U.S.S. Dean

For one of my Boss's birthdays, I decided to make a cake.  He is into sailing, so I tried to figure out something to do with that.  I had a hard time figuring out how to make a 3D boat out of food, without spending a million hours on it.  So, I ended up running to the store and looking for a toy.  I found this cute little boat.

I just did variations of blue for the water and put in a little island on top with brown sugar.  However, it wasn't until I was putting on the boat when I realized that I was putting the boat on the island, which makes no logical sense.  Oh well.  I secured the boat with a dowel and added a small sale.

The cake was chocolate with fresh strawberries and vanilla frosting.  It was really tasty and I was proud seeing I didn't dedicate much time.

Missionary Cake

I took a "Tall Cakes" class at JoAnns to learn how to stack cakes.  So now I can easily do wedding cakes.  This didn't turn out perfect, but it was for class.  However, I did use it for my cousin's mission farewell.  It is suppose to look like paints with pinstriping on the bottom, a belt, dress shirt and tie.  It also has a missionary tag and RWH means Return With Honor.  Overall, it was pretty good and I was quite happy with the elements.

Inside, the top tier is Red Velvet with Cream Cheese frosting, middle tier is German Chocolate, and bottom tier is Chocolate with Strawberry filling.

Strawberry Vines

After making my Grandmother’s cake, I was curious to work on my vines again.  So I whipped up another cake.  Vanilla with Strawberry inside.

I tried to add little strawberries and replicate the vines I did before.  This was a bit disappointing since it wasn’t how I wanted.  I figure it didn’t come out as well since it wasn’t made with the same love.

Fresh Strawberries

My Grandmother’s 80^th birthday was coming up and of course I wanted to give her the very best.  I made a chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream and fresh strawberries.  After learning from my Heart cake, I kept the strawberries on top rather than mixing them into the buttercream.

I decorated by first places chocolate covered strawberries around the cake.  Then I added a Happy Birthday.  The cake looked a little simple, so I added some vine work.

This has to be the hands down best cake I have made to this point.  It was so good and fresh!  Not to mention, my family had yet to see my attempt in cake decorating and they were quite impressed.

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.