Lady Bug

Lady Bug 1st Birthday Cake

 

 

Lady Bug Smash Cake



 

 Individual Construction cake to honor the customer's nephews birthday.

 

Smash Cakes

 

 

 

Bow Ties & Staches

A Little Gentleman's first birthday party isn't complete without mustaches and bowties!!

Guess How Much I Love You

This is probably one of my favorite cakes I've made so far.

 

The theme was from the children's book "Guess How Much I Love You".

 

 

I actually painted this cake!

It's all hand painted.

I used the gel colors, water and paint brushes.  

Lucky for me, my son has this book so I was able to use it to find a good scene to paint and use lines from the book to quote around the sides.

 



 

Smash cake of Little Nutbrown Hare.

 

 



Fourth of July Birthday

4th of July First Birthday Cake

 

 

 

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!

Jackson's 1st Birthday

I had the honor in making our close friends, Chad and Kelsey's son Jackson's 1st birthday smash cake and cupcakes.

 With a Mickey Mouse theme in a blue and white color scheme.  

Cupcakes: Chocolate Covered Strawberry and Chocolate-Chocolate Chip with Chocolate Cream Cheese topped with marshmallow fondant Mickey Mouse and "2's".

Happy 1st Birthday Jackson Jones!

Tutu Birthday Party

I got the pleasure of making a cake and cupcakes for the daughter of our friends fpr her 2nd birthday. They had a cute tutu themed birthday party for little Miss Gracyn, with hot pink and orange decor (seriously adorable!)

My first successful take at ribbon to top Gracyn's cake, I found a great tutorial on-line on how-to here.  I had a few ribbon casualities but luckily had made a few extra.

Chocolate Strawberry Covered Cupcakes (minus the chocolate covered strawberry on top) tinted extra pink and Chocolate Cupcakes with Peanut Butter Frosting tinted orange.

Vanilla Cake with Chocolate Chip Cupcakes with Chocolate Cream Cheese Frosting.

Happy Birthday Miss Gracyn!

Safari Birthday

A few weeks ago I made Drake a smash cake for his One Year pictures, here. This past weekend was his 1st birthday party in which he had a Safari Themed party. This being my first jungle/safari theme I had no idea what to do or where to begin. Luckily Drake's mother included this link to all the party supplies she was going to use which gave me my inspiration. I wanted to make all the safari animals....

The beginning of my animals

Starting to come together

They actually look like animals!

And it all comes together :) 

A 2 layer 10-inch marble cake with chocolate ganache filling and vanilla buttercream

I love how it turned out! The safari animals turned out better than I pictured.

We have lions, tigers, zebras, giraffes, elephants, and monkeys!

The smash cake

Birthday cupcakes for all of little Drake's friends...I'd say my handwriting is starting to improve (at least on the cupcakes!)

Happy 1st Birthday Drake!

Hope you had a wonderful party and enjoyed your cake.

Smash Cake

I have a Safari Cake coming up in two weeks for a first birthday that I'm very excited to make. In preparation of little Drake's first birthday, he's getting his one year pictures taken and his parents asked if I could also make a smash cake for his pictures.

This is my first time having one of my cakes getting professionally photographed!!  How exciting.....and a little nerve-racking. His color scheme for the pictures is navy blue, lime green and gray.   

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.

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.