Gramma Ruthie's Camping Cake

Alexis turns 6!!!

Jackson's 3rd Birthday

Tinkerbell Cake

My daughter turned five years old this year and wanted to make something special for her. She loves Tinkerbell and I remembered my mother telling about "doll cakes" that her mother used to make for her as a child. I did not make this one with a Bundt cake pan like my grandmother use to; I used a Wilton Doll Mold pan. It turned out great! I bought an 8" tall Tinkerbell doll and wrapped her body from the waist down with plastic wrap. The white frosting is plain buttercream frostings. The green leaves I made out of fondant. I bought plain white and colored it using Wilton's Gel Coloring. I used leaf-shaped fondant cutters for the different sized leaves. I took about 5 hours, start to finish. Not bad and my daughter LOVED it!!!

Bullseye Birthday Cake

My big brother celebrated his Golden birthday this year; he turned 31 on the 31st of May. I made him this Bullseye Cake because he is big into outdoors, hunting, archery, etc, etc; basically anything that screams BOY he is into it!
I cheated this time and used two boxed cake mixes, one white and one chocolate but mixed them myself to make it a "marble cake".



I used the Wilton Buttercream Frosting Mix and tinted it with the Wilton Gel Colors. I feel that the gel colors are a much more vibrant color than anything else I have ever used. I frosted it the night before and right before serving it, I added the black outlines with black frosting in a tube.



My wonderful husband went to our area Gander Mountain for the arrows. They were left behind in their archery target area and he cut them and cleaned them before we stuck them into the cake. We then stuck candles in the tops of them.



It turned out great and my brother just loved it! And his niece and nephew loved it as well! :)

The Louis Vuitton

This Louis Vuitton cake was made for my sister-in-law on her 27th birthday.

This was fairly simple to make; the fondant was the most time-consuming part of the whole ordeal...but well worth it! :)

This is a standard yellow cake recipe that made two 13x9 cakes. Once cooked and fully cooled, I cut each 13x9 in half to end up with four 6 1/2x9 cakes. I leveled them all off and then stacked them up. I carved it to the purse shape, covered with plastic wrap and placed in the fridge overnight.

The frosting was a Wilton Buttercream Icing mix. The rest of the decor is fondant. This was my first time using fondant and I have to say, it was pretty fun to work with! I used another Wilton product for the fondant. I have found some great make-it-yourself fondant recipes but was a little nervous to attempt that this early in the game!

All in all, I loved making this cake but loved presenting it to my sister-in-law even more!

Happy Birthday, Tricia! What will you do for my birthday?!? :) Just kidding; hope you enjoyed it!

The Train Cake

This is the cake that got me hooked on themed cakes! It was for my son's 2nd birthday. I found tons of great ideas from this website and threw a bunch of them together to come up with my own version. It was a three-day process but well worth it as you will see by the look on my son's face!

I used two Pound Cake box mixes and from that made two 9x5 loaf pans and one green bean can for the engine train. His party was on a Saturday so I baked the cakes on Thursday afternoon, carved Thursday night and decorated Friday night.

I made the frosting from scratch; just a simple whipped cream frosting.

The Frosting recipe is:
-- 1 quart heavy whipping cream
-- 1/8 - 1/4 cup powered sugar
-- a dash of vanilla extract

Combine all the ingredients in mixing bowl and using the whisk attachment, whisk at high speed until thickened.
I then divided the frosting into thirds because I needed three different colored frostings. This is what took so long; getting the right color combinations of food coloring. I didn't have enough red coloring so I settled for orange for the caboose. It still turned out great!

I used canned white frosting in a piping bag to do the details on each car. The track is made of black licorice and chocolate wafers; the "gravel" around the tracks is praline ice cream topping. Oreos were used for the wheels with a M&M in the center of each wheel, just for a little more detail. I hollowed out the middle of the second car and filled it with Jelly Belly's as the "coal car".

You can not see the clock but it was about 11:00 pm on Friday night and as you can see, I only had the engine completed! It was a long night!!

Coal car...complete at 12:15 am!

Finally finished...time? 1:30 am...

...the big question; Will he like it? Was it worth all the effort?

Just look at that smile...totally worth it!! :)