Bumble Bee Baby Shower Cake and Cupcakes

A few week ago, I got to make such an adorable cake for my Dad's friend.  I was given a picture of the invitation and given free reign to do as I wished for the cake and cupcakes - LOVE IT!  My favorites cakes are always the ones that I get to design and create and it's, for the most part, a total secret until delivery.  Type A and OCD-me would go insanely crazy if you were to do this to me, but when it's the other way around, I thrive on the unknown and love the surprise factor.  But, I do spend hours upon hours sketching and contemplating the design for days upon days too and usually, well, nearly always, change up something about it during the process.

The invitation design is so cute and one that you can find on Etsy by Note-able Chic.  I fell in love with the invitation and was completely inspired.

Baby Shower Invitation by Note-able Chick (Etsy.com)

I made 2 dozen cupcakes and a 6 inch round cake to match the invite.  There was so much involved with making everything for the cake and with staying up late (into the wee hours of the morning) working on it, I didn't get a chance to take photos of each step but here are the few that did make it into the camera.

Making the Marshmallow Fondant (MMF):
1) To make the Yellow MMF, I used Americolor Electric Yellow Soft Gel Paste
2) To make the Black MMF, I used Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips and AmeriColor Super Black Gel Paste.  Follow my steps HERE on how to make MMF using Candy Melts (super easy to get dark colors with).  You can use Black Candy Melts too but it also works with using any type of brown chocolate.  If you really take notice, the Black Candy Melts is really a dark brown so don't fret if you can't find any.  Any brown chocolate will work.

The Baby Carriage:
Cake Fixation has a lovely tutorial on how to create the carriage that you can follow HERE.  So I basically followed her instructions and then made my own modifications.  For starters, the piece of Styrofoam I used was very soft so I ended up taping it a couple times in shipping tape to keep in all together and since I couldn't "stab" the 18 gauge wire into it, I taped up all the wiring around the base of the stroller using lots of tape all over the place to make sure nothing moved and everything was secure and in place before covering in fondant.

Baby Stroller structure - all taped and secure.

I covered the entire stroller with back MMF that I attached to the stucture with piping gel.  I then added the stripes separately using Jessica Harris' (JessiCakes) technique found HERE.  To get the perfect shape I needed for the canopy, I lay a piece of paper over the canopy and outlined the shape and used it as a template (see the polka dot piece above, it was sort of an "eye" shape).

To get the polka dots on the canopy to look smooth, I added the yellow dots onto the black fondant, then rolled it out flat before trimming it to size and attaching it to the stroller with piping gel.

The flying bees are sitting inside coffee stirs inside the cake.

The Wheels:

I cut out the tire ring using 2 round piping tips close in size (1 to cutout the outside, another to cutout the middle).  I then added the spokes so that they fit snugly inside the tire ring and punched a hole in the middle with a #1 piping tip.  Brushed it all over in a thin layer of water front and back a couple times throughout the evening to make sure the MMF melted and fused to each other so they wouldn't come apart on me once dry.  You could also use gum-glue or tylose glue for this but water works fine too.

The Finished Stroller:

I painted the legs and handle with black gel colors and then bent the bottom 1 inch of the stroller legs so that they pointed straight down into the cake and not at a 45 degree angle.  Since the wires were not long enough to support the stroller securely, I pushed coffee stirs straight down into the cake and wrapped up the bottom part of the wire with an extra layer of floral tape to make them thicker and fit snugly into the coffee stirs - the stroller didn't budge and wasn't going anywhere:  It was as snug as a bug!

I then attached the wheels to the sides of the stroller legs using black royal icing and added the little baby head and hands.  Notice, I added lashes and a red bow to the baby to make it girlie vs. what the actual invitation had (all the little details really do make a difference).

Bumble Bees:

I made a couple bumble bees out of fondant (mixed the MMF with some tylose) and lay the bees with wings over various piping tips to dry so that they would have a natural curve to them.  Used thin wire wrapped in floral tape for the antennas that I later painted with black gel colors.

The wings, once dried, were painted over with piping gel that I thinned out with vodka and sprinkled with Rainbow Disco Dust.  I also brushed the entire body with yellow luster dust.

Damask Toppers:

This was my very first time using a stencil and I was honestly stressed out on how I was going to do black royal icing over white fondant - it's so unforgiving and unfixable if it doesn't work.  So, I Googled for help and found that Lesley from Royal Bakery wrote up the most informative tutorial on how to Damask a cake.  See it HERE through her Facebook Page.  The stencil I used is by Designer Stencils (link below).  I did practice on a couple pieces of fondant first before attempting it on white:  Roll out the fondant, rub it lightly with shortening to help the stencil stick to it (and help seal the stencil tightly against the fondant) then spread black royal icing over it, scrape off excess, carefully lift stencil off, allow to dry for about 10 minutes then use a round cutter to cutout the topper with.  Phew!  They turned out so lovely and I love the contrast between the black and white.

Here is the link to the Damask Stencil I used:

Black Royal Icing:

To get the royal icing really black, I always make it at least 1 day ahead to give it time to mature and darken.  Make your Royal Icing...

1)  Add a couple drops of AmeriColor Super Black Gel Paste

2) A drop of Americolor Burgundy Gel Paste

3) And a drop of Americolor Royal Blue Gel Paste

Black alone has a slight green shade to it and the burgundy helps remove the green while blue helps deepen the black.  Hope that makes sense.  It took some experimenting but this works for me every time without fail.

Rather than repeat what other great Cake Decorators have done already and explained so well, below are some links to some tutorials you can check out and also a quick recap on everything I did...

Cupcakes:

1) Damask pattern made with, Designer Stencils Damask Cake Tier #2 Cake Stencil.  Used Royal Bakery's Facebook tutorial to find out how to use a stencil.

2) "baby" stamped lettering made with, FMM Lower Case Block Alphabet Tappit Cutters Set

3)  Handmade Bees - I need to make a tutorial on this one day for you all.  I tried to use my iPhone to record a tutorial but it was bad, really bad.  I need to borrow my brothers camcorder one day and make you all a real video.  It'll be a first for me and we'll see how that works out.

4) Yellow/Black stripes on the bows were made by following JessiCakes Striping Tutorial.  The actual folding of the bows was made by using Royal Bakery's YouTube tutorial, Satin Fondant Bow.

5)  Smooth Polka Dot Toppers:  I rolled out the fondant, added the polka dots to it, rolled it out again so the dots are flushed with the rest of the fondant, then cutout the circles using a Double Sided Round Biscuit Cutter.

6)  Lately, I've been flat-top-icing the cupcakes (not sure on the exact term used) and I'm loving this look.  I fill the cupcake liners 1/2 way with batter so they don't grow taller than the actual liner.  I then fill the tops of the cupcakes with buttercream and with an offset spatula, scrape off the extra frosting straight across the top of the liner.  Add a small swirl of buttercream to the middle of the cupcake about 1 inch tall and top with the toppers - I just prefer to have the toppers "floating" above the top rim of the liners.  The toppers should be made a couple days prior to allow plenty of time for them to dry flat and hard.

Cake:
1) Baby Carriage Topper made by using Cake Fixation's, "How to Make A Stroller Cake Topper" tutorial.

2)  The white bee wings and white scalloped circle on the cake were brushed in piping gel thinned out with vodka and sprinkled with Rainbow Disco Dust.  I used a Double Sided Round Biscuit Cutter for the white, round, disk on the side of the cake.  

3) The "baby" stamped lettering was made by using, FMM Lower Case Block Alphabet Tappit Cutters Set

4) Petal Ruffle along the bottom border will be a tutorial coming soon.  I was trying to come up with something different rather than leaving it plain or using ribbon or piping something around it and after playing around a bit, came up with the ruffles.  I think they worked perfectly on the cake - don't you think?

Well, that's it for now at least.  The year's almost over and hopefully, LIFE won't have me super busy so I can do a better job keeping up my blog.  I'm so sorry for being MIA for so long and thank you all for sticking by me during my absence.

Happy Holidays!  Ya know, Christmas will be here before you know it.

Rice Krispie Sushi Treats

Sushi anyone?  I love sushi and I'm was so glad that we got to eat real sushi after making these - got my sushi craving satisfied...at least for the moment!

It was the night before my father-in-laws birthday and my husband and I were talking about what I should make.  For the past 3 years, I had created a tennis themed cake (Tennis Racket, Tennis Court, and last year, a Tennis Shoe) and although I had originally planned on making another tennis themed cake, I really didn't feel like it.  We were going to a sushi restaurant the following evening to celebrate his birthday and my husband thought it would be really nice to surprise him with a sushi cake or cupcakes instead.  It was late in the evening and we just had one of the hottest days of the year and baking, was not one of those things I wanted to do in the midst of the heat.  And I thought (a light bulb moment), why not make them out of rice krispie treats (RKT), they're his favorite anyways.

I quickly gathered up all the stuff and stayed up late making these.  Big pat on the back for creating such a neat treat at a short notice in the middle of the night with no planning, baking or prepping for - whoo hoo - SCORE!  And dishes...aside from the bowl and spatula used to make the rice krispie treats, my sink was empty and not an aftermath of a mess in the kitchen to clean up (well, a tiny mess on the dinning table where I worked on these) - I LOVED it!  I am one of those that really hates the clean up part of cake-ing and would rather decorate more than anything.  And when each cake averages 15 hours to make plus weeks upon hours worth of design and planning, it was such a nice change to be able to make something that didn't take much thought and planning for.

RKT and Fondant:  Candy Sushi Cut Rolls

(ooo, bad lighting with this one - used my cell phone)

The first thing I made were the cut rolls.  I made them like your would normally make a regular roll of sushi but instead of using rice, I used rice krispie treats and stuffed the inside with red vines, marshmallow ropes and some homemade mango fruit rollups (pretty much I grabbed what I had on hand that would work).  Rolled it up tightly using a sushi mat then cup them up into 1 inch circles.

Making Nori (seaweed)

To make the Nori (seaweed wrapper), I took a crumbled piece of foil and stamped it along a thinly rolled out piece of dark green fondant (the little square at the top of the photo is an actual piece of nori that I used for reference and later ate up...umm umm good).

I've made some sushi before at home and there are a couple websites that show you how. I used the same technique to make these:  It works just the same as if making them with rice.  Be sure to keep your hands greased up with a little bit of shortening to keep the RKT from sticking to them.

Here are the Ikura (Salmon Egg) Sushi.  I rolled out little balls of orange fondant and painted them with piping gel thinned out with vodka.  I layered on colors of yellow, orange, red and white to give them a shinny, almost transparent, appearance.

RKT and Fondant:  Ikura Sushi (Salmon Eggs)

One naked shrimp and one dressed up with the 1st few layers of coloring

For the shrimp, I hand sculpted them out of white fondant, scored it a bit then painted it over with a mixture of piping gel thinned out with vodka in layers of yellow, white, orange, and red.  I kept going over it in layers and layers of colored piping gel to build up the texture found on shrimp.  They were then laid over the RKT (I used a little bit of piping gel under the pieces to help them stick a little to the RKT).

RKT and Fondant:  Shrimp Sushi

I did the same thing with each of the other sushi pieces:  hand molding them, scoring them, painting them over in a variation of gel colors and piping gel thinned out with vodka.

RKT and Fondant: Salmon Sushi

RKT and Fondant: Tuna Sushi

RKT and Fondant:  Tamago Sushi

To make the Tamago Sushi (egg custard), I rolled out the fondant just like you would make the real thing then painted in some highlights with egg yellow and white gel colors.

Once I had everything made, I didn't know what to use to display it on.  It would have been really nice to make a bento box but there was no time.  As I dug around the house, I spotted a bamboo steamer basket - it worked!  It also had a nice lid to hide the sweet goodies from everyone =D

And again, I'm craving for some sushi...

A Mad Hatter Tea Party (and Mad Hatter Cake #3)

Oh dear, here is one cake that I didn't get around to share with you all from last May - A Mad Hatter Hat Cake with a modeling chocolate figurine of the birthday girl.

A chocolate cake filled with strawberry Italian Meringue Buttercream
and covered in Chocolate Ganache dusted in green, brown and gold dust

Last May we made the 6 hour drive to San Jose to spend Easter with my cousin and to also help with her daughter's 10th birthday party.  It was the most amazing Mad Hatter Tea Party.

the girls huddled in front of the cake while eating some treats =)

This was the 3rd Mad Hatter Hat Cake that I've made and if you would like to see them, check out my previous blog posts here:

Mad Hatter Cake #1

Mad Hatter Cake #2

We also made a bunch of decorations to top the cupcakes with...
- Stacked teacups which I later filled with chocolate ganache
- Mad Hatter Hats with her birthdate
- Clocks with her birth time
- Eat-Me tags
- Ribbon Roses
- Clubs, Clovers, Hearts and Spades
- and butterflies

The chocolate cupcakes were frosted with a swirl of purple and pink Italian Meringue Buttercream and topped with an assortment of decorations.


We also made cake pops and skewers of fruit and placed them in tall vases stuffed with colorful tissue paper.

My cousin did an awesome job with the table setting:  A couple unique tea pots and a different teacup for each setting - not one of them looked like another...it was perfect for the theme.  She also found some really colorful and bold plates, cups, napkins and little trinkets to make for a super colorful and perfect tea party.  I went overboard tying a bow onto anything that could hold a bow (I loved the red/black/white printed ribbon) - it's even up around the windows and wall decor too =)

She even setup a table for the little ones.

And the doily lace trimming around the cake stand is a paper border that my cousin had bought a while back.  It came precut and folded up inside a little packet by Martha Stewart.  I attached it to the side of the cake stand with some double sided tape.  I loved how it dressed up the stand - so simple too.


We had all hands were on deck from family and friends in putting this together and it turned out quite lovely.  An incredibly beautiful birthday for an incredibly beautiful girl.

Lalaloopsy Cake & Dessert Table - Toffee Cocoa Cuddles

My daughter's 5th birthday cake - she is crazy about all things Lalaloopsy with her most favorite doll being Toffee Cocoa Cuddles.  I think the dolls are a little weird with their huge plastic heads and tiny bodies but they do have cute names and stories of what they're made of behind each one of them.  Such as Crumbs Sugar Cookie (made from pieces of a baking apron), Spot Splatter Splash (sewn from a painter's coveralls) and Ember Flicker Flame (made from a fire fighter's uniform).

As for her favorite one, Toffee Cocoa Cuddles is "sewn" from pieces off a chocolate box and likes to give hugs and all things sweet.  Plus, she has a chocolate lab that has a piece bitten off his ear - how cute is that!  

If you're looking for some really cute Lalaloopsy invitations, check out Lala Heaven's store on etsy.  You give her your info, she sends you the digital file and you print them on your own printer and paper - convenient, inexpensive and oh sew cute!

I wanted to create a table setting for "Caitlyn's Sweet Shop"with lots of sweet treats for the party guests to enjoy - something I had never done before and with seeing so many pretty dessert table setups over the Internet, I really wanted to give one a try.  But boy!  After all the prepping and getting things together, I ran out of time and didn't get all I envisioned made and on it.

A Lalaloopsy inspired dessert table

My 8 year old son helped make the banner on the wall out of foam cutouts found at a dollar store.
Button Plates were inspired by Pinterest:
Lalaloopsy Party Button Backdrop on Hostess with the Mostess

another Pinterest find:  Fabric Flowers by Bete Bazzi on flickr
I bought an assortment of fabric and cutout circles using a play dough lid as a template =).  Stitched up some buttons for the centers, glued a 1/2 inch felt circle to the back and sewed hair ties to them.
I then tied them up in pairs and put them in a heart shaped bowl for the girls to pick from for their goody bags.  These turned out so cute.

Chocolate Cake Pops
I also made the button monogram in the background and hope to hang it up in her room soon...once I find the bag of picture hangers in the garage somewhere =)

Some candy jars...I printed out images of the dolls off the Internet, cut them out using zig zag scissors and attached them onto a glass jar wrapped in ribbon.

more candy jars.... I also had a jar with clear bags and ties for the guests to fill their own goody bags to take some sweet treats home with them.

I love the Candy Topiary inspired again, by Pinterest:
Take a foam ball, stick Dum Dum lollipops into it (it took an entire large, 180pc bag of Dum Dums) and stand it up on either a candle stick or like I did, stick a dowel wrapped in ribbon into it and stand it into a flower pot.  The ball is really heavy so I stuffed a bunch of heavy stuff into the vase to support it (there are a couple bags filled with rice, a foam block to help hold it up straight and a roll of this heavy, industrial tape I found in my hubbies tool box - pretty much anything that would fit and support the heavy ball and keep it from toppling over)

a game for the kids - Guess the number of M and M's in the jar.
Winner got to take the jar home....Congrat's Ally!  That's Crumbs Sugar Cookies little sister (Sprinkle Spice Cookie) on the label and she has a smudge of chocolate on here face - lol!

and some mini Chocolate Cupcakes topped with Raspberry Italian Meringue Buttercream

and one of my most favorite treats, Lalaloopsy Cake Pop Favors

I made the tags in photoshop, zig zag scissors to cut them to size and then punched holes in 2 corners to slide the popsicle stick up through.

For the cakes design, I pulled some features off the doll's outfit - such as the stripes along the side of the cake matched her sleeves and the loops below the stripes matched the loop design on one of the layers of the skirt.  My daughter specifically asked for hearts along the cake so I did the top trim in hearts and they actually turned out really cute that way.  I was also inspired by JessiCakes design and used her technique with the stripes as shown here on her blog:  Maddie's Fashion Birthday Cake by JessiCakes.

Her head is made out of a cake pop and the body is decorated in gumpaste and MMF.
It was 4am by the time I finished her up and I had to leave the polka dots off her dress to sneak a couple hours of sleep before having to get the entire house in order and lalaloopsy cake pop favors made - yeah, talk about last minute.

before being wrapped up into favors

To see how the figurine and the Lalaloopsy Cake Pops were made, take a look at my 1st Lalaloopsy Cake post found here:  Blossom Flower Pots Lalaloopsy Cake and Cake Pops

and to the best part...getting to cut and eat the cake
(no worries - I was standing right beside her keeping a close eye on her)

Cake is covered and decorated in MMF
Momofuku Milk Bar Cake filled instead with Raspberry Meringue Buttercream
8 inch round (6 inches tall)

All in all, her party turned out oh, sew sweet =)