August in Cakes

The month of August has brought on some new challenges in the cake department.  We revel in challenges and in learning new techniques.  We helped celebrate the end of a softball season, a new little baby girl's baptism, an impending wedding, and a surprise birthday party.  We made mistakes, had major beef with the humidity affecting our icing, and found ourselves at odds over the thickness of a cake.  This month has been a month of learning and growing and CAKE!

Here is a cake sample for someone who was interested in our new little business.  

White cake, buttercream icing.

I tried out a new piping technique with the icing roses.  I think it turned out quite nicely.

To end a season of softball on a sweet note we made a softball jersey.

White cake with buttercream icing colored to match a similar counterpart.

Which one is real? :)

Our next project was for a sweet little one's baby baptism.

You will have to humor me with the amount of pictures of this cake.  It was definitely a favorite of mine!  The bottom layer was chocolate and the top was yellow cake.  Simple pink colored buttercream with buttercream border and pearls.

Fondant cross with fondant flowers.

We fell in love with pearl luster dust, coating the flowers and the cross and even the buttercream pearls!

Here you can see why we have beef with the humidity.  Thankfully, with some very gentle hands, we straightened out this little crease. 

Our next project is pretty self explanatory.  It was someone's birthday.  Guess her age...

Dark fudge chocolate cake (yum!) and almond icing (extra yum!).

Now these are some fabulous birthday colors!

Our last cake of the month was for a bridal shower.  Just beachy...

White cake with buttercream icing and white chocolate shells with a special trick (brown sugar) for sand.

Our fancy "shell border".  I know this is probably not funny to anyone but me, but I cracked up the whole time while applying these little chocolate shells.  I did a shell border out of icing for the top and a "shell border" out of real shells.  Come on now, its funny right?

Best tasting sand you will ever find.

This bridal shower cake is even more exciting because we are also doing their wedding cake in just 2 weeks!!  We are both thrilled to be able to help celebrate their marriage.  

Tip of the day:  My Gilmore Girls education has taught me to say congratulations to the groom and best wishes to the bride.  Now don't forget it!

I hope August has found each of you well and I hope your week starts out sweetly simple!

Cake Class

The month of July was just about the busiest month ever.  We had our first craft fair which entailed not only baking, sewing, and decorating but also figuring out the business side of things, which is totally new to us! We also tackled two Wilton cake decorating courses in July as well.  Every Tuesday and Thursday for 2 hours we worked away in a ridiculously hot room at the craft store to hone our cake decorating skills.  Here are a few of our projects and designs!

Our 1st Tuesday class we made cookies and took them in to learn the basics of decorating.

Our 1st Thursday class we made gumpaste flowers.  Button flowers and pansies.

Our 2nd Tuesday class we made cakes and learned to easy ice them and the basics of character transfer.

Our 2nd Thursday class we learned to make a whole bunch of different kinds of flowers including rose buds, daffodils, apple blossoms, and primroses.

Our 3rd Tuesday class we decorated cupcakes, which is definitely one of my favorites!

Our 3rd Thursday class we made roses, violets, and lilies. (We didn't take pictures but we included them on our last cakes!)

Our last Tuesday class we designed and decorated our final cake.

Our last Thursday class we designed and decorated another cake.  This one we did chocolate cake with chocolate icing to mix things up.

We had a blast in our classes and we learned alot of valuable information.  But we are also glad that July is over too :)

Soul Deep Craft Fair

So, while our little business is new and we are figuring out all the kinks, we are excited to transition our lives into the crafty creativeness of cake decorating, sewing, and crafting in general.  It has been both of our dreams to "one day" have a bakery and stretch, tone, and use our creative muscles full time.  I had thought it would happen way later in life when I was old, gray and wise.  Well after imagining and dreaming for a few years Carla and I decided it was time.

The event that pushed us into making that final decision to step into the unknown and build on our castle of dreams was the opportunity to take part in the Soul Deep Craft Fair at Living Hope Church in Boonville on Saturday, July 24th.

Our first goal was making a business card.  With the help of our awesome friend Ryan we designed our card to match our blog!  

We baked and sewed and decorated for weeks in anticipation and preparation of our big day.  We stayed up into the wee hours of the morning of the 24th putting the finishing touches on all of our handmade creations.  Around 4:30 a.m., too soon, our alarms went off waking us up from our few hours of sleep to load up the car and head off to the craft fair. 

Here is Carla, feeling our few hours of sleep.  Only sugary goodness of McDonald's sweet tea could perk us up into full functioning mode.

We set our table up, moving things around, deciding, and re-deciding exactly how we wanted to present our hand crafted goods to the world for the first time.

We made 72 cupcakes of varying varieties:

 Strawberry with almond icing and a sweet little gumpaste flower.

Chocolate with chocolate buttercream icing and a chocolate butterfly.

And finally white cake with buttercream icing and a rainbow sugar cookie to top it off.

 

Now our white cake wasn't your ordinary cake.  We created a special surprise on the inside. 

Rainbow cake!  

Not only did we bake up a storm but we tackled bunches of sewing as well.  With the help of Carla's sweet mom we premade 32 baby burp cloths to sell as well!  We also had a small display of our pouch slings and ring slings.  We just set them out so that if anyone was interested they could place an order.  

What you didn't see was our fantastic little basket of homemade candies: peanut butter cups and oreo truffles.  If you could have just one homemade candy in your life it should be oreo truffles.  They are simply delicious. 

Our overall day was spectacular!  It ended with melted chocolate butterflies and icing sliding off of cupcakes as we loaded our left over treasures into the car in the 105 degree weather.  But, we met some fantastic people who encouraged us in our new endeavor.  We placed a few orders for slings and made contacts that will help us move forward into the wonderful world of our crafty business.  And most of all we reached out to our little piece of the world to let them know we are here!