Elmo Birthday Cake

I wanted to make a birthday cake for my niece's 2nd birthday and her mom told me that she's into Elmo and Barney.  I'm not very partial to Barney so I decided to make an Elmo cake.  Her mom also wanted to stay away from too much food coloring so the cake is carrot cake with buttercream frosting; I also made and placed the decorations in a way so they could be easily taken off.  Since my niece is turning 2 and won't be a baby much longer, I made a "baby Elmo" cake topper.

Instead of rimming the bottom of the cake completely with fondant, I sporadically grouped fondant balls (so they can be easily taken off).

Right view:

Left view: 

Aerial view:  The letters were cut out of a mixture of fondant and gum paste and I surrounded each letter with sugar confetti (I put them on one at a time with tweezers).  I thought the mosaic effect of the confetti was pretty cool!

Sesame Street sign: I used yellow sprinkles to create the sign's border.

One more picture:

 HAPPY BIRTHDAY ADDY!!!

Brave Cake Truffles

These "Brave" cake truffles from the Scotland Highlands were for a 9-yr old's family birthday party.  Her mom basically asked me to create something for her daughter and mentioned that her daughter really wanted to see "Brave" for her birthday.  I wavered between making "Brave" cake pops or cake truffles, but due to the design, I settled on cake truffles.

The design of the two dozen "Brave" cake truffles include Melinda, a target & arrow, Eleanor's crown, three bears, and gold leaves with yellow pearls.  The butter and chocolate cake truffles were first covered with blue candy melt and then covered with a piece of blue fondant to achieve a smooth finish.  All of the decorations were hand-molded from fondant with the exception of the leaves and flowers; I used a cutter.

Close ups:

Aerial view:

Packaged and ready to go!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!

Perry the Platypus Cake Truffles

These Perry the Platypus cake balls were made to celebrate the launch of Disney's "Agent P Strikes Back" online game.  As part of my research for this project, I ended up playing several minutes of the game which included collecting coins in the shape of platypus feet and battling robots; it's quite a cute game!

Here's a link to the game:  http://disney.com/agentp
This URL also works on mobile Safari/Chrome browsers too!

Blue and yellow candy melt were mixed to match Perry's turquoise color.  I came up with using a little star-shaped fondant cutter for the feet and a Rolo candy on top of a circle of fondant for the detective hat.  I mixed my own orange and brown fondant since I usually only have a few colors on hand (primary colors, white, and black).  The hats were allowed to dry overnight before I attached them to Perry's head with a dab of candy melt.

I sometimes delay putting eyes on my creations due to the discomfort factor of having so many pairs of eyes staring at me...it's a bit disarming.  Makes you wonder what the guy in the lower left-hand corner is looking at.

This brigade of partially finished Agent P's made me a little nervous when I went to bed around midnight; I kept wondering what mischief they might be up to downstairs.

Perry's tails were hand-molded and detailed.  All the vanilla Perry's have straight tails and all the chocolate Perry's have slanted tails.  For the final detail, each detective hat was rimmed with black "ribbon" making Perry an official cake agent.

Aerial view for Agent P's different expressions:

Agent P's packaged and ready for their next assignment: 

Estimated time for this mission: 7 hours.

For the Perry fans out there, there's also Disney's iPad/phone app puzzler game called "Where's My Perry?" modeled after "Where's My Water?"  It's Disney's number one phone app right now, and I downloaded it this morning and it's really fun!

CONGRATS TO THE DISNEY TEAM THAT WORKED SO HARD ON THIS PROJECT!!

Butterfly Garden Cake Pops

What else is more fitting then butterflies and daisies for a 7 year old's birthday?  I was asked Wednesday to create a cake pops gift for Sunday; a bit of a rush order, but tons of fun nevertheless.  The birthday girl's grandmother wanted lots of colors on the cake pops so I made various-sized butterflies out of different colors.  All of the butterflies were covered with shimmering pixie dust.  The yellow cake pops are chocolate on the inside, and the butterfly cupcake pops are delicious butter cake.  I got lucky and found the matching butterfly and daisy basket AFTER I already made all the cake pops!

  

 Side view:

  

Ariel view:

A different arrangement I put together at home:

Ready for delivery later today!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANNIKA!!!

Custom Dog Cake Pops

A friend asked me to make cake pops of their two dogs for her husband's birthday; six cake pops of Alfie and six of Juno.  They are all chocolate cake on the inside.

Here are the real Alfie and Juno:

Both dogs had amber irises, so I gave the cake pop version of Alfie and Juno amber irises too.  You can see the color better in Alfie's picture below.  For Alfie's scruffy look, I meticulously dipped a toothpick into the candy melt and added "fur" strand by strand.  I even made sure to copy the direction that Alfie's fur grew!

I also made nostrils for all their noses so they could smell better:

 Here they are packed and ready to go!  When my friend came to pick them up, she said that the cake pop Alfie has the same expression as the real Alfie.  I hope they enjoy the cake pops, but I'm wondering if it'll be hard to take that first bite!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DARREN!

Rubber Ducky Cake Pops

On Sunday we went to a cousin's son's 100th day celebration and I decided to make some cake pops using a different butter cake recipe.  I went with the classic rubber ducky design and mixed in some blue sugar crystal cake pops.  I had meant to add some sugar pearls (as bubbles) to the rubber ducky cake pops, but I ran out of time so I had to be content with what I had.  Thankfully, everyone thought the cake pops were cute and delicious, and someone even said that the rubber ducks look like baby Brandon!

HAPPY 100TH DAY BRANDON!!!

Not-So-Pink Baby Shower

For my good friend's baby shower, earthy and not-so-pink were the color scheme.  The center pieces for the baby shower were glass bowls filled with a mossy bottom, and inside them were Bambi and fawn figurines and red mushrooms with white polka-dots.  The favors were almost mini-versions of the centerpieces with Bambi favor tags, so I really wanted to keep with the style.  However, I didn't want the treats to look too washed out so I went with a combination of the baby's bedspread and the shower's decorations.

In addition to creating red mushrooms with white polka-dots, I made beige cake balls and dotted them to represent Bambi cake pops.  Because I always picture Bambi poking his head into flowers and smelling them, I created multi-layered flowers in yellow and white with candy pearl centers.  The pink cake pops were actually dipped in beige candy melt first and then capped with pale pink so the overall effect wouldn't be too pink.

When I finished, I displayed the treats in a woodsy basket I had saved from a wedding.

Here is a close-up of the stitching details on the butterfly wings.  These butterfly and leaf designs were from the baby's bedspread, and the white dots were sprinkles that I placed on the leaves and the wings one at a time with food tweezers.  :)

One final picture:

Welcome to this world, baby Serena!!!

Butterfly Birthday Cupcake Cake Pops

What a tongue twister.....these fluttery cake pops were for a special little girl's sixth birthday party.  Their garage was turned into a dance studio (disco ball and all) where an instructor taught the girls various dances (what a cute idea).  The family already had a Tinkerbell cake, so I decided to make whimsical cake pops.

 For these butter cake flavored cake pops, I used a cupcake mold to achieve the shape.  I first dipped the bottom into chocolate candy melt, and when it dried, I dipped the top into pale pink candy melt.

Here they are before any embellishments: 

I needed to "jazz" them up so I dusted each cupcake with pink shimmer dust (look closely):

They still weren't jazzy enough for me so I added lavender sugar sprinkles:

Next, I marbleized pink fondant, stamped out butterflies, and shaped the wings.

Once the butterflies were allowed to set, I gave each butterfly a white sugar-pearl head.  All the butterflies also received a coating of glimmering pixie dust:

I attached the butterflies to the cake pops using pink candy melt and arranged all of them in a wooden basket with a bright pink bow.

And since I had one butterfly left, I placed it in the middle of the bow.

I really just wanted the butterflies to be able to fly away on their own.....

Butterflies drink nectar, but nectar comes from flowers, so I add a ring of pink and yellow orchids around the outside of the cupcake bouquet.  When I showed up to deliver the butterfly cake pop basket, all the young girls swarmed me.  I was so happy to see their delighted faces since I don't usually don't get to see the reactions!  :D

HAPPY BIRTHDAY IVY!!!

Winter Penguins

A friend and I made these cozy little penguins for fun...the holidays are always an excuse to make something!  We decided to dip them in ice blue since we didn't have enough black candy melt, and I thought they turned out pretty adorable.  Each penguin was warmed up with a scarf, earmuffs, or a beanie.  The scarves were surprisingly the most difficult to make because the long strand of fondant kept cracking.  All the penguins are butter cake on the inside.

Here's a picture with a funny effect; the penguins look like they have blue eyes in this one.  Brrrr........

We packed some of the penguins away in their igloo for house-to-house transfer, and apparently, one of the "naked" penguins was immediately eaten upon arrival!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!