Fish Cake

Candi called me up and asked me if I would be able to make her a cake for her bosses birthday.  I didn't have any cakes scheduled so I said sure.  Candi said her boss was a fisher and that she was wondering if I could do a fish cake.  And she added that his favorite cake was German Chocolate cake.  Not one to back down from a challenge I said sure.  I had never made the coconut and pecan frosting from a German Chocolate cake before but figured I would be able to figure it out.  I think the filling turned out really good.  Then it was on to the fish.  I hope that I did the blue fish justice.  My favorite part was his eyes and mouth.

The example that I used:


What I ended up with:

Fellowship cake

My neighbor across the street Ann asked me if I could make her a cake for her Christmas fellowship meeting today.  This cake is as diabetic friendly as I can make one of my sweetest things.  I used a reduced sugar chocolate cake mix, sugar free pudding, and fresh fruit.  This cake was chocolate cake with fresh strawberries and strawberry crack filling.

Marissa Cake

One of Cameron's teachers is about to have a baby boy any minute.  So a few weeks ago the other teachers threw her a baby shower and I was lucky enough to make her cake. 





The top cake was chocolate cake with buttercream filling, the middle cake was yellow cake with fresh strawberries and strawberry crack (marshmallowy) filling, and the bottom cake was yellow cake with chocolate truffle filling.

Jack O' Lantern cake

This past weekend Shayne and Andrea had  a Halloween party.  On thier invitation it said to wear a costume and bring a carved pumpkin.  Not being all that good at carving pumpkins I opted for a nontraditional Julie style pumpkin.  I just made mine out of cake and fondant.  Turns out that I was the only one that read that part of the invitation.  So by default I won the pumpkin contest.  This cake was carrot cake with cream cheese filling. 

Pumpkin cake

MacKenzie's school was having a fall festival and asked for cake donations for their cake walk.  So to be a little fancy I decided to make a pumpkin.  The fondant was being difficult so I addes fall leaves to hide the imperfections.

Kaya cake

Kaya's cake was a yellow cake with fresh strawberries and strawberry crack filling.  It was fondated with chocolate fondant.  Both Andrea and Shayne send me texts after they ate the cake proclaiming that this is now their all time favorite flavor cake. 

Erika's cake

One of MacKenzie's friends recently celebrated her 10th birthday and as apart of her gift I made her birthday cake. 










This inspiration for the cake

Raspberry Lemonade Cake

This is my contributions to the "Great Cousin Cake Swap 09".

heart cake

Another cake I made in my class.

Tiki Cake

The lastes "big" cake I have made is the tiki cake. Shayne and Andrea called me to see if I would make them a cake for Shayne's promotion party. The party was a luau so I started searching the internet and found a really cool tiki cake (see the picture) and thought that I could do that. One thing that I wanted to do differently from the picture was to make it 3d. When the time came to make the cake things were going ok until I started on the face details. I started to get really frustrated. I actually texted Andrea and told her that they might be getting a Hawaiian stump cake if I couldn't figure it out. But a little persistence payed off and I was able to get my little tiki man all done. Then I make the base cake to have a water look complete with edible sand. The tiki cake was the butter pecan cake with mocha ganache and the base cake was yellow cake with a new filling pineapple dream filling. This filling isn't "new" but it is the first time I have put it into one of my cakes. By the way the party was Fantastic!!!

Purple birthday cake

My friend Shayne all me and asked me to make a cake for him to take to work for a birthday celebration. This cake is the butter pecan with mocha ganache filling. For a change I did all butter cream and no fondant.

Twilight Cake

I did forget one cake.  For my friend Christy's birthday there was absolutely no question what kind of cake I was going to make.  Christy is head over heals in love with Twilight!!!  So I took inspiration from three of the book covers to make her the perfect little birthday cake.

Mom's cake

So the whole reason I started this cake stuff was ultimately make the cake for my mom's 60th birthday party.  I have been thinking and searching the internet for exactly the right inspiration.  I knew that it was going to have dragonflies on it but it took me a while to figure out the rest.  One thing I did was use MacKenzie?  I had her ask my mom what her favorite color was.  Here is what I finally came up with.  I was very excited that it made the four hour trip north unscathed!!!

Cam's Cake

Everytime I asked Cam what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday the description changed.  Finally toward the end it was a blue and purple cake with strawberries.  No problem that I can handle.  So here is the final product.  Not the fanciest but when asked if it was what he wanted he very happily said "Yes!". 

Jared's Cake

I almost forgot about Jared's cake.  This is what really started the Gymboree birthday cake spree.  Tiffany, one of Cam's teachers, asked me to make her a cake for her husbands surprise party.  She wanted to get a cake with his favorite band Mushroom Head.  I decided to take on the challenge.  Let me start off by saying black fondant is a bitch to work with.  I gets a million marks on it and shows every little smudge.  The face was made with royal icing and left to dry for a week.  I was smart enough to make two full faces because I just knew that when I peeled them off of the wax paper I was going to break at least one pointy tooth.  They I used red piping gel to make the blood and lettering.  Rob was actually very helpful with this cake as he is familiar with this band.

Rob's Cake

I forgot to add Rob's birthday cake into the mix.  Nothing spectacular but I am proud of how even the layers.  It was a chocolate butter cream filling.  Rob isn't a huge sweets person so I stayed small and simple.  I was just proud of how even everything turned out. 

Maya's Cake

Next big cake on my list was Maya's 3rd birthday.  Maya is another of Cameron's friends from school.  Her mom was at Ella's party and came to me right after the party to see if I could make Maya's.  I had to think about it because Maya's birthday is the day after Cameron's but the party was on Cameron's birthday.  I wasn't sure if would have the time to make both Cam's and Maya's cakes.  I decided to go ahead and try.  The cake was a Blue's clues themed cake.  I mad the little house topper out of gum paste and painted the details with royal icing.  Characters on the middle tier are plastic rings.  I am getting good but not that good yet. 

Ella's Cake

One of my first really cakes for hire was one of the mom's from Gymboree.  I had talked with Laurie about my cakes and when it was time for her daughter Ella's 3rd birthday she asked me to do it for her.  I was excited to try my hand at a bigger tiered cake.  For the first time I drew the cake out before.  This is what I came up with.






The finished product.

Chloe's cake

For my friend Christy's daughter Chloe I made a Littlest Pet shop cake.  This is my first and only sculpted cake.  I first drew out the paw shape on poster board and then baked a square cake bigger than the shape and cut it out from there.  The I made patterns for all the paw shapes on the cake.  to finish off the cake I took a few of Chloe's favorite pet shop people and decoated the cake.

The sad thing about this cake was the day of the party Chloe got sick and they had to cancel the party.  I made this cake for a birthday party at a jumpy house where they had invited her whole class.  Lucky for them some of thier family was up visiting so the cake wasn't a total waste but from the size of the cake they were eating for a long time. 

Redskins cake

For my neighbor Ben's birthday I made him this cake.  Ben loves the Washington Redskins so I figured that I would make it the colors of the Redskins.  It was a chocolate cake with a strawberry cheesecake filling.

Basket Cake

My neighbor Ann asked me to make her a cake for her ladies group meeting.  This is what I came up with.

Stars & Circles

Stars and Circle birthday cake

Super Bowl Cake

Super Bowl Cake

Haunted House cake

Here is the cake from Christy & Chris' halloween party.  It was a yellow cake dyed red with lemon green slime filling

Cake Class

So as you all know this whole cake thing started after I took the Wilton cake decorating classes at the local Michael's.  What many of you might not know is that this is not my first try at cake decorating.  Many many years ago after high school I worked in the local grocery store in the deli.  Back then the deli and bakery shared space.  One thing led to another and I started to learn how to do basic cake decorating from the head baker.  That came in handy when they needed a hand or if a customer wanted something done to a cake later in the evening when the bakery staff was gone.  I did also do a few basic cakes from time to time but then I moved on to other things and cake decorating took a back seat.  Recently I was looking for a little something to get me out of the house.  I started looking in to craft classes at Michael's.  Unfortunately Michael's stopped offering their general craft classes leaving only cake decorating.  Rob got me a gift card for Michael's for my birthday I think to pay for all the classes so I decided that it would be fun to get out once a week and do something on my own.  In the beginning I only did the cakes required for class, then I started to take them when we were invited to someone's house for a party and it just seemed to grow from there.  After making them as gifts I made my first "cake for hire" as you will for my friend Chirsty's daughter's birthday (more on that later)  and then it just grew.  I just finished up my fourth paid custom cake and am enjoying what I am doing.  I thought it was better to separate my cakes from my family blog because if someone wanted to see my cakes they don't necessarily want to search through what goofy things the kids have been up to.  So here we are.  It took me forever to come up with a title but I like what I finally chose because my life is filled with the sweetest things no matter if  it is my cakes or my family and friends.  So let me know what you think.  I will try to add all of my cakes so far very soon.