Pug Cake

After the pug cupcakes, I was asked to make a simple pug cake.  My friend's friend has two little black pugs.  One of which recently went through surgery and lost her eye.  I went on a quest to find some pug cakes to inspire me on what to create and I came across this beautiful cake which can be found here http://benditoacucar.blogspot.com/search/label/Pug

What I love most about this cake is the composition in that one of the pugs is not on the cake but on the side and trying to climb making the cake look more interesting. If I had more time I would have loved to have covered this in fondant, but overall I was very happy with the pugs and all their wrinkles.

Eiffel Towers . . . literally

This cake was very simple to make, but when making objects that are very delicate such as royal icing latices of the Eiffel Tower you need to make several in quantity and to allow a lot of dry time.  

This chocolate salted caramel cake with Bacon was for my friend at work Jocelyn, who loves all things Parisian.  So yes, that is a strip of bacon on the top.  The flowers and pearls were nothing new, but this Eiffel Tower idea, I had never done this before. I had originally wanted to make it 3 dimensional, but I didn't have the right "jigs" set up so that it would dry.  So I decided to just go with a simple one dimension image, that I hoped the frosting would hold up. 

The night before I pipped out a total of 4x - Eiffel Towers, two on parchment paper and two on a plastic film. Plastic film worked out the best as it didn't wrinkle like the parchment paper did due to the moisture.  In the morning I began peeling off the paper . . . .. I broke every single tower beyond repair . . . 

I piped exactly two more on the plastic film and brought it to work.  I let it dry for about 6 hours.  At 3pm it was the point of no return  . . 

Eiffel Tower #5 . . I slowly peeled off the backing . . . success.  However, when it came to putting it into the cake . . . I snapped off the leg . .  DOH!

Last chance . . . Eiffel Tower #6 . . . All or Nothing . . . the structure came off the plastic without a hitch and went right onto the cake . . . Unfortunately, with the Eiffel Tower in place, the cake was much taller and the box lid dropped and snapped off the tip! 

Corgi Meetup

So my neighbor in the office LOVES Corgis and her birthday was coming up

Therefore the theme of her cake was going to be a Corgi meet up in the park.  So the idea was to make a number of different corgi's each with their own unique style.  The corgi's didn't quite come out the way I wanted them too, because I'm not sure off hand you know they are supposed to be corgis. However, you know they are dogs. My favorite is the high fashion corgi with her big bug eye sunglasses, hat and pearls

Joseph 1st Birthday - Cat and the Hat themed

Melissa and Russell's baby just turned one and they decided to throw a birthday party themed around the Cat and the Hat.

We decided that we were going to make a small six inch cake and then serve sheet cake to keep it simple.  However, when I started to look for inspiration I came across a beautiful cake by Andrea's Sweets that I decided to replicate but at a smaller scale. Additionally, I LOVE topsy turvy cakes and I have yet to do one.  This cake is the closest that I've gotten to.  For perspective, the base layer is a 6 inch cake, with the second being 4 inches.  The additional cat hat was made out of rice crispy treats and covered in fondant.

You'll see that in this next picture that the cake started sinking in.  This was partly due to the day being EXTREMELY hotter than normal.  I believe the weather was in the 100s where normally in the bay area it is in the low 80s!  And possible due to the pressure placed on the cake when positioning the cat

To quickly recap the process, my partner in cakes Jayson baked and frosted all the cakes, allowing me to focus on the decorations.  I started off with sculpting the main focal points being the cat, the fish in the bowl and then the giant hat.  Then I shifted and started working on the board and the lettering.  During this time, he helped out making the red and white balls bordering the second tier.  The next morning, I began assembling the cake.  I wasn't sure how I was going to make the snowcaps, but in the end I used rolled fondant and covered the top, and then tucked in the excess to make the snow ploughs.

I love themed cakes.  My favorite part about this cake was the Cat's hat and fishbowl with the water spilling out.  When it cake to making this cake, nothing had to be perfect, which is the beauty of topsy turvy cartoony cakes.  

Lorraine's Birthday Cupcakes

For Lorraine's birthday we took her out to dinner and rinks at Trick Dog.  The food was delicious, but just know they do not do desserts, however based on the menu now it looks like they do ice cream.  On this day it worked out perfectly because we had special cupcakes of Lorraine that we surprised her with

This is Marc trying to distract Lorraine so we can get the cupcakes into the kitchen's fridge.

Eating birthday tulips . . . also placing a penny into the vase of water hold your tulips helps to keep them upright

Our first round of drinks for the night.  Trick Dog is known for their drinks.  Their cocktail/drink menu is laid out in a paint swatch book

Here's the close up of the cupcakes.  I was really pleased with the roses on these cupcakes.  The petals have a lot of texture and ruffling

Celeste's Birthday Cake

Simple cake for my good friend Celeste's birthday dinner

St. Patty's Cupcakes for Dad

My Dad's birthday is Saint Patricks day, so this year I thought I would make him some cupcakes to celebrate. Happy Birthday Pops!!

Eat up Mom and Dad!!!

Monkeying around with Bananas

My friend's daughter Malia was turning one.  Gabe told me that he called his Malia his little monkey which was the theme/inspiration for this cake.  

There are a ton of fun ideas that we came across.  I started off making these little bananas, but after about 20 of them it started to get a little tedious! I started off by making closed bananas and with scissors just cut it half way and then split one of the halves to create the peeled banana. To make it not just a peel, I then added a piece that was 1/2 or 1/3 of a full banana. To make them more realistic, spots were added.

In addition to the cake, we also made four dozen cupcakes.  They were then topped with bananas and these monkey faces.  My friends really loved the eyelashes.

The monkey faces were placed vertically into the cupcakes with two additional circles placed in as hands to make them look like they were peaking over the frosting.

Tea Party Cupcakes

My friend's mom was throwing a tea party that was going to be hat themed . . so what better cupcakes toppers then hats?  Sassy Sweets made these cupcakes first and I mimicked them for my friend. Thanks Sassy Sweets for the idea! Check out her blog for more fun cakes!

Pug Love

One of my oldest and dearest friends Marc asked me to make cupcakes for his sister's birthday as he wanted to do something extra special for her this year.  After discovering my side hobby of decorated bake goods, he challenged me with the idea of making pug cupcakes.  Maestro is their family pug who has stolen their hearts.  Below is a picture of Rina (holding the pug cupcake) and Maestro.

As always, I went onto Pinterest and found these cute guys.  These are wedding cake toppers made by Bonjour Poupette.  In addition to pugs she make a lot of other animals so check out her Etsy store. 

Source: etsy.com via Katelyn on Pinterest

Modifying Bonjour Poupette's design, I decided to just utilize the pug faces for my cupcakes.  To make the eyes shiny, water was added to the fondant by taking a paint brush and just glazing over the eyes.

This was going to be a small custom order of 9 cupcakes.  To add variety, I like to alternate cupcake designs so I added some flowers to keep the theme more feminine.

And finally here is a close up of the pug on the cupcake.

Do you have the fever? Bieber Fever?

So I knew that Kate's birthday was around the corner AND we all know she loves Justin Bieber.  She recently also finally was able to get tickets to his concert this summer at the staples center. Apparently these tickets are ridiculously hard to get as they usually sell out in like 14 seconds.

So I went onto Pinterest to so some research on ideas to use. I came across this iconic cupcake. Genius right?

Source: ultrainteresting.com via annissa on Pinterest

If you were paying attention during Bieber Fever you would recall the hair obsession and how he used to do a little shake to flip his hair. So to tie it in for Kate's birthday . . what other way but to do Kate's hair. Note Kate is a red head, but her hair is not extremely red . . I found this really cute site that does an amazing job showing how to cut faces and hair check it out!

Source: bakehappy.blogspot.com via Cari on Pinterest

Also the recipe for this cupcake is from "canyoustayfordinner.com." In the second picture you will see how white her white cupcake recipe really is.

Source: canyoustayfordinner.com via Cari on Pinterest

And now . . . here is the final product.  Kate hearts Justin Bieber!

I decided to not do faces, partly because I didn't quite now what color Kate's eyes were.  Given that Justin Bieber's hair is so icon and Kate is a red head, I think the hair was enough.

Happy Birthday Kate!! I hope you loved these cupcakes.