Finding Pins and Needles

Here's a throwback to one of my favorite cakes I did for my daughter, and it was seriously easy with a few supplies. Besides your typical cake supplies, I've listed some basic decorating supplies for this cake. Supplies: Ariel Topper Sea Life Silicone Mold  (shells and coral) Circle Cutters  (scales) Alphabet Cutters (for the name) Luster Dust (pick up in cake isle, paint on scales) Fondant (purple, greens) Brown Sugar (sand!)

Possibly my easiest cake ever? If you don't consider yourself a cake-decorator, even YOU can do this one. Materials: Once you've iced your cake, you'll want to roll out your fondant  with a rolling pin. Next, take your Butterfly Plungers  and cut out a variety of sizes and colors. To give your butterflies a 3D look, take a cereal box or other cardboard and fold it like an accordion. Take your butterflies and press them into the accordion crevices to let them dry. Allow plenty of time for the butterflies to dry and stiffen. Once dry, knock yourself out decorating. Find the letter cutters here If you're looking for party supplies to match, we used these:

With Frozen 2 hitting the theaters recently, I thought I'd post pics of the Frozen cake I made a few years ago. It was labor-intensive & pricey, but one of the coolest cakes I've done to date. Decorating Supplies: Isomalt Food Coloring Candy Thermometer Snowflake Mold Gem Mold Silicone Mat Cake Topper/Toy Silicone Baking Mat  (for Letters & Numbers) Hexagon Cake Pans Tutorials Isomelt & Jewel Tutorial Isomalt Shard Tutorial Isomalt Letters Tutorial To get custom letters and numbers out of Isomalt, I chose a font I liked and printed the name and numbers from my computer. After I cut out the letters and numbers from the paper, I used an x-acto knife and cut into a  Silicone Baking Mat  to create a custom mold. Once I poured Isomalt into the molds and the letters cooled, I dropped a dot of Isomalt on the base of each letter and attached a toothpick. " Some people are worth melting for" -Olaf

3...2...1... Happy Birthday! My son loves Mario Kart, specifically Waluigi. So for his 7th birthday, we did a MK themed party where he dressed in his purple suspendered Waluigi costume. The kids and adults had a blast playing MK on the wii. Here's how the cake turned out... Super Mario Figure Play Set Mario Kart  Mini Karts The inside of the cake was checkered like a racing flag, find the very easy tutorial  here . Mine didn't turn out perfect,  but it was fun and pretty simple to do. Icing Tip  for grass The #7 was done by cutting same size squares from black and white fondant, assembling the check pattern and then using a Wilton  Number & Alphabet Cookie Cutter . I applied it on top of white fondant 7 to give it more strength. The "Happy Birthday" sign was made using this  font .

Tea anyone? When my daughter asked for a tea party theme for her 4th birthday, I immediately thought of a lovely table with tablecloth for a cake, set with sweets and tea. Luckily with this kind of detail, I can do them ahead of time out of fondant because it lasts, but I switched it up this time. Since I've been dabbling in clay lately, I decided to do the tea set and food in clay so she could play with them after the cake is gobbled up. The tablecloth on down is fondant and edible goodness, here's how it turned out. This cake was labor intensive, at least the clay bits, but it was worth it, it will last and boy is this food tiny! Here's how it went... "SOPHIA" was cut out using the Ateco Alphabet Letter Set . To give you an idea of scale... (and I have tiny hands)

Want to make one?

There is something to be said for simplicity. Up until now, I've always decorated detailed and over the top cakes for my kiddos. But when my brother gave me free range on my niece's 1st birthday cake with the only direction of " teal ", I went for a little simplicity.

I finally had a chance to make a cake for an adult! Whoohoo! We were celebrating two Birthdays of our female friends so Spider-man and Transformers were out of the question this time. I wanted to challenge myself with trying new techniques and coming up with something elegant. I learned two new techniques with this cake. The first was

How-to Secrets Revealed... When you spend as many hours as I did on something you plan to cut up and eat, you better believe I'm going to document it! My son is a HUGE Transformers fan and I wanted to make him an Optimus Prime cake for his seventh birthday. I'm really happy with how it turned out... and it wasn't as hard as it might look. Shhh ... here are my secrets... Exploding Cake  A huge thanks to Rose Bakes for the exploding cake tutorial. It was really easy and I hope to be able to use this technique again sometime. Spirals This is pretty simple, you'll need Duff's Decorative Cake Wire Twists . Take your fondant, roll it like a snake and wrap it around the spirals until it's covered. Cake Topper Transformers that don't transform are no fun at all, so I wasn't interested in getting a "cake topper". Here's the Optimus Prime  toy I used instead. He was a perfect size for the cake top. I jammed toothpicks into his feet/w...

Cake decorating, no needles but it's crafty, right? In the past few years I've dabbled in cake decorating. With 3 kids, 3 birthday cakes a year, and a number of showers in between I don't have a lot of experience, but wanted to share the one I whipped up last week because it was seriously fun to make. As I mentioned , my niece had a 1st birthday party and I was asked to make the cake with a ladybug theme. I did, but I surprised everyone by making the inside p o l k a - d o t t e d ! Here's how it turned out... It's crazy how easy this  p o l k a - d o t  technique is. First, I used the   red velvet cake  recipe that came with my  Babycakes Cake Pop Maker  machine which I ordered from Amazon. Once the cake pop balls were cool, I placed whole and half balls in the cake pans and poured the cake batter (white and chocolate ) over them. Bake. Surprisingly, they don't overcook being baked twice! So fun and I love the contrast of ...