All American Hero!

A Captain America Birthday Cake for my son!



He is sculpted from fondant with some toothpick support in spots. I think sculpting is my favorite part of cake decorating. Although I do get frustrated by the structural elements as I'm definitely not the engineer type!!

His nose/eyes were fun! I learned a technique where you indent into the face with a ball tool and then roll a teeny piece of white fondant to insert into the dent. Then I painted his pupils and used sculpting/smoothing to create his nose.


I confess I'm not a great photographer. Hopefully you know this about me by now!

This cake was made allergen-free using an adapted Cybele Pascal recipe for red velvet cake, but I substituted blue instead of red food coloring and I did my own flour blend as I don't have the 11 dollar superfine rice flour she recommends. I ended up doing a confetti type cake for the top tier and did a dairy-free buttercream on the entire cake. All decorations are fondant. I wasn't 100% happy with the result. When I bake allergen free cakes from scratch it always feels like something is missing and I struggle to keep them moist. I still think 1-2-3 Gluten Free and Pamela's Chocolate mix are my favorites. I'm leaning toward oil over shortening too. The oil lends itself to keeping a higher level of moisture. I suppose this will be an ongoing learning process for me. I do enjoy the process!

Blessings!

Happy Thanksgiving Week!

Our church had a bake sale and I donated some baked goods with a Thankful theme in honor of Thanksgiving Week.

I am thankful for my family and for how much I have learned this year. Our Loving God is so very generous with His love and His many gifts!!! What are you thankful for??



I hope your Thanksgiving is abundantly blessed!

With Gratitude,
Evie

Happy Birthday to Our Lady!

Yesterday was the feast of Our Blessed Mother's Nativity! Her birthday-day...so to speak! To celebrate with my kids we made donut muffin/cupcakes...allergen free taken again from the brilliant Cybele Pascal's website. The recipe is FABULOUS and I highly recommend ANY recipe by this talented baker. We used a dairy-free shortening based buttercream and these taste like cinnamon sugar donuts with buttercream on top...very tasty! I just used Bob's Redmill brown rice flour so mine are crumbly compared to what you might get with Cybele's recipes. I recommend doing it exactly as she says if you are picky. :)
The raised up cupcake represents Mary with 12 stars to represent her crown of 12 stars as laid out in Revelation. The unfrosted cupcake under it represents the moon under her feet and the blue is for her traditional color. Each cupcake has the symbol iced in white...white representing purity and holiness.


The Marian symbol was used on each cupcake.

I used a 1M tip to do the base icing and 12 tip to pipe the M with a tiny, tiny #1 tip to pipe the crosses. The stars can be done with any star tip, but I picked a small one maybe a 14 or 15...I don't quite remember! :)

Happy Feasting! :)

Happy Independence Day!

I ALMOST didn't make a cake.

And then I did.



This is my first time trying a recipe from Cybele Pascal's book "The Allergen-Free Baker's Handbook".

I didn't have the same Gluten-Free flours, but I used what I had and was happy with the amount and overall look of my cake layers. We will try a bite later today and hopefully it tastes as good as it looks!

I wanted to try a chocolate icing instead of the usual white/red/blue for the base. So many designs look washed out or too bright...I *think* it works pretty well. I had hoped for a darker chocolate but alas...not enough cocoa powder. It was a happy accident that it works well.

I hope your 4th of July is blessed!!!

Happy Father's Day and Birthday Week

Happy Father's Day to all the dads! I made this one for my Daddy! We did a quadruple celebration this weekend since we have 3 birthdays in our family this week, my hubby, my mom and my brother too!

Here's Dad's Cake from above and before/after travel...which always seems to cause something to move a bit!

This one was chocolate cake with vanilla and chocolate buttercream/fresh raspberries (dad loves them)!

Here's a good shot of birthday week cake stuff...

All lined up!

Mom's healthy carrot cake/GF/dairy-free/egg-free too!

My brother's topper for his traditional grasshopper cake...I didn't make the cake, just the TB Rays hat and ball topper.



And the cake for my hubby was the Angry birds 6 inch which I froze and thawed for this weekend...see previous posts for closer pics of this cake. I'm not a fan of the thawed cake taste...but I think there are better techniques for freezing. I didn't do it the best way! Next time. Next time I will do it right! :)

Blessings!

Angry Birds Cake!

My hubby has recently acquired an Iphone. I must say it is quite a device. I'm not really tech savvy, but he has been having a blast with it. I discovered Angry Birds shortly thereafter and it. is. addictive. My hubby isn't really INTO Angry Birds, but after our team didn't make it all the way for the Stanley Cup Finals...a hockey cake wasn't on the menu. He suggested this and I thought it would be a blast!



I spent a lot of time making all the little pieces and had a difficult time getting that bottom cake to behave, but all in all it went well! I used hidden pillars wrapped in fondant to hold up the 6 inch cake and there are some supports that are not edible, but otherwise everything is fondant and buttercream. Hubby always requests cotton candy buttercream so we have a white cake with cotton candy buttercream. This was a lot of work, but also a lot of fun! I was sad to cut it up and store it, but it fits the theme too, right?

Destruction and mayhem abound! :)

Blessings!

Tiny eye painting tutorial

There are a couple different techniques...I like this one. Although, to be frank...it can be messy and sometimes is not the cleanest. However it is faster than trying to glue teeny tiny dots of fondant (another way to do it).

Sooo depending on your comfort level you can give this a go or roll up tiny balls of black fondant and attach with a dot of water instead. Too much water will make it sticky and hard to work with.

Here's what I do:

Need:
White fondant
Black icing color
Ball tool or toothpick---depending on size of eyes
Premade piece that has dried enough to handle


After you've done the eyes if there is a tiny spot out of line or needing filled in a toothpick or pointed fondant tool does wonders for fixing it. I painted eyebrows here and used some orange to shape a beak. Again you could also use black fondant for the eyebrows. I did this technique using yellow for my black bomb birdies.

Blessings!

Preview...can you guess the theme?

This one is going to be fun! I can feel it!

Blessings!

Baby Shower Cake

One of my friends is having her 5th baby and I was blessed to make her a cake for her shower. Our Catholic families group tries to have a shower for each new baby even if the mom has already had several children. It is so neat to welcome each new life with a celebration and a cake! :) Also I think the moms appreciate having some things that are just for the new child.

The theme was sage/brown with polka dots. I found some ribbon as requested and then made a gumpaste/topper with a piece of the ribbon attached and the baby's name piped onto it. The cake was white chocolate cake with vanilla/caramel buttercream and chocolate butter cake with chocolate fudge icing. Buttercream icing with gumpaste fondant decorations and chocolate icing polka dots. The cake did a little slide to the right in the car so I had a bit of frustration with the after travel look, but that part of cakes (driving them) is still something I have to work on...long, long way to go. I think with a buttercream cake I need to use more icing to secure the cake to the board and perhaps double check the centering of the top tier. OR I just need to assemble on site! :)

Happy Easter!

He is Risen from the dead...REJOICE and BE GLAD!
Alleluia, Alleluia!

May your Easter be filled with the joy of Christ!

Blessings!

A Berry Sweet Time!

I really enjoyed making this cake! Even with the struggles I always face when making an egg-free/dairy-free cake; it is still a joy to make something special for my daughter.

Here she is...so happy to be 5! :)



This cake was gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, and nut-free. Supposedly it is yellow cake, but given I don't use eggs it is more like a dense white cake. I have to say the 1-2-3 Gluten Free Cake Mix is my new favorite! I am fan of the box mixes for Gluten-Free baking simply because doubling recipes to make a tiered cake can often mess up the structure of an egg-free/gluten-free cake. I find when I do make it from scratch I NEVER have enough batter. This box mix made 2x as much as any other one I would buy and tasted much better than the other vanilla cake mix I used for her 4th birthday cake (the rainbow one). So I'm hooked! Thank you 1-2-3 Gluten Free!! The only modification I might try (when I make something smaller) is using oil instead of shortening. Since most recipes call for butter, shortening is a great substitute, but I've found it to create a very dense cake. Using oil seems to give a moister softer consistency. It will have to be an Easter Experiment! :)

Strawberry Shortcake is hand molded from gumpaste. I couldn't use the usual meringue powder glue to hold her together due to my girl's egg allergies. Which, well, was challenging. BUT toothpicks saved the day. In lieu of spaghetti and eggwhite glue we did toothpicks and tiny bits of water or corn syrup. It was difficult and time consuming, but this piece was the one thing she said she really wanted. How do you not make that happen!?!?! :)



Wishing you a Berry Sweet Day!

Prepping for a Berry-fun time!

My firstborn baby is turning FIVE tomorrow. I really just can't believe it has been 5 years since I held her for the first time. This also marks 2 years of some serious cake decorating! I started this blog in Spring of 2009 so it has been an incredible ride since her 3rd birthday! I was telling a friend that I have probably made more cakes in these past 2 years than I have in the whole of my life!! Crazy huh?!??

Here's a preview of her cake decoration:




And I'm excited to say that I found an even better Cake Mix for gluten free baking...1-2-3 Gluten Free!


It makes 2x as much cake with only one box and for the same price as one of the other boxes which only made one layer at a time. Did I just confuse you?? Long and short---more cake at once...less moolah. Woohoo! I have found the Betty Crocker GF cake mixes to make a pretty dry hard vanilla cake, so I'm excited to have a new test of this brand. It says it is an award-winning mix! I'm excited to report on its taste when I blog about her party and Berry-Sweet cake!
:)

Til then!

Blessings!

Happy Valentine's Day!

I made this cake for a small party for Valentine's Day. I also did quite a few sweets to go with it! Cupcakes, and cookies and candy oh my! :)



Now I just need to remember to take pictures before everyone arrives!

I hope your Valentine's Day is sweet!

Blessings!

My Niece is ONE!

I made her this Ballet and Butterflies Cake for her 1st birthday! I met her in person for the first time this weekend and it was heaven! I LOVED every moment.



Her mom, my sister-in-law, asked for ballet since she had a ballet first birthday cake when she turned one AND for butterflies since my niece loves the butterfly at the end of the Hungry Caterpillar book. Pink and green was too match her bedroom colors and TADA! Fun, fun, cake! I had a blast making this one!

The cake is white chocolate sour cream with vanilla buttercream and mmf. All the decorations are edible and made from fondant/mmf/and buttercream.

I'm still working on my piping, but I think it's getting better each time.

Here's a pic of my lovely niece with her gift! :)


Happy Birthday Allison! I miss you already!

House Divided: Gators and Noles Cake!

This cake was soooo fun but also quite the ordeal!!! I normally don't drive cakes over an hour a way, but for my oldest friend I decided it was definitely worth it! She asked for a Noles/Gators cake for her Brother-in-Law who was getting married. This was their rehearsal dinner cake!

Here's a close up of those time consuming gumpaste figures:

Check out the cute pics she sent me of the happy couple with the cake!



And look...no rivalry here! :)



Despite some of the drama I had with my car keeping me stuck at my sister's for a day and at my parents for another 2 days...it went smoothly...looooooong story!!!

Here are some other pics because they are just too fun to miss out on:


That's me. HI! Putting finishing touches on this cake at the site of the Rehearsal. Luckily the only thing that fell off the cake was 2 fondant balls and the "united" sign. Easily fixed! I had to pipe all the grass and fix those pieces...plus pipe all the details on the fondant footballs.


Also there were these babies:


Lots and lots of work!! I'm so glad I got the experience of doing a cake this large and of traveling with it. Lessons learned are definitely always worth the trials we endure to learn them. I'm soooo thankful for all of my answered prayers along the way and for the "cake angels" I'm certain were with me on the way there! Otherwise my car would have failed on me before the delivery. God is good.

And last but not least here I am with my oldest friend...we go waaaaaaaay back.
First the throwback pic...no laughing:


And here we are with the cake this weekend:


Love you girl!!!! Thanks for making me a part of Corey and Sarah's special day!

Blessings!