Cricut Projects

One of the things that has distracted me from cake decorating is the Cricut!  I got one as a very early birthday gift and I have spent a lot of time trying to learn how to use it and play with it.  I did not get a Cake Cricut, but I did not want one either.  I don't even like using fondant because I think it's kind of a cheater/easy way to do things, so the Cake Cricut would be right up that same alley.  For others who are interested in buying one, go ahead if that's what you want, but do know that I've heard nothing but complaints from those who have bought it.  They say it's not that easy to use and it's more time consuming.  However, if you want perfection, that might be the way to go.

Anyways, back to the non-cake Cricut.  I have been making crafts with it and learning vinyl lettering.  It has been a lot of fun and I've been trying to figure out how to incorporate it with my cakes and other daily things I do.

Giraffe

A coworker was having a birthday and I asked for some help with ideas.  I asked for his different favorites.  He said his favorite animal was Giraffe, so I thought I'd try it.

The cake itself is chocolate with raspberry filling and vanilla buttercream.  For the Giraffe, he is made of cereal treats, wrapped in fondant.  Around the cake is chocolate!

I had a lot of fun working with the cereal treats trying to figure out how to get them to work with me and how to assemble the pieces together.

He sure isn't perfect, but I had a lot of fun with this one and he was so delicious!

Halloween, Boo!

I saw so many creations and inspirations from Wilton, that I had to make a Halloween cake.  Inside, I made the Halloween themed funfetti and outside is vanilla buttercream.

I started with the mini-cake and decorated a web.  I bought a Wilton icing for this, since it's hard to get a true black.  The icing would be crazy from time to time, but overall, it got the job done.

Then after frosting my cupcakes, I worked on what I thought was color flow.  I guess I didn't pay that much attention on tv when I saw Cake Girls do this trick.  I thought they just used Royal Icing.  I think what they actually used was Color Flow.  Either way, about half of my tombstones came out alright, so I was proud to use them.

I was so excited about the tombstones, you have no idea.  Then, I finished up the remaining cupcakes and moved on to the challenge:  the spider.  I made the spider completely out of fondant.  I just modeled him how I wanted and layed him on the cake.  I couldn't be more proud of how he turned out.

Overall I loved everything about this cake / cupcake creation.  I think it's my best so far.

Teacher Appreciation

Our primary had a Teacher Appreciation dinner and I offered to make cake.  I tried to make a tiered cake.  I will still need to work on it, but it worked out alright.

The cake was chocolate and vanilla for one and vanilla and vanilla for another.  My husband helped a lot with this since the cakes seemed to not want to work with me.  Overall I think they turned out alright.

I loved the little apple out of fondant with a chocolate candy for the stem.

Fondant Flowers

I have been looking all over for cake decorating classes, but haven’t had success.  I finally found a basic’s course, but the teacher was awful!  She didn’t even know how to ice a cake!  There was a different instructor for Flowers & Cake Design, so I thought I’d join that class and see how she was.

I loved the instructor.  She was very understanding and helped by telling stories of experience rather than consulting the book.  I was so glad to meet her.  For one of our classes, we learned Fondant flowers and how to use cut outs.  I thought I would use this technique for my cousin’s daughter’s 1^st birthday.

The cut out flowers are very cute on their own and very easy to use when you first learn them.  I made the cake vanilla and had vanilla buttercream.  It was very simple, but very cute and I will be using the cut outs more in the future.

Basketball Attempt

I was asked to do another cake for my Mother's class.  The boy loves basketball and chocolate.  So, I thought a basketball cake could be easy enough and clearly I'm good enough to fondant a cake again.

I made a chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream painted orange.  I measured the top of the cake and rolled the fondant accordingly.  I layed the fondant on the cake and *facepalm*.  I measured for the top of the cake, the 9" not enough to cover the entire cake!  I didn't have enough for the rest so thi was now a semi-fondant covered cake.

I thought I could add texture now that the fondant was on the cake and it wasn't working well.  So I gave up and focused on the lines and writing the boys name.  I was pretty proud of it, even thought it wasn't perfection.  It was still pretty okay.

Then, I showed everyone my cake and my mom said something like, "Is this wet?"  She left a nice streak on the cake.  I fixed it, but it made it just a little more less perfect.

All in all, I can't be too upset with myself because I don't know what I'm doing, I'll I know is the next one has got to get better!

Heart Cake

This was for a birthday cake for one of my favorite cousins.  To begin, I decided to make sponge cake.  I did one little heart shape of that and...fail.

I got over that pretty quickly.  So, I moved on to just a white cake in a heart shape.  That was much more successful.  For the frosting, I had vanilla buttercream and I mixed in strawberries.  I think it's better to have strawberries on top, though.  This made the consistency very thin and watery.

I then colored fondant and covered the cake in pink fondant.  I was impressed with how easy this was!  However, it was only one layer of cake, so I'm sure this isn't the reaction every time.  Then, I cut out little free hand hearts and starts with more fondant.

It looked super cute and I added her name, Sienna.  Amazing.  But, of course, I couldn't stop so I kept going!  I added food color to some of the hearts to add variety (lesson learned:  do not put food color on top like that, it stays like that and gets EVERYWHERE!).  I also did little stars or something with royal icing.

All-in-all, best cake yet!  It tasted great, however, there are still a lot of things I am learning and trying to figure out.