Behind the Scenes - Stormtrooper Cake

The making of the stormtrooper cake:

I was taken by suprise that my fridends (almost) 4 year old asked for a stormtooper cake for his 4th birday. I though about it for a while and decided that I could make one, but it would take sometime and a practice cake before I felt comfortable to be able to pull this off and present to someone other than my coworkers to eat.

The practice cake helped when it came to doing the face. I quickly found out that forming the face out of cake was not easy and since the fondant was so heavy it was distorting what I build. So I quickly moved to Plan B. Rice Crispies! These worked great, and I used them for the base, the round sides and the face in the final cake.
(This was 1 1/2 have batches of rice crispy treats)

I decided to make 3 eight inch cakes and stack them as the head. 2 were marble and the top was chocolate. I filled the layers with chocolate pudding. Vanilla buttercream was then coated over all the rice crispies and the cakes.
Above you can see I had to add a fondant bridge for the nose. When I layed down the fondant, I had to do it in sections to allow for all the different shapes and different levels of white that made it look like a helmet.

I needed to make it look like the eyes were set into the helmet, so they were a few piece to give them depth and a more 'protective' look.

Fireworks & A Birthday Party

My parent's house plays hosts to a number of parties every summer. It was the weekend before the 4th of July and my uncle's birthday / Fireworks over the lake party. My mother requested a cake for the party. We had about 30+ people so this was the largest cake I had to create. It was also one of the most involved.

It was a two tier, pillar cake, made from my Mom's chocolate cake with chocolate pudding and butter cream frosting.
The bottom tier was a 9in cake, make to look like a like with a pier and some fish avoiding worms on a hook. My uncle likes to fish.

The fish were made from royal icing.

The top of the bottom had some little bobbers, and then later we added a sailboat, to fill in the space left by the pillars.

The top was to look like the fireworks we would be seeing later tonight. I cut the cake down to 7in round cake. It would have been easier to bake a smaller cake, but my Mom didn't know what sizes, so she just baked two 9 inch cakes, and I wasn't about to complain since I didn't have to bake them this time. (My uncle's nickname is Tink.)

The fireworks were made with small dots of royal icing.

Tink with is cake. The boat number is N59, in honor of his age. :)

Here's the final cake. I was really happy with it.

Making Candy Flowers

For the Wilton II class, it's all about flowers. Luckly in June it was rainy so on a rainy Sunday, I spent most of the morning making a number of different flowers to decorate my final cake.

This was my best violet, I really liked making these flowers and Apple blossems.

Birthday cake

Between Wilton I and II, I had to create a cake for one of the women I play tennis with, Amanda. She requeted a Yellow cake with Raspberry filling and Vanilla cream frosting. This was an ovel cake decorated with flower pots and the Wilton Rose decorating the top.

I was getting better with my roses, but I still need to work on my writting with frosting.

Here's the side detail.

Wilton I Cakes

Here are a few photos from my first class.

This first cake was for Lindsey's Birthday. She's a co-worker and I had only had one class before I made this cake.
I was pertty happy with how it looks. I had just learned about different frosting types but didn't really know much more.
It was a double layer chocolate cake, with a frosting center with Vanilla Cream frosting.

Here's a detail of how the sides were done.


During the class we have to bring in our own frosting and cakes to practice our skills on. This was my first practice cake. It's personally a little busy for me, but it was really to try out my different frosting and covering techniques.
It was a double layer chocolate cake, with a frosting center with Vanilla Cream frosting.

Wilton I and Wilton II were right before I played tennis with the girls. My day went from work, directly to cake decorating class, then directly to tennis. (It made for a crazy Wednesday) After tennis we would dive into the cakes, figuring our hour of tennis burned all the calories we were about to consume.

The next week was our final class from the 1st session. I decided that since we were going to be eatting it after tennis that I would decorate my final cake with a tennis theme. I put all our faces on the cake and I made our tennis coach the ball.
It was a double layer chocolate cake, with a raspberry filling center with Vanilla Cream frosting.

Here's my after tennis, look at my creation pose:

How it started...

How does a biology major, turned internet marketer start decorating cakes? Well all I can say is that I went to a liberal arts college, (Ripon College) and I learned that I can do many things, so why not try a little bit of it all.

I’ve always liked to bake and decorating cakes has always interested me. In April, 08 I started a Wilton 1 class at JoAnn’s. I had a great teacher, Elizabeth. I figured out early on, that it was a lot of work to bake and make frosting in my tiny kitchen, but I enjoyed it. I had fun making cakes, cupcakes and cookies. Jayson and I didn’t need to eat them all, so we started to feed them to our co-workers. (I am still waiting for the commission from their gyms since they should have all had to join one after I started.) As time went on I took the Wilton 2 and currently I’m taking the Fondant class.