Love Is In The Air

 Valentine cupcakes for Dave's work.  After taste testing (which you know you have to do), I think these are the best I've made.  Strawberry cake filled with cheesecake pudding mousse, topped with lovely smooth Italian Meringue Buttercream (probably the most heavenly icing there is), drizzled with a melted Hersheys chocolate bar and topped with candy hearts.  Can I just say....A..MAZ..ING.

                                      

Mario Kart

 Our Grandson's sixth birthday and he loves Mario Kart.  White cake with pistachio pudding (he also likes green) and whipped cream mix for the filling.  Butter cream frosting.  All components are hand sculpted with either modeling chocolate or fondant.

                                     

  

                       you can see little toothpicks there...they are kind of heavy.  Another lesson
                                learned...insert the toothpick on the back at an angle, not straight.

   thought it would be cute to put happy birthday like signs that are painted on the road but I got it

backwards.  If you were driving down this road you would need to see Happy first.  Oh well, to late.



Wisteria

I've been pretty quiet lately, haven't been doing much baking so I decided to try and make wisteria blossoms.  Didn't start out very successful...with two books having directions, neither one made sense to me soooooo I made my own directions using a gladiola cutter and a sweet pea cutter and voila, a wisteria (my rendition of one anyway).  I wish I had a better camera...none of my pictures looks as good as the actual product.

                                   

80th Birthday

 Going to Las Vegas for my mother-in-law's 80th birthday.   Hope this cake travels that far ok.  Lemon cake filled with a layer of boysenberry curd and a layer of pastry cream and frosted with buttercream.  All decorations are hand sculpted from gum paste. 

  

letters from cutters and dusted with plum color

used a decorating comb to texture the side...angle makes the cake look crooked but was very straight

orchids, butterfly, filler flowers, and varigated ivy

Gobble Gobble

Was looking for something simple for pot luck at Dave's work and found this on the Wilton website.  Yellow cake with vanilla buttercream and a light coating of caramel ice cream topping for the filling.  Frosted with buttercream.  Turkey body is a sugar cookie piped with chocolate buttercream and feathers are piped buttercream.

                                      

Sad Little Butterflies

 This is what happens to gumpaste butterflies when they are on display at the fair for 13 days in August.  Sad.  The rest of the cake made it  through with no problems.

Antelope Valley Fair Competition Cake

 O.K....here it is.  Four tier wedding cake for the A.V. Fair competition.  As slow as I am...this took a long time.  Lucky it is cake dummies and not real cake.  You can't decorate a cake without any mishaps...while putting on the flower tree, I broke a petal off of one of the flowers way at the top...did a quick patch with some royal icing and said a little prayer that it stays until after judging.  I did such a bad job of putting the fondant on the bottom tier that I put on the medallions...not the original plan.  I think it was ment to be because I love the way the medallions look.   All in all, I like the way it turned out...lets see what the judges have to say.   

it is very pink

butterfly...wings and body wired together separately

top tier needed something so took left-over flowers and made just a little something and added letters at last minute...looks much better

lace medalions cut from two separate cutters

lacy tier components cut from the same cutter set as the medalions

UPDATE:   Won Best of Show