Rylee's Birthday Cake!

Some nice people in my office said they heard I made cakes and asked if I would make their daughter, Rylee's, 10th birthday cake. I didn't think before saying "Absolutely I will!" Then I thought for a moment and asked when they would need this cake and learned I had just two days to make a two tiered sheet cake.

Rylee loves pink and zebra print so they asked for a pink zebra cake. I showed them the cake this morning and they loved it. I cut everything (including the letters) out by hand except for the stars (I have star cutters). So anyways here it is!

Just the beginning of the zebra stripes (which I cut out by hand)

Zebra stripes = Completed

Second tier is on!

Yay! Completed! I cut out those letters by hand.

It was exhausting, but I think it turned out well. I am pleased and so is Rylee's mom!

Lady Bugs & Fondant

I did it. I made lady bug fondant cupcakes. It took me a while and the fondant was annoying at first because I wasn't used to it. I did a little bit of research on the best tasting fondant and everything I found online said that Duff Goldman's line of butter cream fondant tastes the best. The last thing I wanted was to have disgusting, foul smelling fondant on my cupcakes. I tried a little and it tastes like candy corn! It must have been delicious because Lilly ate the entire lady bug off of her cupcake. This post will be mostly photos of my fondant lady bug cupcakes. So here they are... (I went a little Instagram crazy...)

These are just the fondant toppers before I placed them on the cupcakes

After Assembling the cupcakes

Cupcakes on display st the party

My cupcakes with the professional cake by wedding cake baker/designer Edith Hall in the background

Me posing with my delicious little masterpieces!

So I discovered I do like to work with fondant. This is good because yesterday I was asked to make a two tier pink and black zebra birthday cake for someone in my office. They need it tomorrow. I am freaking out a little bit, but I am also really excited! I hope it turns out OK. I'll post some photos after I finish which will probably be very late tonight...

La-la-lazy

(Above: Lilly just being Lilly= Awesome)

OK, I need to apologize. I haven't written in a while. Things have been crazy busy! Between filling my Etsy orders (business is actually booming believe it or not), showing our film, Marceline, for Disney D23 members, having a film in the T/F film festival, and just pure laziness, I haven't had the time. I often thought about writing, but the writing would have gotten in the way of my laziness time.

It's pretty hot out for March so every day has felt like a lazy summer day. This makes me more lazy.

I've been so lazy the past few days and I seriously need to do laundry. One good thing about not doing the laundry is it forces you to get creative and take fashion risks. Under normal circumstances I'd be too embarrassed to wear a paper bag out of the house, but at this point, I have no choice. I swear I'll do the laundry tonight. I just got tired of looking like a hobo. And by "just" I mean literally, like, three seconds ago was like, "man I am so tired of looking like a dirty hobo". Laundry. Tonight. I SWEAR.

This weekend I am going to be trying my hand at fondant for the first time. I promised to make about 50 cupcakes for Andy's cousin for her daughters first birthday. I am incredibly flattered that she asked me because she is a perfectionist and even though I know she also ordered a cake from a professional wedding cake baker, it is still a big deal that she trusts my baking abilities for Ellie's first birthday. The theme is ladybugs, which is really cute and lucky for me, also pretty simple baking wise. About 30 to 35 of the cupcakes will just be red icing with white sprinkles. But, about 15 to 20 of them will have fondant ladybugs on top. I am very excited and extremely over confident. Especially considering I've never worked with fondant before... The plan is to make everyone believe I do it for a living. I'll let you know how they turn out. Probably amazing (there's that over confident-ness again), but we'll see.

The next few weekends will be really busy. We will be staying one weeked in Marceline at the bed and breakfast, one weekend at the Lake of The Ozarks at the family condo, and one weekend at "Camp EM-A-LIL-EE-EL-EE"...

Let me explain about camp. I couldn't be more excited about it! My family thought it would be nice to take a camping trip altogether since we haven't done that, like ever. But there were too many complaints about tents and peeing in the woods (I complained about that one) and sleeping on the ground. So we looked for campgrounds with cabins and as it turns out you can rent an entire summer camp. A freaking summer camp! Like with 6 cabins, an infirmary, amphitheater, and even a mess hall! So not only is the family coming along, but we also invited several close friends to join in the fun. This is like a dream come true for me. Having our own summer camp! Everyone in the family was given a job. The jobs are mostly a joke, but I am taking mine (activities director or course) very seriously. I've planned arts n crafts, sports, and a talent show. A mandatory talent show. We'll see how that goes. I hope at least three people actually participate. I might have to offer a prize for the talent with the most applause...

Anyways that's all I have for now. Don't forget to become a fan of my Etsy shop on Facebook. Click HERE for that.

Get your copy of our film, Marceline, HERE

These are the cupcakes I plan to make. (I stole this pic from The Crafty Penguin)

Number 4: “Learn To Use/Make Fondant/Modeling Chocolate”

To start: What is Modeling Chocolate? and What is Fondant?


I am a product of America and generation Y or X or Q (or whatever, I have no idea actually, which generation I am a “product of” I just liked the way that sounded). being American and of this generation (whichever one it was) we were always told (and I believed) "you can do anything!" And for some reason one of those things I believed was that I was a dessert decorating wizard. This of course was never true. My little sister is way better at it than me, at both baking and decorating. I am pretty mediocre. I don’t know just when it was that I became so delusional. In my mind baking was MY thing that she so rudely ripped out from under me by being so suddenly awesome at it. In reality, aside from her natural talents (she is naturally quite talented at this sort of thing), she took months and months of Wilton cake decorating classes, majored in food sciences in college, and even studied cooking in Florence, Italy for a few months. I was really just jealous when my little sister surpassed my mediocre cake decorating abilities and became more awesome than me at something (She is actually more awesome than me at a lot of things). But looking back on our childhood and teenage years, she was always cooking and baking (hence her choice to study it in college). I can count on one hand the number of cakes I baked and decorated. I think I made 3. THREE. Yup that’s it. I really admire my sister’s abilities and am so impressed by all the cakes she makes. If I could learn to be half as awesome as her, my cakes and cupcakes would seriously ROCK. So I have a lot of baking related goals on my list. Some are things that sounded cool to me. Some things I just like to eat or want to taste. This particular goal is just the beginning of my baking and decorating adventures!

So the modeling chocolate thing was not going well already. Well the cupcake part was not going as planned anyway. I had baked the cupcakes on Tuesday night so they would be ready when my friend, KC, came over to teach me how to make and use the modeling chocolate on Wednesday. Why is it no one sells regular cake mix anymore? Only extra moist or moist? Those are NOT good for decorating cupcakes or cakes. Before I baked the cupcakes, KC had suggested I also make a pound cake mix and add a little bit of that in there because that would solve the moist gooey problem that occurs when using the moist or extra moist cake mixes. I looked everywhere for pound cake mix and I couldn’t find any. So I just baked the cupcakes without it. I went home to have some lunch on Wednesday. While I was there I decided to check on the cupcakes. I had put them in a container before they even had a chance to cool so that I could go to bed. Well, they were all moist and gooey on top which is the WORST THING EVER for icing cupcakes. The icing just sticks and pulls the top layer of cupcake off and it is stupid. Just plain stupid. I decided to leave the cupcakes out of the box and hopefully the moistness would dry or go away or something.


The moistness did not completely go away by the time I got home form work so I took the baby (I guess she would be a toddler now) and we went out in search of pound cake mix. I ended up finding the most expensive cake mix I had ever seen, a box of Duff Goldman's white cake mix for $7.99. Yup, $7.99. I thought, This stuff had better be good! Well, I got home and baked it and turns out if was perfect for what I needed it for. I still haven't tasted it yet though... 

KC was running a little late, but when she arrived I was totally ready to go. It turns out modeling chocolate is not as difficult as I had originally anticipated and it’s totally fun! It tastes like tootsie rolls and is as fun as playdough! It’s made from corn syrup and chocolate. We colored it lime green, neon yellow, neon, blue, and neon pink because those were the colors we had. I decided I wanted to make little flower shapes because I wanted to keep it simple on my first attempt and I found these cute little flower shaped cookie type cutters that are used for fondant and modeling chocolate.

We also made icing. Which, again, was even easier than I thought. I don’t know if I’ll be buying store bought icing anymore. Unless I am in a hurry I guess.  

The cupcakes turned out pretty and cute! Thanks KC for all your help!!! I hope they taste good. I am a little nervous about the taste since I have never used that cake mix before, never made icing before, and obviously never made modeling chocolate before either. I guess we shall see tonight…

Here is a pic of the cupcakes and a little of the "process":

So, Ilyssa, How are my cupcakes? Did I do a good job?