Vegas Baby!

 

For our friend's 50th Birthday party, we decided to do a casino theme... fun in so many ways! Fun decorations, fun games, fun casino themed food... just fun!

 

 

For my part I did the cake.  I'm not super creative on my own, so my favorite thing to do is scour the internet for ideas and either look for a cake to try & recreate or mash some ideas together for my own twist.  This 'Vegas style' cake was a lot of fun to do!

 

 

Simple two-tiered design... covered in marshmallow fondant with fondant rose accents, fondant coins and an arm for the slot machine too!  For the arm I covered a wooden dowel with fondant, capped it with a ball of fondant, and brushed an edible silver glitter powder on it for a metal looking effect.

 

 



Life's a Beach!

For my daughter's 8th Birthday she decided to have a "Teen Beach Movie 2" party.  I knew we could have a lot of fun with a beach themed cake so I started scouring the internet for ideas.  I found a cake to recreate and put together my shopping list!

 

 

This cake was fairly easy to do and if I'd planned better & started earlier it would have turned out even cooler!  This cake was two tiers... the first tier I covered with light blue tinted marshmallow fondant.  The second tier I frosted with buttercream and lined the outside with Pepperidge Farm Pirouette cookies.  I then sprinkled brown sugar on the top of the second tier (sand), used Milk Duds as coconuts, a fondant surf board, pretzel rods for trees (with fondant leaves) and a drink umbrella just to be cute!

 

The thing I was most disappointed in was my trees.  If I had done my tree leaves a day or two in advance and let them harden some, they would have looked more natural and I wouldn't have had to prop them up with toothpicks.  But... all in all the cake turned out well.  It definitely went with our party theme and Ginger loved it!

 



Spiderman!

Spiderman!

 

 

I've made a Spiderman cake before... years ago... with a Wilton shaped cake pan and the star tip pattern frosting... but this is the more grown up version of this cool comic book hero!

 

This cake was for a Sweet 16 party for a young lady who likes super heroes.  I scoured Pinterest for ideas (I'm LOVING Pinterest by the way... aren't you?!) and found this design.  I love the simplicity of it... not overdone or too advanced for me and fits perfectly with the Spiderman themed party!

 

I am a huge fan of marshmallow fondant ... it's easy to make, easy to work with and actually tastes good... but I find that whether you're tinting fondant or buttercream there are some colors that are just VERY hard to get right... and red is one of them.  So, I headed down to the craft store to hit the cake aisle for some pre-made red fondant. 

 

Now that I had all my supplies in hand it was time to get started.  For this cake I did three layers of 10-inch cakes for the bottom tier... did a buttercream crumb coat and then covered it with my marshmallow fondant in blue.  I used four wooden dowels in the center of this cake to support the second tier, which was two 8-inch cakes covered in the Wilton red fondant.

 

Once both cakes were covered I placed the red tier on top of the wooden dowels and started the webbing.  I used a pre-made black Wilton tube frosting for the webbing (black is another color that's tough to tint dark enough).

 

 

I set aside a small piece of the red fondant and rolled it out into an oval/face shape and turned that into Spiderman's face for the top of the cake.  This really added a nice detail and also works well to cover up the center of the spider web which can look a little messy/chaotic.

 

 

For the city effect I had to make a choice here... spend extra money on the pre-made black fondant and hope I can get the buildings to set enough to use on the sides of the cake or save the money and make a non-edible option.  I went for construction paper, white paper, a highlighter and a little tape & glue.  I was able to make the buildings, attach them together and place them around the bottom tier of the cake for a lot less money and still get a really cool effect.

 

 

 

 

I really enjoyed making this cake. I'm happy with how it turned out and loved the opportunity to work with fondant again. The more you work with it the more you learn & grow... so don't be intimidated... it's fun and not as hard as you might think!