Housewarming Party

I made a dozen sunflower cupcakes for our housewarming party and these were all that were left by the time I remembered to take a picture.  I guess they were a hit.  I used oreos as the center and vanilla frosting tinted yellow and orange to make the leaves.  They sure brightened up the party.

Dave's 30th Birthday

I made these shark infested cupcakes for my husband Dave's 30th birthday.  I learned that fruit leather and fruit roll up are 2 completely different things while I was making these ones.  The life preservers and sharks didn't come out quite the same b/c of my mistake, but I think the sharks look pretty cool all the same.  Happy Birthday honey!!

Threadcakes Contest

I've never entered a cake contest before and while there are some amazing entries already, I thought practice with a purpose made sense, so here's my entry. I started with a yellow cake mix that I cooked in 2 round 9 inch pans. After they had cooled for an hour or 2, I put them in the freezer over night. The next day I removed one of the cakes from the pan and put it on a plate. I've never carved a cake before so using a print out of the Daisy shirt as a template I attempted to carve the cake. Every other petal I carved out to give it some dimension. When that was done I put it back into the freezer to work on the next day. The next night I used a tub of pre-made buttercream frosting and separated it into 3 bowls to color. One is black, one is orange and one is yellow. In a large ziplock bag I put the orange and yellow to use to frost the petals. In an up and down motion I went back and forth to frost the entire cake in the 2 toned orange/yellow color. Then in a smaller ziplock bag I put the black to outline the petals and center. Finally I used black sugar crystals as the center of the flower. It came out pretty close to what I had in my head, I just need to work on my carving skills.

Entering the Blogging World

I've been talking about baking and decorating for a long time now and finally after seeing the work of a friend, Jacqueline Ngo (formerly Nguyen), I've become inspired to work on it more and document my progress.  In a short time she's become so amazing and I only hope I can be half as good as she is.  It also helps that we moved into our first house 6 weeks ago and it has a sweet kitchen.  Right now I'm working on my entry for a cake contest put on by Threadless Tees.  It's going to be a daisy.  It's my first contest ever and while I'm not doing it to win, it is great practice and of course a great treat when it's all done.