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!!!

La Crosse Teamwork

I was requested to make 25 cake truffles for a high school girls' lacrosse team for an end-of-the-year celebration.  The girls' main team color was blue, so I decided to put white chocolate lacrosse sticks on top of blue cake truffles.  The truffles are a mixture of chocolate and cookies and cream on the inside, and the lacrosse balls were made from fondant.

I was really happy to hear that the girls "LOVED" these sporty treats and enjoyed eating them!  

WAY TO GO GIRLS!!!

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!

Sports Baby Shower

This was a sports-themed baby shower and the client wanted a main cake as well as cake truffles to give away as shower favor.  The bottom tier of the cake was Belgian chocolate covered with chocolate buttercream, and the top layer was red velvet covered white buttercream.  

I started covering the bottom layer with different stripes of brown and blue (two different widths of blue), then covered the entire top tier with a piece of blue fondant before decorating it.  I pretty much had to mix and knead the blue, orange, and brown colors of fondant.

The decorations on top were made of a mixture of white chocolate and fondant.  The baseball cap with a "W" is made of fondant, as is the basketball.  The golf ball and baseball were solid pieces of white chocolate; the red on the baseball is fondant.  For the soccer ball, the base was also a solid piece of white chocolate, but then it was covered by individual pieces of black and white fondant to achieve the soccer pattern.

 For the party favors, I created 35 plain baby blue cake truffles dusted with light blue shimmer (not pictured).  These were cookies and cream...yummy!  I also made 25 baseballs and 10 soccer balls that were butter cake on the inside.  The soccer balls took the longest because I had place each hexagon and pentagon on individually.

I hope everyone had a blast at the baby shower!

WELCOME BABY WIGHT!!!

Golf Ball Cake Truffles

I was asked to create golf balls with a logo as a promotional item for a company, and the only requests were to have a dozen golf balls  in each box and to place them on some type of green background.

For the dimples of the golf balls, I used candy molds.  But even then, I had to dip only one side of a cake ball at a time and make sure I used just the right amount of candy melt (so the molds wouldn't overflow once I placed the cake ball in the mold).  After I attached the two halves together, I chiseled all the way around to get rid of any unsightly seams.

Two days before the pick up date I actually spent four hours trying to figure out what method would work best for putting the logo on.  Initially I made my own stencil of the logo and protected it with mailing tape,  but when I tried to hold it over the golf ball and "color" it in, the result was just a smeared mess.  I tried using royal icing and edible markers (which I really don't like to use to decorate treats) for the stencil, and I even tried piping the logo freehand onto the golf balls.  None were to my satisfaction.  Finally, I remembered I had rice paper and edible ink so I experimented with that, and added a red sprinkle to finish off the logo.

 Each box contained a mixture of three flavors: the golf balls with the red dots were red velvet, orange dots were butter cake, and green dots had chocolate cake inside them.

Below are the golf balls packaged to go to the driving range - that would be interesting, wouldn't it?

I hope these golf balls are a hole-in-one at the office!

Here is one of the Regus golf balls with my own golf balls:

Which one is made of cake?  ;)

Chanel Purse Cake

I've been wanting to make a cake purse for a really long time, so with my friend's 30th birthday right around the corner, I offered to make her one.  Since this was my very first purse cake, my friend found a purse design online and I basically tried to copy it.

I baked layers of cream cheese pound cake, leveled them off, and stacked them on top of each other.  To make the layers stick together, I carefully frosted between each layer with homemade buttercream.  Using a really sharp knife, I then carved the small mountain of cake into the shape of a purse.

All the surfaces of the cake also received a coating of buttercream to seal in the crumbs (I forgot to take a picture!).  After chilling in the fridge for a few hours to harden the coating, I colored and rolled out a large piece of soft pink fondant and covered the cake.

Then I gave each side of the cake diamond details:

Next came the black corner fabric, rolled piping over the two edges of the cake, the Chanel logo, and an extra piece of fabric on top with stitching details for the zipper.

Zipper detailing and the metal rings for the double straps came next; I had to figure out how to give the straps the knotted detail at each metal ring.

Top view of purse straps and zipper detail:

 To finish off the look, I rolled out white fondant and placed it on a cake board.  Such a large piece of fondant is quite difficult to work with , but the wavy effect of the cloth was worth it.  I wanted some different colors in there as well so I made a small bottle of nail polish, and since my friend said she normally uses lip gloss rather than lipstick, I also created a little jar of lip gloss.  And of course, what's Chanel without a string of pearls?

Top view: 

 Side back view:

Other side back view:

 Entire display with fondant lettering on board:

HAPPY 30TH BIRTHDAY JOHANNA!!!

1st Birthday Cake Decorations

This was  my first out-of-state order!  A lady wanted to make a 1st birthday cake for her granddaughter and saw a cake very similar to the cake below.  Even though she had never worked with fondant before, she was willing to make the cake herself but wanted help with the decorations and the cake board.  She found me online and it was really great to work with her!  :)

Below is her picture of the finished cake:

Since she already had the tiara, I ended up making the "1st Birthday Princess Saalaya" sign, the hearts, the flowers, the butterflies, the lilac pearls around the base of the cake, and the cake board.  Everything was pink and lilac, but the pictures make the lilac look a little bluish.  I mixed both the pink and lilac fondant colors.  Once I finished everything, I meticulously packed everything inside jewelry boxes before I packaged everything in a larger box and ended up having to make my own box to mail the cake board.

 Here are the butterflies, hearts, and flowers I placed in the jewelry boxes.  The butterflies have pink shimmer on them and the hearts and flowers were powdered with lilac shimmer.

I rolled the lilac pearls for the base individually, and I definitely underestimated the amount of time it would take me since I wanted every pearl to be smooth and similar in size.  It ended up taking 1 1/2 hrs!

Fondant letters were not as easy as I thought they would be because the letters are so slim and soft and stretch out easily.  I had to redo many of the letters and keep "ironing" out the heart to make sure the heart was large enough to fit all the letters.

For the board, I hand-painted all the butterflies and hearts in edible colors and glued a pretty pink ribbon around the edge.  My client sent me a picture after she put everything together.  I thought everything turned out beautifully!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PRINCESS SAALAYA!

Valentine's Day Cake Pops 2012 - Order NOW!!!

It's that time again when love is in the air!  Express your love with an exclusive collection of delicious handmade Valentine's Day cake truffles (some may call them Valentine's cake pops) - hearts, double hearts, hearts within hearts, XOXO's, and edible glitter will do the trick.  Your sweetheart will love you for it!

ORDER NOW!!!

Please see prices below:

Set 1: Valentine's Day cake truffles (box of 5): $15 + S&H (or you can just pick up the week before)
Set 2: Valentine's Day cake truffles (box of 8): $20 + S&H (or you can just pick up the week before)

Shipping and Handling: If orders are placed one week in advance of Valentine's Day (on or before 2/7), I will ship the order via Priority Mail on Thursday, Feb 9th ($10 for S&H); package will arrive on the 13th or the 14th (I can't control the arrival date).  I can also ship the day before Valentine's Day via Express Mail for the truffles to arrive before 12 noon on Valentine's Day ($35 for S&H).  Sorry - I'm going by post office prices!

Each set will contain an assortment of cake ball flavors: red velvet, chocolate, and butter cake.

A complimentary card will be mailed with the order.  Please email me at dewishesdelights@gmail.com with the quantity you would like of each set of Valentine's truffles.You can pay by PayPal (or personal check if I know you).  :)

Below are samples of the set of 5 and the set of 8.

 HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!!!

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!!!