KA-CHOW!!!

What comes before thunder? That's right Lightning. Lightning McQueen that is. This week, aside from several yummy cupcake orders, I also had the pleasure of creating a Car's cake for a little man who is turning 3. Benson loves Cars, Toy Story, and Angry Birds so the cake possibilities were endless.  However at the top of his list for birthday cakes were Lightning McQueen and Tow-Mater. Having already tried a Mater cake last summer I thought I would give Lightning a try. And I have to say I am quite please with the way it turned out. (Not that I didn't have my moments of doubt with this one....)

For a simplified version of Julie's toy I think he turned out awesome.

The both the car and the base are chocolate cake with vanilla icing.

The road is brown sugar and the grass is tinted vanilla icing. I may have to do some stretches for my wrist and forearm after doing the grass. Time consuming but so fun! 

Lightning is covered in homemade fondant (which is where my troubles began this time) and has both modelling chocolate and fondant accents.

That tail is solid fondant (I am praying it stays in one piece until Benson at least sees it!)

What did I learn this week? Well it really just hit home something I already knew.... 

Buy red fondant. 

Don't make it yourself. 

You see in order to get a really good red colour you need to do 2 things: 1. READ THE LABEL ON THE BOTTLE or at least make a test patch before you tint the whole thing. 2. Dump the whole bottle of red colour in and use 'no taste' red. 

I did the second one of these. Sadly the first colour I added was actually a burgundy colour that I must have stuck the wrong lid on at some point.  I then madly tried to back pedal and fix the problem with red. The colour was pretty dark when I finished but not too far off. I actually think the burgundy colour helped make the red really solid.  However adding that much colour to anything will mess it up and my perfect fondant was no longer perfect. All I could do was pray that it still had enough elasticity to cover the cake with out crumbling. We more or less made it. There were a number of cracks that I was able to fix so the overall effect was positive.

On a happier note I also made a new friend. Cornstarch. I have been a die hard icing sugar fan for rolling out my fondant for several years now. I am no longer a fan. I have dumped you, sticky icing sugar, and am now in a relationship with cornstarch. I discovered that at least for MMF it makes a lovely slippy surface and buffs out much easier. WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TELL ME THIS YEARS AGO???? Sigh... Live and learn.

And that is enough ranting for today. I hoped you enjoy the pictures of Lightning. I hope Benson, a fabulous little man, has a great birthday and I am thrilled that Amy asked me to be a part of it.

Take care!

Sandy

Summer Maddness!

Hello everyone!
Sorry for the long break between posts. I was out of my province of Alberta for 3 weeks camping with my smalls.  It was a wonderful break from work and the usual routine. While I was gone my biggest small turned 5. And since we were camping and she had already had her birthday party I improvised the best I could.... I made her a cake out of a box, covered it with a can of icing and then loaded the whole thing with sprinkles.

She was thrilled just to get a second cake!! And the fact that she lived off of burgers and ice cream for 4 weeks...

Once I was back I had a few cake orders to make, but was without my camera so didn't get a whole bunch of photos using the old cell phone camera. In fact for Amber and Trent's wedding cake I didn't get a decent photo to post!

The first cake back from holidays was for one of my most treasured people in the whole world, Lindy. It was Lindy's birthday and her hubby Brent wanted to throw her a party. I called dibs on the cake!

Lindy loves pretty girly things. She is also AMAZING at sewing (and one of the best mom's out there!). Since she started her own business creating headbands this year I knew I had to do something along the lines of fabric. And then make it pretty colours.

This was my first attempt at making a ruffle cake. I may or may not do one again.... It took me hours longer than I thought it would to make all the ruffles and it was super hot in my little kitchen so I had a hard time getting the ruffles to do what I wanted them to. However in the end it looked pretty to me and Lindy loved it.

The cake itself was vanilla (my personal favorite since Lindy doesn't have a favorite) with pink fresh raspberry butter cream icing. It was three layers and giant! 

The next cake on was for Amber and Trent's wedding. This awesome couple had beautiful colours of green, purple and orange. The request was for cupcakes and a 2 tiered cake. The cupcakes were chocolate and vanilla, half purple with orange daisies and half orange with purple daisies. The cake was 2 tiers, one chocolate, one vanilla iced with white butter cream. On the tiers were cookies that said: JUST MARRIED and hearts. The cookies were my homemade oreo recipe!

Here is one of the orange cupcake with purple flower.

And the purple cupcake with orange flower.

Did I mention that they asked for 100 cupcakes? I loved the tower of cupcakes and the fact that for 3 days Amber and Trent's wedding took over my kitchen, both of my fridges, my dinning room and even part of my sewing room in the basement! It was wedding madness and I loved every minute. Even when the cookies broke when I was assembling the cake and I had to rush to make new ones. My only frustration is once icing sets you can't get it to go back if you mess with it. So sadly the cake had cookie crumbs from the broken cookies on it. SIGH. You can't win them all!

I have a number of orders coming up that I will post as they come along. First up is Benson's 3rd birthday!

Hope everyone is having an amazing summer!

Take care!