Strawberry Lemonade

I wasn't sure how many people were going to be at the super bowl bash so in addition to the giant oreo cupcake I also made smaller strawberry lemonade cupcakes. Now don't judge to much, cupcakes are not exactly my forte but my sis-in-law Kim is WAY freaking amazing at cupcakes and makes the best ones EVER (seriously not kidding, the lemon ones are to die for - if you ever want cupcakes let me know and I will get you in touch with her) so I got a few of her recipes. I don't know why I struggle with cupcakes since they are just smaller cakes and I can do cakes, but they came out heavy - yummy, but heavy (I will figure this out though and somehow make good cupcakes). Anywho, the frosting is also a strawberry lemonade frosting; can you tell I love strawberry lemonade? The first batch of frosting was a bit grainy but I got all that figured out on the next batch and they are DELICIOUS! Beanie helped me make the little strawberry lemons that sat on top and then we had little pink sprinkles and yellow lustre dust. YUM!!!

Blaire's oreo cupcake

My sis-in-law Blaire wanted either a giant cupcake or a giant donut for her birthday and since my awesome hubby got me a giant cupcake pan for Christmas that is what we went with. The cake is a chocolate cake with bits of oreo mixed in. The filling inside is buttercream with oreo pieces and then it is covered with marshmallow fondant to make the cupcake liner and buttercream with crushed oreo sprinkles. The candles are made out of fondant.

Cream Puffs, YUMMY!!!

*** Sorry about the lack of posts, I am hoping to start baking and decorating a bit more soon.***

I LOVE cream puffs so I thought it would be fun to play with them a bit and create some fun stuff for the holidays. For Halloween we made pumpkins, for Thanksgiving we made turkeys, and for winter we made snowmen with sculpted caramel noses and sprinkles for the buttons.

Snowman

My mom found these edible snowflakes and wanted to use them for Beanie's birthday so we made a snowman to go with them. Since it was just family and we didn't want a ton of left over cake we just did the head of the snowman. The cake is a white cake, buttercream filling, and marshmallow fondant as well as fondant decorations.

Camryn's 1

For Cami's 1st birthday I guess I couldn't shake my love for the ocean so she got a happy octopus cake complete with undersea creatures (if you look close you can also see the rosy cheeks on the octopus). Beanie helped me form the octopus tentacles out of cereal treats and also formed the fish, starfish, crab, bottom dweller, shells, etc. that adorned the bottom of the cake; there was even a clam with a shiny pearl. The water portion initially gave us some problems but after a 2nd try I think it looked perfect.

Rock A Bye Baby

We had a rocking baby shower for my sister in-law who is having a little boy at the end of the month. It was awesome! My sisters and I made all the decorations, invitations, and deserts for the shower and my mom made her awesome caramel-chocolate pretzels. All I know is that I have some freaking talented siblings. My dad helped me make our rocking cupcake stand made out of old records (so sweet)! Oh, we also made a diaper cake that looked like a guitar.
We made a pregnant Kim complete with her own killer guitar, Beanie helped me make all the cupcake toppers to put on the freshly homemade by Kim cupcakes (yup, we made Kim make her own cupcakes because she is way to awesome and no one else can make them like she does). Can't wait to meet the little rock star!

Kim

8", 10", 12" square tiers stacked slightly offset.
bottom: Styrofoam
middle: White cake, raspberry filling
top: chocolate cake, raspberry filling
marshmallow fondant with a black chocolate buttercream design and white shimmery sugar pearls adorning the diamond design on the bottom tier. handmade fondant calla lilies and leaves.

Brani

Bottom layer: styrofoam
1st & 2nd layers: Chocolate cake with Raspberry filling
vanilla buttercream covered with a marshmallow fondant and decorated with a black chocolate buttercream.
She did have flowers on top as well but the florist hadn't gotten there yet so I didn't get pictures with the flowers.

Natalie

1st and 4th tiers: chocolate cake with bavarian cream filling
2nd and 3rd tiers: white cake with raspberry filling
marshmallow fondant decorated with a chocolate buttercream piping in black and chocolate marshmallow fondants dots also in black.

Special Agent Oso

For Ellie's2nd birthday I gave her the option of a Mickey Mouse cake and an Oso cake which happen to be 2 of her favorite Disney shows; she wanted an Oso cake. Since most people have no idea who Oso is I have attached a picture of him above. I was in a big hurry so it isn't perfect but I think he turned out pretty Oso-ish.

Jazz

Angie wanted to make a cake for her friends birthday who is a BIG Jazz fan so we saw a similar design and decided to do the ball in hoop but replace the little jerseys they had on the base with a big Jazz penant that draped across the hoop.
***Note*** I know the spalding letters are not the right font but it was late and I did this for free or I would have piped it on instead of using fondant cutters, I still like it though.
*** Photography provided by my brother-in-law, more of his work can be seen at Smith pix photography on facebook. He really does a fantastic job with pics of my girls.

Rachael

The first of June I was able to fly to Oregon to make my cousins wedding cake. It was a lot of fun to see her and other family I don't get to see often as well as my good friend Lindsay. I had to fly back early so it was left up to others to stack it on the day of the reception so I never saw it fully put together until the picture.
The cake was a combination of 2 pictures that she liked and a final fourth (top) tier designed by me to flow with the rest of the cake. The bottom tier was fake and the top and third tier were a chocolate cake and raspberry filling while the second tier was white cake and strawberry filling. Overall I was really happy with the outcome of the cake.

Fathers Day

I know this is a lot late, but, for Fathers Day we made each of our husbands a cookie bouquet. Dad got tools, Justin got a BBQ set, Josh got a variety of items, Ryan got sports balls, and since we didn't want to leave Chris out even though he isn't a dad or almost a dad we made him some tires.

madagascar

I wanted to test out a new pan that I got before needing to use it for a wedding cake and my sister wanted to learn a few things so we decided to make this cake which has a few new techniques for me also. It is a white cake with a hint of orange flavoring covered in an orange buttercream and marshmallow fondant. The characters are rice krispy treats covered in fondant.

Cookie Bouquets

I have always wanted to try the cookie bouquet and have been messing around with cookie decorating a little so I made these for a family that moved into the ward area as well as two families that just had babies. They were a lot of fun and I think they turned out really cute. The cookies are sugar cookies covered in Royal icing.

birthday cakes

Since I am on the planning committee I was asked to decorate some birthday cakes for the RS birthday dinner which would be the center pieces of each table. I actually missed the planning meeting where they decided that to help me out they would all make the cakes and bring them over to me if I was able to decorate them in a green, yellow, and purple color scheme. Turns out that is actually more difficult for me since the cakes were not level and even but I was able to make them work with a little carving and patchwork. I was asked to do it about a week before we needed them and got the frosting stuff on Sat so after the girls went to bed I stayed up REALLY late to make all of the gumpaste pieces so that they would harden in time. On Monday everyone brought their cakes over and I had to adjust the designs a little to fit the sizes and shapes but thankfully they all still worked. Since I have 2 little ones 1 of which is curious and have little grabby hands I decided it would be better to get up early on Tuesday and work all day to hopefully finish in time. I did have someone come help watch the girls for the better part of the day and Elliette actually slept in and took a nap (neither of which happen very often) and I had 2 ladies that came and helped which was great but was also a challenge for me to let someone else try to create the vision I had for the cakes and try to teach them how to use fondant in the first place. It was also hard to not go back and straighten some pieces out and fix a few things but overall I think they did a fantastic job, I was pretty happy with the end result and it only took me 12 hours to do all 7 cakes (yeah I am slow)
*** to give some credit: I did get 2 ideas from Collette Peters Cakes to Dream On Book which is a great book if you don't have it and also one from a book called Celebrate with Cake by Lindy Smith.

** I made the bow loops early and didnt match the greens very well so it looks a little off so dont judge to much.