I ABSOLUTELY LOVE my niece Emma and nephew Evan. They are the sweetest, most kindhearted, and bright-eyed little children ever! I have the ultimate privilege of making their birthday cakes each year. This year was no exception. Luckily, Evan's birthday party fell the weekend on the end of my spring break from law school, and Emma's birthday is in June, while I'm out for summer [see my next post for Emma's cake].
Evan had chocolate cake with chocolate ganache covered with fondant in a Team Umizoomi theme. Evan loves the cartoon (and I've never seen it haha). I used a lot of bright colors and basic shapes on Evan's cake. I printed some images of Geo and Bot and took them to Lowe's Foods and had them printed onto edible paper. I transferred those images to fondant and put them on the cake. This way they would be pretty exact. While I think I could probably make the images with fondant after a lot of hard work and intricate cutting, I am a hopeless perfectionist and its much less stressful to use an actual image.
I made a pennant bunting with Evan's name on it and a fondant "2" and used those for the topper.
The cake went over SO well and Evan and his Momma, my sweet sis-in-law, loved it!!
Let me know what you think!
On April 27th I had the pleasure of baking 7 dozen cupcakes and a 5 layer top tier wedding cake for a lovely couple Melissa & Marcus. I met them through a friend, Pete, who was in my Bible Study. I make cupcakes almost weekly for Bible study because I love to bake and that is a great way for me to love on my friends :) Anyway, Marcus' brother Pete told Marcus that he just HAD to try my cake for their upcoming wedding.
I did a tasting for them at the beginning of November 2012. I made several different flavors for them to try; I brought everything from vanilla to cinnamon toast crunch, to almond with chocolate buttercream. The bride, Melissa, fell in love with the cinnamon toast crunch, ordering 3 dozen, and at her future brother in law's urging, decided to get 2 dozen S'mores cupcakes as well. She also ordered a dozen each of vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream, and chocolate cupcakes with chocolate buttercream. She wanted a top tier, but didn't have a flavor preference so I just used left over cake batter and frosting from the other cupcakes to create a decadently delicious S'mores cake.
I used 3 layers of chocolate cake and two layers of cinnamon cake with marshmallow buttercream in between each layer. I iced the whole cake in rich chocolate buttercream and topped it with Melissa's original handmade toppers. She and Marcus were to be wed in the NC Museum of Natural Sciences with all of the Dinosaur bones, so a T-Rex Groom and a Velociraptor Bride with a Sabortooth cat carrying purple flowers to represent their pet cat were a perfect fit. I threw in a little M & M banner and some chocolate cake "dirt" to finish off the look. Melissa sent me the sweetest message the week after her nuptials to thank me for the cake and cupcakes and said they were the highlight of her day :D what a compliment!!
In other news, I got waitlisted at UNC Law School, which is a top tier school and would be an amazing one-in-a-million opportunity for my legal education. I am really excited for the chance to still attend there, but I am really happy with Campbell Law as well, so either way, my dreams are coming true!! Thank the Lord for his faithfulness and guidance; trust in him, and he will direct your path like he has mine :)
