Serious Ju Ju

I made this cake for a skateboarding ministry here in Montana. They celebrated their 2 year anniversary this July and wanted a little something to help celebrate. They are a great Christian Ministry that helps bring the gospel to skateboarding teens! The lizard is their logo, and their colors are black, white, and red. Other than that and that they wanted a skateboard, they pretty much gave me free reign for the design. I made it cherry flavored. The white is buttercream and the black and red are fondant.

Bonner Wedding

Congratulations Eric and Alyson! My friends got married on May 22 and I got to make their cake for them. It's always fun to make cakes for friends and it's even better when the result is what they were hoping for! This picture is the final result.


Cakes are such a process, and while I love to try and document each step, I rarely remember until it's too late. So the picture below is the only one I captured and it's just the cake before the black fondant was added. Each tier was a different flavor. Starting from the top: French Almond with strawberry, Dreamsicle, Kahlua Fudge with Strawberry, and French Almond with Cherry. The little circles took a LOT longer than I thought they would but maybe that's just because I wanted it to be perfect and cut each circle to fit a specific spot. It was a great experience though and probably the first cake I was truly happy with in the end.

Devan and Jenn Cake

Cake Decorating truly is a process. You can't just wake up the morning the cake is due and begin. It takes time! You spend a good amount of time designing what the cake will look like and figuring out every single thing you are going to need (and then you actually go purchase those things) from the boards to supports to ingredients. There is a lot more math involved in baking a large cake than you might think... you have to calculate EXACTLY how many boxes of cake each pan will need and figure out how to bake them the in such a way that all the batter gets used. If the 12" cake needs 3.6 cake mixes, you just hope the 6" only needs .4 of a cake mix and you actually get the make the same kind of cake for both layers! Then I also have to figure the right proportions for all the other "extra's" I throw in. It's fun though, thankfully I have always liked math ;-) Yes I do use boxed cake for a majority of my cakes- but trust me, my cakes don't taste like boxed cake when I'm through.

You also really have to schedule your time well. For this cake, I had to make a lot of fondant flowers that had to harden so I had to make sure I started a couple days before the wedding so they would completely set up and to make sure I made enough (I overshot a bit and made a little too many but better to have extra than not enough!)

The two different flavors I got to make for this cake were Strawberry Supreme and Vanilla Chai. The Chai was fun to do and a little intimidating at the same time because I could not find a recipe for this cake ANYWHERE that actually created a cake of wedding cake consistency. All the recipes I saw were like coffee cakes. So I had to experiment and create my own. Jen's favorite chai mix is David Rio so I made sure to add a lot! I really wanted it to have that distinct flavor.

For the Strawberry cake I used fresh strawberry's in the cake and then I had a strawberry filling and I added fresh strawberry's to that too!

I had to bring the cake to the reception in two separate pieces, the top two tiers and the bottom two tiers and assemble the cake there. I also had to put the flowers and branch on there as well. This was the first wedding cake I had ever done all by myself so I was a little nervous. This is the final result! As always, you are your worst critic and I always think of other things I could have done after the fact, and I kinda wish I had someone there to give some advice, you know, add a flower there, you should make another small branch, whatever. But it's ok. The Bride and Groom seemed to like it and everyone seemed to like the flavors, so that always makes a decorator happy!

White Chocolate Chai Experiments

Sometimes the best things start with chocolate. This time though, the white chocolate was a delicious little addition to what I was trying to create. I have a wedding in just a couple short weeks and the bride and groom, Devan and Jen, requested a Vanilla Chai cake. I've searched high and low for recipes but couldn't find any that were what I wanted. I decided I would just have to create one on my own and have some taste testers (or any friends that wanted to try) tell me what they thought. I had read a ton of different recipes, some calling for Chai Concentrate, some for powdered drink mix, and others that actually ground up all the individual spices and tea and added it in. So I went about mixing and measuring to create this delicious flavor.

As I was mixing I thought to myself, "mmm, wouldn't it be good to have white chocolate on the bottom of this cupcakes!" So I melted some down and divided it up in the cupcake holders. Flowers for spring! I'm SO ready!

I also decided to experiment with some frosting. I have a nice reliable buttercream recipe but since I was experimenting to begin with, I decided to run with it! I had read all these different recipes from other blogs I frequent, some are made with pudding mix, some called for melted white chocolate, others for cream cheese. I thought, why not have it all? So that's what I did. This is my white chocolate cream cheese frosting. Definitely not a decorating frosting, it was much too soft and sticky, but it was really good. And don't forget the dash of cinnamon on top!

Now I only have one cupcake pan, so the rest of the batter became a cute little 6" cake with cake crumbles and white chocolate chunks on top.

Labeling

I thought it might be a good thing to put my name on my pictures so they can't get stolen. Not that they are super great quality that would make someone want to steal them, but I thought, what the heck.

5 Cakes for my Birthday!

Vanilla Spice with Buttercream

Triple Cherry Chocolate Fudge

Mango and Whipped Cream

Root Beer Float
Fondant BoxSurf Board Cake with Water (blue Sprinkle) and Sand (Graham cracker) Cupcakes.

Goofy Spice Cake

Fresh Life 2nd Birthday Celebration Cake - French Vanilla and Chocolate with Buttercream

Topsy Turvy white and chocolate cake created for Business project

Fresh Life logo cake


Cake 3 Final Wedding Cake with Fondant roses.

Birthday Cake Experiments

5 cakes for my Birthday Celebration! My mom and I worked together on these. Our focus was more flavors rather than the decorating (except on the purple one)

Root Beer Float




3 layer Mango cake with whipped frosting


Triple Cherry Chocolate Fudge cake


Vanilla Spice cake with Buttercream and fondant flowers


Dreamsicle Cake with whipped frosting and Mandarin orange garnish

Black & White Birthday Party

I made some cupcakes for a friends birthday. The party was Black & White themed so I stuck with traditional buttercream frosting for the white and then use black frosting and black fondant for the details. The cupcakes are Gluten-Free Red Velvet with Vanilla Bavarian Cream Filling. They turned out good and were so decadent and rich!

some recent cakes

Birthday Party last September- Let's party like it's 1969!
Young boys birthday party in January 09.
Fresh Life Church celebrates 2 years!
My favorite little girls' 2nd birthday cake. The entire head is cake and the hat is rice crispy treats.