Pam's - - th Birthday Cake

To protect the innocent, I did not include her age.

Pam at work has the same birthday as Art. I told her I wanted to make her a cake, and she got really excited. She said she liked strawberry cake, and I happened to have a box of it at home.

Cake Details:
Duncan Hines Strawberry Supreme cake mix
Frozen, unsweetened strawberries.
Vanilla Buttercream frosting.

I thawed the berries in water, then sliced them. I put a VERY thin layer of icing on the inside, and put all the berries on there. It was a thin layer, but just enough berry to get a pop of the flavor in your mouth.

I decorated it with violet-tinted thin-consistency icing, which wasn't my best work, but nobody would care because I made ROSES! I made 7 roses using a little bit of violet and lots of pink to make a nice deep pink color. I threw in a few light green leaves too.



:) She loved it. She said she had a cake that was almost exactly like it when she was 7 years old. The same color of purple and everything. That made it much more special, and I was glad I was able to make it for her because I knew it was appreciated. :)

Happy Birthday, Pame-lama-ding-dong!

Art's 33rd Birthday Cake

We all know that Art likes pirates and anything buccaneers-ey. So for his birthday this year, his parents and my mom came over to the house and we all wore Bucs jerseys and watched the game with him. Mom made iced tea which was gone before the sun went down. For dinner we had a huge salad bar with ALL the toppings you could imagine, and chicken wings (tequila-lime and buffalo). For dessert, I made him a cake. Well, I decorated it. Mom bought the cake mix, his mom made the cake, and I decorated it.

And so, we all know I'm kind of a control freak. His mom made the cake as if she were pouring it into a bundt pan or something, so she totally over-beat it. The taste was really good, but the shape wasn't really uniform like I would have for decorating. It actually looked a little like a mushroom. So I just leveled the top, and decorated it as-is.





As you can see (by the fake gang sign showing he's 33... and yes, there are that many candles on the cake!), he liked his cake. It was yellow, no filling, with vanilla buttercream frosting. There was only a little bit leftover, so I gave it to Phil who tore it up by himself. :)

Happy Birthday babe!!!

Jesus Pitones' 67th Birthday Cake

The future father-in-law's birthday was on August 14th. We went to La Jolla Shores with most of Art's family and extended family for his annual birthday picnic, and the next day Art bbqed some kabobs and I made his birthday cake and card.

This is the card I made for him. I used a Jolee's Boutique embellishment set and some curly letters I found on clearance at Michael's a few months back. I used an upside-down I for the exclamation points.
I made this cake because Art's dad is always working on something and building stuff. So obviously my inspiration was a tape measure...

Vanilla cake mix w/vanilla buttercream frosting.

Used golden yellow coloring for the base color, black for the black and grey parts, and brown for the handle of the hammer. Where the 12 and 1 are near each other, the spacing isn't so great but everywhere else it happened to look pretty even. I just eyeballed the spacing. I put small stars around the bottom.

Art's mom was VERY impressed with the cake as were his tias. They watched me make it to see how I leveled, torted, and iced the cake. They watched how I decorated it as well and I told them about the Michael's classes. Since they just got a Michael's in the valley, I told them they should take the class.

ANYWHOO.... that's that cake. :) The more I decorate cakes, the more I love doing it. :)

Wilton Cake Decorating, Class 4

Tonight was our last cake decorating class for Course 1. We're probably not taking Course 2 unless we can find one that is on a Friday or Saturday night.

We did the Wilton Rose (tips 12 and 104) and learned leaves, a bow, and the sweet pea too.

Cake Details:
Spice Cake
Vanilla Buttercream Frosting (3/4 tsp vanilla, 1/4 butter)
The middle layer had a thin layer of frosting, and some Pampered Chef Sweet Cinnamon Sprinkle
Shell border on bottom w/tip 21; dots with tip 3.

We finished the class finally! It was worth the practicing.... but the classes definitely moved too slow for us.Me and mom posing with our proof-of-skill :)

Wilton Cake Decorating, Class 3

For Class 3 we had to make a cake with yellow on the sides and white on top. We also learned step 2 of the Wilton rose (even though mom and I went on to practice the rest of it because we got bored of waiting for the lady to move on), shell borders, and dots.

I never follow color-related instructions. Why would I? So I made mine with blue on the sides and green on top. I had clowns that were teal. I wasn't going to do the clowns because I just thought they were stupid. BUT I did it anyways. Here is how it turned out:

(p.s. it took about 10 tries to get this stupid picture uploaded on here since I'm an internet pirate and steal wireless from my neighbors! lol)

CAKE DETAILS:
Strawberry Cake
Vanilla Buttercream Icing (3/4 tsp vanilla, 1/4 tsp butter flavoring)

I used Royal Blue coloring for the sides, and Kelly Green for the top (doesn't look too Kelly though, oh well).
The borders are teal, done with the leftover from the clowns.
Pink dots are same as the details on the clown.
The Clowns were done with tip 21, dots with tip 3.

I don't know how likely it is that I will use those clown head again, they're kind of creepy, but I'll hold on to them just in case someone wants a creepy clown cake again.

Mom's cake turned out cute... she put balloons on hers, with cute little clowns that reminded me of Julian and Gabi. One was green, the other Yellow.

I don't know if I will miss taking the class... I think mom and I are going to get together to learn Course 2 things so we can do it without having to pay or go on their schedule.

Frisbee Golf

I made another cake this weekend, just for fun, for family dinner's dessert. The theme of the cake was based on the Evite Jeni sent out.

We played frisbee golf (which, it turns out, makes your whole body throb in pain hours after you're finished losing, from your chest to your fingertips), and the winner's name was going to be written on the cake.

It was definitely fun, it was just tiring because we were walking SO much more than I thought we would. Art got hit in both ankles by frisbees too.

SO here's the cake before we played:So we played, and Carisa won (if you doubled her score, since we were playing teams and she was playing alone). OJ won singles.
So this is what happened:

Carisa said to put OJ on there too... after I wrote her name (it was kind of sloppy though, my arms were hurting from frisbee golfing). So I added OJ in there on the side.

I like making cakes even more now. :D

CAKE DETAILS:
Vanilla Cake
Vanilla buttercream frosting (3/4 tsp vanilla flavoring, 1/4 tsp butter flavoring)
Torted the cake, put a thin layer of the thin buttercream frosting on the middle, and a layer of thawed, sliced strawberries.

I used a #3 tip to freehand draw the flamingo in pink, then used my small star tip (I think it was #12) to fill it in with mini-stars. then I used #3 to draw the legs, beak, wing, and eye on the flamingo. The stars on the bottom were done with a larger star tip, and the dots with the same #3 grey.

When we cut into it, the cake was REALLY moist, and Art & Eli were saying it reminded them of tres leches cake (ew). I just thought it was moist and tasty. I might make a blueberry cake next. :D

First Cake

I finished my first cake last night. We made a rainbow cake, which was blue with a star patterned rainbow on top. It had a star border and ugly clouds.

We got to the class and used the demo table because the room was packed. So next week we're getting there early so we can claim that table again, it was perfect. I picked up the practice techniques quickly, which was great because I was worried that I wouldn't do so well on the writing and the stars (which is what we practiced).
We did a piping gel transfer of the rainbow pattern on the cake that we brought with us, pre-iced with thin consistency blue buttercream icing (nice and crusty). All we got around to was drawing out the lines of the rainbow with our tip #3. I was disappointed because I thought we'd have more time, but I think our instructor just moves slowly so that EVERYONE understands what they're doing. That's great, except that my mom and I are quick learners and want to get down to business!

I brought it home and finished it right away, which only took about 10 minutes. I accidentally made my star border too small, but that's ok because it still looks nice.

So, here's my first cake!So that is the cake. But then, I remembered that Art wanted the cake to be for him... so I went and used my thin icing which had some piping gel mixed in, and wrote a little message on the cake for him. I filled in the heart with leftover red from the rainbow.
I'm really proud of my happy little cake. It's actually not little at all:

CAKE DETAILS:
*yellow cake mix baked in a 3" deep, 8" pan. Baked it with some homemade even-bake strips around it so it came all the way to the top. Leveled it, then torted it. Filled with Almond cake filling (found a can of it at Albertsons, it was weird though because the flavors available were kind of grody).
*Buttercream icing was made with 1/2 tsp of almond flavoring, 1/4 tsp butter flavoring, 1/4 tsp vanilla flavoring. It was REALLY almondy. Mom hated the smell of it in class. Next time I think I'm going to make it more buttery flavored with a little vanilla.

Cutting into it tonight, hopefully it tastes great!

Wilton Cake Decorating, Class 2

Tonight is my second cake decorating class at Michael's with my mom. We're making a rainbow cake, and I feel really limited creatively. I would rather not make a rainbow, but that's what the "teacher" says we have to make. We probably have to write something on there too, but I'm not sure what I want to write. I might just write "Eat Me" or "R2" or something on it.

Tonight I will take a picture of the final product so I can put it on here.