Happy 70th Anniversay!

Today my Grandparents celebrate their 70th wedding anniversary.  70 years!!  Simply amazing.  For all intents and purposes, these two people are my only set of grandparents.  And what an amazing role models they are!  5 kids, 12 grand kids and 12 great grand babies, they have experienced it all.  I have been so blessed to have such models of unconditional love, kindness, patience, tenacity,  and perseverance from these two exceptional people.  I am a luck girl.  My girls are also incredibly lucky, that at 11 and 12 years old,  they have had the time to get to know their great grandparents on such an intimate level.  Not many kids have this opportunity. 

In honor of their 70th anniversary, I will share with you wedding cakes, grooms cakes, and wedding favor cookies.  I haven't done many, but have had fun with the ones that I have had the opportunity to do.  Hopefully, I will have many more to come.   

I will also share of picture of the two amazing people that inspired me to get on and blog today.

Here they are.  :)  70 years ago and today.  These two people me so much to me and my family. 


 
 

Here are a few of my creations:
 


This is the photographers photo of the very first wedding cake I ever did.



This is my photo.  This cake was done for a couple of our best friends.

 


This is the grooms cake for the very first wedding cake I ever did. I am so glad I was able to do it, and I learned so much this weekend.  So did my husband.  These cakes were completed in our hotel room 2 hours away from home. 

 


I wrote a whole blog entry about his cake.  This was a special one.



This is my most recent wedding cake.  I had the opportunity to make this one for one of my former students.  It's so neat to see them grow up.

 

This wedding cake was done for a small rustic country wedding.  Left is what I made, right is after the addition of flowers.


 

 Here are a couple of grooms cakes:

 





 

I made this sweet cake for a couple celebrating 61 years together. 

 

 

 
 And lastly, I made 200 of these bad boys for a the wedding of a coworker's son.  I had never really done cookies before.  Before I began, I was a pretty worried.  Once I got started, I was wondering how I was ever going to finish.  By the time I was done, I was hooked!

 

You Are My Sunshine

I had fun matching this cake to the invitations. :)  This cake was lemonade flavored to match the super cute "Sunshine & Lemonade" theme Emily's mom worked so hard to achieve.  I wish I had pics of all the amazing decorations from the party to share with all of you.  Precious. 

 

Paintball Cake

This summer I had an opportunity to make a paintball cake for a young man's 12th birthday.  His mom had some ideas in terms of design, and had one very specific request, she wanted the inside to be camouflaged.  Oooohhhh...that sounds fun.  Here's how I managed to do that.  First things first, bake the cake.  I had to make three batches of cake batter.  Two of the batches were WASC, I just colored one of the olive green, and the third was a chocolate flavor. 

Once the batter was made I had to alternate the batters into the cake pans until all were used and full. 

 

Ready for the oven.

Baked & Leveled.  How cool did they turn out?!?!  I know I was excited!

 

To finish off the cake, I iced in in plain white buttercream, made a target and covered it in "paintball" gumballs.  I was super excited about the final product!  Here it is.  Whatcha think??

 

 



 

 

Super Fun Skittles Cake

In early September I was asked by a friend to make a cake for her daughter's 16th birthday.  Sarah had shown her mom a picture of a cake that looked like a bag of skittles.  I was too excited!  This was going to be a fun one!  Here's how I did it. 

First thing you ask when someone asks for a cake is what flavor?  Her answer..."Skittles Flavor"  Ummm...okey dokey...So what I decided to do was to bake a strawberry cake, and cover it in lemon flavored icing.  YUM!!

Here is the cake.  I rounded the edges and ripped of the corner.

Then I covered it in icing: 

I let that chill for a while.  In the meantime I was rolling out my red fondant to make the bag.  Here it is covered.  I scalloped the edges just like the real bag.

The next part made me REALLY nervous.  I had to make the letter for the name, but I really wanted to make it as perfect as possible.  I made sure to have the real bag close by for reference.

Then I added the rainbow at the top.  What a pain this was, and I still am not completely satisfied with the result, but it was as good as it was going to get.

Originally I was going to use real skittles for the bag and for the candies that were to be spilling out of the bag.  Then my husband suggested that that would look dumb.  Gotta love him, but he was right, so I made them from fondant.  Here's the result:

 

In the end, I had tons of fun with this one.  And Sarah loved it.  She and her friends couldn't believe that it actually tasted like skittles!!  Yay!!





 

Ugly Firetruck

So sometimes you take on a job (or in this case I volunteered for a job) that reminds you that you still have a learn. Yikes! At least the birthday boy and his 3 year old friends liked it. :/ I think, had I used fondant, and given myself a bit more time, it would have turned out so much better!

Valentines Day Cake Ideas

Here are a few ideas for easy valentine cakes and cupcakes: The first were some cupcakes that I had bakes for my daughters class, last minute as usual, so easy was a MUST!
I made this cake quite a few years ago. I really just wanted to practice my basket weaving. :)
I saw a picture of one like this somewhere and though I'd gie it a try. The same size heart cutter is key but it can get to be a bit tricky trying to get the all to fit together just right.

Rainbow Wedding Cake

Last summer my mother-in-law, and her partner , took a trip to Cape Cod and were wed. They had a reception planned for October to celebrate here at home with their family and friends. Of course, I signed up to make the cake, and much to my delight, I was given free reign on the design of the cake. I wasn't sure if I needed to go traditional, in design, or something completely off the wall, after all the reception was a 70's themed costume party. :) But what I did know is I wanted to completely surprise them, and I knew I needed to incorporate the rainbow in somehow. Here's what I ended up with: A four tier (4 in, 6in, 8in, 10in) covered in buttercream, decorated with fondant circles.

I think they really like the cake. But maybe weren't so blown away with the "traditional" wedding cake appearance. Although, I did try do go more mod in design, it did look very traditional. They were happy, but not blown away.............yet. :) Here's what I did to knock their socks off............

Here are only four of the 24 layers of cake I baked for this cake. 4 tiers, 6 layers per tier.

Leveling....


Each tier got filled with my traditional buttercream icing, all 6 layers. Then crumb coated.Each tier got filled with my traditional buttercream icing, all 6 layers. Then crumb coated.

After icing and smoothing, the buttercream, I attached fondant circles to the out side of each tier.

The fondant circles were dried, sprayed with shimmer, and cut in various sizes. Here is a close up of circles:

Random pattern:

Tiers waiting to be stacked:

My husband and I were the only ones who knew what the inside looked like, and I was like a little kid trying to hold it in, because I knew how much they were going to like it. And lets face it, I do this to see the look on the faces of the recipients, it makes me feel good to see how excited someone can get over a cake that you have made for them. But alas, I had to wait, and wait, and wait.....

Finally, it was time to cut the cake. YAY!!! Here's is what they saw first...OMGeeee.

What one whole tier looked like cut...........

And what each piece looked like!

The ladies were thrilled, soooo very excited, and blown away but what I had made for them. Congratulations Mom and Missy Vet. We love y'all !