant for burger baskets. They usually take turns bringing a treat to share. This week, in honor of his birthday he wanted to bring a birthday cake.

It's a chocolate cake frosted with chocolate frosting (I cheated and used the canned version for this one, shh). I used a vanilla buttercream for the laces and "I", which is homemade to use for my cake decorating class tomorrow night.

Happy Birthday Dad!!!  We love you!

Star Wars and Hawkeyes

You might not think they have anything in common but a 7 year old boy would tell you different. Our friend Annette's son is turning 7 this weekend and having an Iowa Hawkeye themed birthday party. Although his mother thought he would want an Iowa cake and cupcakes for his party when she first asked me, turns out Linkin's final request was a Star Wars cake with Hawkeye cupcakes instead. Love it! The birthday boy gets what the birthday boy wants!

Dave was pretty excited about this cake (as he is about most character cakes I make). He made sure he asked Linkin who he would want most from Star Wars and he stated Chewbacca. I tried looking for ideas on-line but most of the Chewy cakes just looked like big blobs of chocolate frosting. I did find one good cake for my inspiration and think I came pretty close to getting it.

I used a Lemon cake (per request) in a 9x13-inch cake pan. Once cooled I rounded the top for Chewbacca's head and used those cake scraps to build up a little dimension around his eyes, nose and mouth so he wasn't so flat looking. I used a Lemon Cream Cheese frosting that I tinted and used left over marshmallow fondant pieces for the eyes and teeth. I drew the eyes on with edible marker.

May the force be with you Linkin! Happy 7th Birthday!

The Birthday Boy

Hawkeye Cupcakes

This past weekend we celebrated the home opener of the Iowa Hawkeye's Football season. I made themed cupcakes to match.

These are Chocolate Chip cupcakes with a chocolate buttercream and a marshmallow fondant "I"

These are a Lemon cupcake with Lemon Cream Cheese frosting and a marshmallow fondant tiger hawk I hand drew with an edible marker.

Baseball Glove Cake

This week I finally got to make my first boy birthday cake! Jamie had asked me a few weeks ago if I had ever made any cakes for boys and that she wanted a baseball themed cake for her son Peyton's 1st birthday. Although I had yet to make a boys cake, I as definitely up for the task. She ended up wanting a baseball glove cake and after debating how to carve a glove out a cake, I found a baseball mitt cake pan at Hobby Lobby, score! I only buy cake pans I know I'll use more than once and this one I know I will be.

I used two cake batters, one for the baseball glove and the other I divided into a 6-inch round cake pan for the smash cake and two 8-inch square pans for the baseball base. All three cakes are a white cake with white buttercream frosting and the two larger cakes are covered with marshmallow fondant.

Happy 1st Birthday Peyton!

Baseball glove and base cake

Baseball Smash cake

White Cake

1 1/2 cups self-rising flour*

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened

2 cups sugar

4 large eggs, at room temp

1 cup milk

1 tsp vanilla extract

*If you don't have self-rising flour you can you only all-purpose flour and add 1 tsp baking powder.

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

In a small bowl, combine the flours and set aside.

In a larger bowl cream butter with electric mixer for about 2 minutes. Add sugar then add eggs one at a time until combined. Alternate adding 1/3 of the flour then 1/2 of the milk until thoroughly combined. Add vanilla.

Divide batter among prepared pans. Bake 25-35 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean from center.

Best Buttercream

2 cups shortening

8 cups powdered sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1 Tbsp vanilla extract

6 oz heavy cream

Cream shortening in electric mixer. Add sugar one cup at a time. Add salt, vanilla and cream, mix until fluffy, about 3 minutes

I usually only use butter in my buttercream but this is truly a really good buttercream recipe that I'll use for special cakes and occasions.