Birthday Cake!

Several weeks before my birthday my mom called me up and told me they wanted to host a birthday party for me, but that I have to make my own cake. While she was only kidding, I took the offer seriously and started doing my research on cakes - more importantly, butterfly cakes. And now all can see the result! Ta da!

I made the butterfly by taking a round cake, cutting it in half, then set the cut edges away from each other. All it took from there were some subtle notches out of the side, and suddenly I had wings (or at least my cake did). To top it all of, my mom bought some twizzlers for antennas.

After I finished with the cake, there was plenty of frosting left over. So I started decorating my mom's kitchen counters. Needless to say, it wasn't long until I got into trouble. What is a girl to do? Decorate herself! P.S. You really can get away with a lot on your birthday...

Confection Creations

For Christmas my parents enrolled me into a cake decorating class. Here are some samples of my confection creations.

The first class was pretty basic. The instructor taught us how to frost a first layer, which she refers to as the "crumb" layer. Let that layer stand for a few minutes, and then put on another layer which will be smoother and crumb free. She also showed us how to add texture to the frosting by smoothing a paper towel over the surface. Check out the close-up to see the detail.

This second cake I made over a weekend. . .I'm not sure why. For the flowers, I drew them on with a tip, then flattened it out to make the petals smooth. I then outlined the petals to bring out a bit of a 3D affect.

The frog cake was my creation this week. Our instructor taught us how to use rice paper to draw the image you want to create, then you frost over the drawing. Within a day, the rice paper disolves into the frosting, and wah-lah, you suddenly look like a drawing super star.