Lion Cake

My son Cade had a Jungle themed birthday party when he turned 4. Here is his cake:

I got a new "hair" frosting tip to do the mane and I love how it turned out. For this cake I baked a 9 inch round and a 9 x 13 inch cake (cut into triangles) plus cupcakes.Happy Birthday Cade!I also painted this Monkey bean bag toss game and made banana bean bags. This was a hit at the party, and we had it in our house for weeks afterward because the kids loved playing!

Island Cake

My little boy and my dad share a birthday, which is a lot of fun. It's also at the beginning of summer, so I am always in the mood for something tropical by then. When Brennan turned 3 I made this cupcake cake for him to wake up to in the morning.... the Island cake I made for the family party for both Brennan and my dad.



I used a chocolate mold and made seashells with swirled white and milk chocolate. I crushed Nilla wafers to use as the sand. My dad LOVES fishing, so I made a fishing pole with a skewer and dental floss. The palm tree is a skewer and construction paper fronds.

First Birthday

It's tradition in our family to give a baby a chocolate cake for their first birthday. Here is a picture of Ray's-- I made her her very own cake-- as well as the adult-size version to share.




She was very apprehensive about the whole cake thing, and cried when we put her finger in it! What a little princess!

Crab Cakes

I threw a little backyard luau for my husbands 30th birthday. In keeping with the theme, and making it fun for the kids (plus, who wants to feel like they're 30 on their birthday anyway) these are the desserts I made.

Crab Cakes:
Legs and eye stalks were Twizzlers, the pincers were half of a Swedish Fish sliced open.
Oysters:
The "pearls" were yogurt covered raisins, and I just used store bought sugar cookies for the shells. If I were to do this again I would make them smaller-- maybe using Nilla wafers instead.

Ladybug Birthday

My husband and I got back from a cruise the day before our daughter's 2nd birthday, so I was very short on time but didn't want to not celebrate her birthday on the day. We got up that morning and the boys helped decorate, then we went shopping, and then while Ray was down for her nap in the afternoon the boys and I made her birthday cake. I just used a metal bowl to bake the cake in, and had some extra cake batter so I did some mini-bug cupcakes. When I'm making a cute birthday cake I always make my own frosting.... but due to the time constraints this time I just used a can of strawberry frosting. Store bought is never the right consistency, but it sure does taste yummy!

Ray LOVED her ladybug cake, and loved blowing out the candles so much we let her do it 5 times in a row!Happy Birthday Baby Bug!

40th Birthday Cake

I was asked to do a brown and white elegant cake for a 40th birthday party. Here's what I came up with. I made the numbers for the top out of chocolate, and used a stencil to mark the fleur de lis patterns on the frosting and piped them in. The recipient seemed happy with it and said it was delicious!

The numbers were held up with a chocolate covered mini-popsicle stick. Here's the back view.
And from the side.... I liked the look of the square layer on top of the circle.

Mini Cakes

I've made a bunch of mini cakes for friends birthdays-- here are two of my favorites!

This first one is wrapped in a layer of chocolate, which is a very fun and easy way to make an elegant cake. It was a great experiment!




The second one I made for a teenager-- kind of a cross between a giant cupcake and an ice cream sundae. Looks delicious to me :)