Falcon Footbal Dessert Dash Cake

It's always exciting when I'm asked to donate a cake.  It makes me feel good to help the community and I feel honored to be able to participate!  Back in September our local High School Football team had a fundraiser going on that included a "Dessert Dash" auction and this is the cake I made to donate to that event:

 

To explain the theme a little:

It's been almost two years since one of our local kids was killed in a random act of violence.  Parker Moore, a 20 year old Woodinville High alumni attending Linfield College in Oregon was at a 7-11 store at night and happened to get stabbed.  Parker died later at the hospital and this tragedy really seemed to unite our communities (Linfield College and Woodinville).  There are shirts with the "Woodinville 44/Linfield 35" logo on them and Woodinville Football uses #44strong consistently in support of Parker.  They've even developed a new tradition of passing down the number 44 jersey to a certain selected player each year... someone the coach feels embodies the characteristics that Parker always showed (playing with intensity, generosity towards others, and leadership). 

 

As a Woodinville resident (and the Mom of a son who played Junior Football here) I think this is a great tradition and a wonderful way to honor Parker's memory.  Based on all this I decided to do a "44strong" themed cake for the dessert dash.  It was fun to create and knowing it made some money to help out our local Football team makes me feel good!!

Golf Tournament Cake

Hi everyone.... so this is a cake that I did for a local women's golf tournament. 

I knew what I wanted to do (grass, 19th hole scene, etc..) but wasn't quite sure how to accomplish it on a large scale (the cake needed to feed 70+ people).  I ended up doing a half sheet cake for the bottom tier and just covering it with buttercream to look like grass.  Then for the top layer I scoured through my old shaped cake pans for something that just looked like an interesting enough shape for the putting green area.  I ended up using my "Dora" cake pan and think it ended up working out well!

 

I covered the Dora cake in fondant and just used buttercream around the edge for some grass accents.  For the small sand traps I used a spoon to make small indentations in the buttercream grass and then sprinkled some graham cracker crumbs in the indents.  Other than HATING how my handwriting looks on cakes, I was pleased with how it turned out. 

 



Easter Basket Cupcakes

My latest project.... Easter basket cupcakes.  I scoured the Internet for ideas and decided on two different cupcakes... a rustic, fun basket with a candy handle ....

and a quicker, easier, pre-made basket cupcake wrapper.....

Although I do like how each style of cupcake turned out, I have to say that I'm a big fan of the pre-made cupcake wrappers! They're fun, fairly inexpensive and could easily be re-used.  I got these ones at Michael's craft store and they were very easy to put together and made my cupcake look cute!

To make these I cheated a bit.... Betty Crocker French Vanilla cake mix... followed all the instructions and baked about 18 cupcakes (I like bigger cupcakes).  Then I used Wilton's boxed buttercream frosting.  I do make my own buttercream most of the time, but sometimes find the Wilton boxed buttercream to be a little firmer/easier to work with.  I added green tint to the frosting and used tip # 233 to make the grass. 

Then it's as easy as adding some jelly bean eggs and dropping the cupcake gently into the basket wrapper!

Previous cakes & cupcakes

Here are some of my previous cakes & cupcakes:

This was a Tinkerbell cake I made for my daughter's 3rd birthday

This is the start of a bridal shower cake I did for my friend who got married in Vegas...

This was the final product of the Vegas bridal shower cake:

The next three pictures are a cake I made for my son's 'end of season' baseball party:

This cupcake was also part of an 'end of season' baseball party. I incorporated little chocolate baseballs and did green grass frosting... I thought they turned out pretty well.

This was a GI Joe birthday cake for my son's 8th birthday:

This was for my daughter's first birthday: