M's 4th birthday party!

Saturday we had a birthday party for my sweet girl "M". She had been feeling sick that week, so we weren't sure it was going to happen, but she made it!

I had been all excited for cake month, but it has been really hard! So many things went poorly! The egg free cakes are a disaster! So with doing cupcakes this time, I thought that they would be fine. When I make them in a pan and then flip them out they fall apart. So I thought that cupcakes were the way to go.

Not so much.
I thought the wrapper would hold it together. Nope. So I scrambled then to make some more cupcakes the morning of the party, while trying to salvage a couple of the egg free ones so that "C" could have some too. So I made them all jumbo, instead of some jumbo and some regular. Oh and the day before, or maybe 2 days before I made this cupcake stand.

I also made this birthday banner.

I told my husband that all the disastrous cake days made me feel like maybe I shouldn't do this anymore. Then later I thought, well if I can pull off a win from a disaster, maybe I am ok at this!

So they turned out pretty well, and as always they were yummy!! My birthday girl loved them, and that's the most important thing!

The 3rd and final phase

The final phase of this weeks cakes have had it's ups and downs. The 2 that I made for my good friend "D" turned out well. I really liked this one:

and I thought this one was ok, not quite what I had envisioned, but not bad:

But I thought they looked really nice together:

"D" seemed very pleased with them and that is all that matters! Hope she and her family enjoy eating them today!!

Yesterday, I made 2 more cakes for our college church party tonight. I made the 8in level egg free so "C" could have some. I tried an egg replacer this time instead of the can of pop and it helped a little bit, but they were still too soft and stuck to the pan, then it broke in half, then it crumbled everywhere. The 6in top layer I used eggs!
I was still able to use the one that broke in half, so I dirty iced it and then rolled out the black fondant. This wasn't too bad, it covered ok and overall was fine. So then I dirty iced the other cake and then rolled out the fondant and flipped my mat to put it on the cake and it was stuck. It would not come off the mat! I did exactly the same things as before. Ugh. So I pulled it back off and decided to use some powdered sugar to help it not stick (I had been using shortening), but I didn't want to because it was black fondant. Well, I sucked it up and went to town. This worked much better! Once it was on and trimmed it looked all bumpy and I was just not happy with it. So I decided not to make it 2 tiers because it would make my other cake that I liked look bad!
Next, I decorated the 8in layer with lacy cornelli stripes and a ruffle border. Once I decided it was going to be it's own cake I then added the Steelers logo to it. I like how it turned out.

The 6in layer was the one I am not happy with. I was too tired and frustrated to decorate it the way I had intended, so I just used the curly cues that I had already made. So it doesn't look the way I planned, but it will taste yummy and that's all that really matters, right?!

Not sure why that is so tiny, but it's probably better that way;)

Well, thanks for following this super bowl journey with me! GO STEELERS!!!

Coming up next is M's birthday, stay tuned!

Phase 2

So, things didn't got exactly as planned today with phase 2. I planned to make some black fondant letters and curly cues. I bought prepackaged fondant because it is hard to make fondant (or icing) really black. So I bought Duff brand fondant. It is really nice and soft, but soft isn't always good with fondant. And black fondant is hard because you have to use powdered sugar so that it doesn't stick to the work surface. So then you have to clean all of the powdered sugar off. The letters didn't look like I wanted them to when I tried to cut them out, so I went a different route:

 I am going to trim it down a smidge and then it will go on a bigger rectangle of gold buttercream icing. I used a stencil and filled it in with buttercream and it is on a fondant background.

The curly cues are giving me a bit of trouble today too! Only because I painted some water on them to get the powdered sugar off, so they aren't dry yet. But I am sure they will be great!

I am anxious to see how they all turn out!!

Phase 1

I have three Super Bowl cakes to make for this weekend so I started making some of the fondant decorations for them today. I really enjoyed the planning phase of this yesterday. I mentioned this in another post, but I have always wished I was creative. I always wanted to be able to paint. I have really enjoyed being creative through cakes. So here is what I was working on today.

Gold curly cues!! These are going to go around the base of 2 of the cakes, along with black ones of course! These are made out of fondant tinted gold. I used a new brand of coloring this time and I liked how it turned out. I usually use Wilton coloring but I used Duff's color this time. I made these by rolling out the fondant really thin and then I used a pizza cutter to cut really skinny strips. Next I wrapped them around wooden dowel rods like this:

Once they were slightly hardened I pulled them off then cut the to the size I wanted. Next I cut out the gold letters I will need:

GO STEELERS!!!

I used a stencil and cut these out with a knife.

So there you have it. Phase 1 complete. I will be making black curly cues and circles for the Steeler logo early this week too, and then the cakes will come later in the week!