In the spring, the church where my parents attend had a Care Net babyshower. Care Net is an organization that helps guide women facing unplanned pregnancies to make the choice that is best for them and their baby. Being a young woman and knowing young mothers I know how difficult it is sometimes to take proper care of yourself, let alone a baby too. Care Net accepts donations that go to women who choose to keep their babies. Anything from diapers, formula, bibs…. and of course money. Mothers earn “dollars” by attending meetings, continue schooling, attending church and other things. They can then use their “dollars” to purchase items for their baby.
This Noah’s Ark cake was part of my donation to the shower. It is also one of my personal favorite cakes that I have ever made. It was a blast to work on, and everyone really enjoyed it. It was for a great cause. I think the cakes for causes like this are the most fun to do, there is so much emotion and motivation driven behind it. And things always come out their best when your heart goes into it!
The bottom is a large oval cake iced in baby blue. the waves are piped with a large round tip. I used Wilton’s blue spray to airbrush the waves. The Ark is made out of a small oval cake. I piped on chocolate buttercream with the basket weave tip. the “hut” on the ark is made out of graham crackers held together and decorated with royal icing. All of the animals are made out of dried fondant!
If you would like to learn more about Care Net, please go to www.care-net.org
In November 2007, we held a wedding reception for my brother and sister-in-law here in Illinois. Since they were married in Texas, several of our friends and family could not make it to the wedding. My brother and sister-in-law both love to play all kinds of video games, old ones and new ones! But nothing tops Super Mario! They already had their traditional wedding cake, so this time they wanted to have something a little more fun! Unfortunately I cannot take credit for the design. My brother found the original picture of this cake online and brought it to me demanding that I make it for him! I did the best I could. The original had Mario and Princess Peach on top of the cake, but the figures are hard to come by! So we weren’t able to find any for this cake. My cake also had to be scaled down in size compared to the original. But in the end we felt that it turned out really well!
The cake sizes are 10″ 8″ 6″ and the dome is made out of styrofoam (we didn’t need that much cake!). The whole thing is buttercream iced, then covered in fondant.
Last October my brother was married in Texas, a long way from our home here in Chicago. My wedding gifts to my brother and sister-in-law were their wedding cake and groom’s cake. My biggest problem was how I was going get the cake from Chicago to Texas! On top of things, I was a bridesmaid. I baked all the cakes at home and froze them. We were going to be driving down to the wedding, so I packed all of the cakes wrapped in plastic into coolers with dry ice. It was a two day drive down there. Our hotel in Texas was an extended stay, I was glad to see that I had a full size refrigerator with a freezer in my room! I packed all of my cake decorating supplies including my cake turn table and trusty Kitchen Aid! Once I was all settled into my room and had my cakes unpacked into the freezer, I did my grocery shopping. In my sad excuse of a “kitchen” I was able to make up several pounds of buttercream icing.
I spent my entire day before the wedding filling, icing, and decorating the different cakes. The brides cake had to be kept unstacked so that I could keep the tiers in the fridge to help prevent my decorations from melting. I never would have guessed that Texas would be so hot in October! I had to have both the bride’s and groom’s cakes finished before the rehearsal dinner that night.
The bride’s cake is alternating layers of yellow and chocolate cake with amaretto buttercream filling and vanilla buttercream icing. The little white flowers are made out of fondant.
Every Sunday when I was little we would go to my grandparent’s house for Sunday dinner. My Papa used to always have Pez candy waiting for us already in the dispensers. When my brothers grew up and went away to college, our mom always sent them care packages. Every care package was complete with a new Pez dispenser. Soon, we all had so many Pez dispensers that my dad built us each Pez dispenser holders to hang on our bedroom walls to display our collections. When I asked my brother what he would like his groom’s cake to look like, it didn’t surprise me when he said PEZ! Actually, I probably would have been disappointed if he didn’t want Pez! My brother and sister-in-law found bobblehead bride and groom Pez figures online.
The groom’s cake is all chocolate cake with raspberry filling. It is iced in buttercream and then covered in strips of fondant. The ends of the cake is dusted with silver lusterdust to give it a “foil” look. I made a PEZ template with help from my other math whiz brother before we left for Texas. Believe it or not, it actually was quite complicated measuring the letters on the little packages and blowing them up. In the end all I had to do was lay the template down on the fondant and cut it out.
In some countries, babies are lucky to survive to be 100 days old. In Korea and many other countries a celebration is held on a baby’s 100th day of life. Here in America, celebrating a 6th month birthday may seem a bit silly. But for some couples, starting a family is not as easy as it is for others. It took a long time before my friend’s mother was able to give birth to her first child (my friend). Her 6th month birthday was definitely a reason worth celebrating (and a good excuse for cake!). Now my friend is married and has a baby of her own. She wanted to keep the tradition that her mother started with celebrating her baby’s 6th month birthday.
This circus train cake is made out of yellow cake baked in those small disposable loaf pans. Each train car is made of two leveled off cakes that were stacked and iced in buttercream. The engine is made out of two stacked cakes that were then carved. All animals and accents are made out of fondant.
A good friend of mine always likes to put me up to a good challenge. The past couple years I have made his birthday cakes including a dragon cake and a “Google homepage” cake. This year he asked for a Chicago style deep dish pizza for his birthday. You may not believe it, but this pizza is actually banana cake inside! The cake is iced in buttercream icing with fondant toppings. The pizza sauce is runny buttercream with chocolate sprinkle “herbs” and white chocolate parmesan cheese. Before icing the cake, I sliced a large piece of it and iced it individually, and I also iced the inside of the cut cake. Then I returned the slice to the whole. When the cake was served, the first piece I removed was the pre-cut piece. My friend got a kick out of it and picked it up and ate it like a slice of pizza!
”Its scary because it looks like pizza, but it tastes like cake!”