Party cakes - I'm Topsy Turvy

Non-peril & fondant waves cake – pool party

April 17, 2013 by Ashlee · 12 Comments

Ever since I made my sprinkles cake I’ve been DYING to try non-perils (the small round ones). When Computer boy decided on a pool party I decided to go with blue waves for decorating and it translated easily over to the cake!

This was a quick and easy cake to make. I loved the way it ended up looking! And even more important Computer Boy loved it.

For the top teir I decied all white non-perils would be PERFECT! If it was an ocean party I’d play it off as foam! I love love LOVE the way it looks. I want to do an entire multi teir cake in non-perils! How AWESOME would that look?

for the bottom teir I covered it with white fondant, then wrapped it in a slightly blue-ish fondant and hand cut waves. Added more blue – more waves, more blue – more waves and finally more blue – more waves. It made the cake wider at the bottom, not straight up and down on the sides, but I’m digg’n it.

No rhyme or reason to the waves, but I like the craziness of how it all turned out. It ended up matching the party and the labels great!

AND it tasted great, can’t get much better than that, right?

Superhero Birthday Cake

April 4, 2013 by Ashlee · 14 Comments

I love making birthday cakes for little boys, they always pick such fun themes. Lego’s, Avengers, Superheros. But I will say I had a hard time mixing Marvel and DC comic book characters for this cake. But what can you do, little boys are always right…

The mom didn’t want an all fondant cake. So first I frosted every layer in buttercream, then added fondant detail work. It’s not my normal style, but I think it worked out well! We started it off with Captain America’s red white and blue.

moving up the cake we get to Batman! The black buttercream is the hardest to achieve by far. I started with chocoalte buttercream then added black powder food coloring. I’m glad I’m not chaning the diaper of anyone eating this cake, it’s FULL of dye!

And then we have spider man of course!!! I wish I had done the webbing in a grey so the spider stuck out more, but that’s my only regret in this entire cake! Pretty good for me, I usually have quite a few regrets, HA!

And we topped it off with Iron Man! I tried to capture his “glowing” eyes by using blue fondant underneath the gold mask for this top layer! I love the way it all came together and worked out. I think the layers flowed really well and everyone got their little “shout out”!

So, if you were going to pick your top 4 superheros, like this little boy did, what would yours be? Top of my list? Superman

Filed Under: Cakes, Party cakes · Tagged With: buttercream, fondant

Peter Pan Shadows birthday cake

March 18, 2013 by Ashlee · 13 Comments

I love making cakes for people I know and care about. It makes it more fun, knowing the bride/groom, or birthday boy/girl that is going to get it while I’m up all night working on it. So when one of my dearest friends. Jesseca from One Sweet Appetite, asked me to make another cake for her I was THRILLED!

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a Peter Pan party with scenes from the movie cut out of black fondant to look like shadows! I’m in LOVE with how it turned out.

Here is my mock up that I sent to Jesseca for approval before starting. These example tiers are the WRAPS (so the 4 inch tier is represented with 12.5″ wrap) so you can see the front and back as this cake spun so you could see the details on every side!

First I covered the cake with white fondant and using my airbrush gun I painted it with an ombre effect using avacado green (to match the swatch she gave me from the party decor)

then I designed the shadows in photoshop and then cut out the fondant with my silhouette cameo machine (tutorial on how to do that here)

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here is the back you so can see, it’s simpler than the front, but still has some really fun details that complete the “story” on the cake.

The bottom tier is the beginning of our “story” with the iconic flying over London images. Starting with Big Ben (I wanted a 3d effect to the layers so often the details of the cake extend past the tier) with Wendy, John and Michael following Peter and Tink!

Here you can see Peter Pan and Tinkerbell (she was so small some of the details got lost) following the Neverland Star.

And around the rest of the cake more iconic buildings we see. There are of course more rooftops and business in the movie, but I wanted to keep the cake simple, so it didn’t look too messy.

And ending with London Bridge, coming back around to Big Ben!

The second tier starts with John, the Lost Boys and Michael bringing up the rear. Singing “following the leader” of course, can you look at this WITHOUT singing? I dare you!

on their Way to the Indian Encampment! This was actually the hardest silhouette to create. There are barely any images on this full encampment, and the ONE good one I could find had so many tepees it was hard to tell one from another so I simplified it before cutting it out.

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The Birthday Boy loves skull island so it took the front spot on this tier, I enlarged the skull to stand over the height of the tier and I love how it turned out!

But not far behind is Captain Hook with Smee and Tigerlily rowing up! I love Smee…

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And finally Peter tops us off. So many of these images had his arms crossed, so I was thrilled to find one with his arms on his hips so you could see more of his shape!

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There you have it! If you were going to do a movie cake with scenes like this what movie would you pick and what would your favorite scenes be? Or if you were doing Peter Pan what scenes would you have picked out?

Filed Under: Cakes, Party cakes · Tagged With: airbrush, disney, fondant, silhouette machine

Mad Hatter Tea Party birthday cake

March 4, 2013 by Ashlee · 6 Comments

When my cousin told me she wanted to throw a mad hatter tea party for her twins first birthday I was SO excited about it! I haven’t done a topsy turvy cake in a while and mad hatter just SCREAMS topsy turvy! She sent me this pin for color and ideas.

I hand carved each tier, air brushed the color and then hand painted the gold. I used fondant around covered wire for the handles and spout, which I made the day before so they could dry. I made a fondant pocket watch and LEFT IT AT HOME! My heart still aches that that didn’t make it on the cake!

The tea cup was hard simply because of the size, the tiny tiers are always tough because they are so small they don’t weigh much and tend to easily get pushed around.

Carving the teapot was of course the most consuming, I started with a ball for the bottom, and then carved the top. I used ganache to “glue” the layers together and hold the carving in place.

To get some fabric soft look to the hat I used buttercream under the fondant instead of ganache. The only thing I’d change about this tier would be to add another cardboard circle in the middle of the hat to help with the weight distribution. The weight of the super height of this tier lead to some tipping issues.