College Bound Birthday Cake

My Stepson will have a birthday tomorrow and in exactly two weeks will be moving into a college dorm at ECU. So, I made an attempt at a birthday cake with a college theme. Ladies, decorating cakes is hard! Let me just say this: When you buy a decorated cake, its worth every penny. Anyway, I guess this cake is ok for a homemade cake. For those of you who don't live in NC, the school colors for East Carolina University are purple and yellow.

I hope you all have a great weekend!

Father's Day Cake

Here's my fourth cake for June, 2009!





Here is the cake before I decorated it. I put it in the freezer for about an hour to reduce crumbing.



The cake in progress:



Have a great day!

This is my newest birthday cake. I decided to put the birthday girl's initials on there. The flower and the initials were made using stencils and colored sugar.



This cake is far... really far from being of professional quality. But, I have learned a few things. 1. How to slice off the rounded top part of the layers to make the cakes lay flat. 2. The frosting needs to be stiffer for the shell borders to look their best. 3. How to use a hot knife to smooth out the frosting.

Yes, I am learning from my mistakes!

This is a cake carrier my stepdaughter gave me for Christmas. She is the same person whose birthday is tomorrow. Isn't' it cute?



I tried to make the little packages shown in yesterday's post. Not... too... good.



More practice with the shell borders:



Saturday I will make a Father's Day cake.

Whatcha Working On Wednesday - Novelty Cakes

Its time to make the next birthday cake I planned to make in June. This one is for my step-daughter who will be 29 Friday. I have already made my cake layers this morning and they are cooling on the counter. I will leave them loosely covered while I am at work today and tonight I hope to create something like one of the above cakes, which were in a Betty Crocker Cake Decorating Book that I got from the library.

The cake on the left has simple piping around the bottom and top edge, which I can do "fairly well". The little packages are fruit chews with little piped strings and bows. It is very cute and I think would be easy.

The second cake uses a stencil and different colored sugars to make pretty flowers. I already have some blue sugar from a previous cake, so this might be an option.

Today at lunch I plan to go to Walmart to purchase either a stencil and colored sugar, or a package of fruit chews. Then tonight I will decorate the cake. Hopefully it will turn out like one of these!

So what are you working on today? Go to Leslie's blog, MY COUNTRY HOME, to see more of what's going on in other women's homes.

Happy Birthday!

Its a month of birthdays at my house! Today is my hubby's and I'd like to wish him a very happy birthday!

I had plans for a very pretty "professional" cake, but with a combination of a lack of time and experience, this is what I ended up with! Please don't laugh... I did put a lot of love into it!



I wanted to make my NC State fan an NC State Cake! These are links to the kinds of cakes I dreamed of making:

Here

Here

and Here.

Oh, well, Next time.

The hardest thing was that the icing wouldn't get red enough, no matter how much red food coloring I put into it. Then the Tupperware cake container doesn't allow enough room on the bottom sides to pipe a shell border. I'm still learning, that's sure!

All's Well That Ends Well!

The rest of the story.......






Thanks to all the commenters on the previous post. I appreciate all the encouragement and helpful tips! I need all the help I can get!

On to Cake Number Two.

Cake Decorating For Idiots

I spent the better part of Saturday trying to decorate a birthday cake using "professional decorating supplies". It is so hard!!! This cake is the final product after I removed garlands from the sides that partially fell off! A product of too thin icing, I think.

The cake decorating dvd I bought was very helpful! But, I need one that is entitled, "Complete Cake Decorating for Dummies!" :o)

Oh well, I did learn a lot and am not giving up. I'm sure the next cake will be easier. I just need to hang in there, and keep working at it. I am by no means an expert seamstress, but kept working at it until I was able to make a few good quality projects. I hope to do the same with cake decorating!



Practice, practice, practice......



I have three more cakes to make this month: 2 birthdays and a Father's Day cake.

Cake Decorating

I've always wanted to be able to decorate beautiful cakes, but was never very good at it! These are a few feeble attempts I found in my picture files:









I had been eyeing this basic cake decorating dvd for a while and caught it on sale last weekend, so I bought it!

Then I went to Walmart and bought a few supplies:



I still need to purchase a cake spatula and a couple more couplers, which I hope to get today.

There are three birthdays in my family in June, one this weekend. I will be decorating my first cake from the lessons learned in the dvd this Saturday. So, you know you are going to be put through seeing my feeble attempts at "real" cake decorating soon. Hey, this is whole new category under labels on the side bar.

Thanks for putting up with me!