Eloise in the Plaza Birthday Cake (click photos to enlarge them!)

 There aren't a lot of "Eloise in the Plaza" cakes "out there" on the net. If you don't believe me, go Google it and see. I found about 4 that were worthy (I'm so humble) of a good look, but none of them was anything like what we had in mind for this cake (we being me and Avery's mom).  Avery, just turning age 5, doesn't just love Eloise... she loves the Plaza Hotel, itself - which I think is just the cutest thing ever for someone who is barely 5.  So I decided if she loves the Plaza, the Plaza she shall have - and I put it right on top of her cake! I also included Eloise herself (an obvious decision), Weenie the pug, and Skipperdee the turtle. Avery's mom, Bridget, requested the pink on pink stripes and harlequin pattern for the two tiers, which I thought was ingenious.  (I'm certain I would have done it that way even if she hadn't requested it *wink wink*)  Cake was WASC with whipped vanilla bean butter cream filling and icing. Everything is completely edible right down to the pearl necklace. Happy birthday, Avery!

Hot Pink and Zebra Print Cake (click photos to enlarge).

Emily called and said she needed a "hot pink and zebra print" cake for her baby's first birthday party - and then she said my favorite words: "You can do whatever you want, I trust you."  I was so excited because I've been desperate to make a zebra print cake ever since I decorated my first cake 10 months ago.  I came up with this design, but everyone and their mother has done a cake like this, so it's nothing you haven't seen a hundred times before.  Or wait, maybe not everyone else looks at pictures of cakes all day long, so maybe I'm the only one who's seen this done a hundred times before.  WASC with whipped vanilla bean butter cream filling and icing.  Daisies, zebra stripes, and #1 are fondant, and as always, everything is completely edible.  Isn't she the cutest thing ever, feeding her smash cake to her mommy?  Adorable!!  Happy birthday, Gracie!  

Despicable Me! (Click photos to enlarge.)

This cake was a real test to my patience, my tenacity, my devotion, my lack of experience - and to my poor posture!  I’m slow at modeling characters in general, but I'm especially slow when they are actually supposed to resemble someone – so each one took about 5 hours. That's about 20 neck-crunching hours just to sculpt the characters!  In the end, I wasn't particularly thrilled with their "likeness" to the actual movie characters, but I reminded myself that I'm still a rookie and these ARE made of sugar! I couldn't find a “Despicable Me” cake anywhere on the web (that was what I was looking for) as inspiration, so I just pulled the basic design from the the DVD cover.  I wanted to cover the sides of the bottom tier with the rooftop design of the houses (see my draft in the drafts gallery), but time just didn’t allow for it. My little girl made a "stuffed crust pizza" for this cake, and I really wanted to find a way to incorporate it into the theme, so I decided all the children could hold something edible.  Edith got the pizza and Margo and Agnes got the lollipop and cotton candy from the scene where they return home from the amusement park. As always, everything is edible! I thought it was really unique and endearing that “Despicable Me” is little Bryson’s favorite movie, being as he's really just a baby.  Isn't that adorable?  Happy first birthday, Bryson - I like the way you think!

(Love the icing on the toes!)

Wild Grinders Cake - Featuring Emo Crys and Meaty the Bulldog (click photos to enlarge)

It's been a weird few weeks.  I keep getting these mystery cake requests, where people ask me to make cakes based on things I've never seen or heard of before!  While I confess this is exciting, it does leave me all by myself, alone out in the big cruel cake world with nobody's work to turn to for inspiration or guidance.  So this week, I had another of these requests.  This time for a "Wild Grinders"-themed cake. I had never heard of the show before, but PTL for Google!  I ran to Youtube and watched videos to become familiar with the scenery and the characters for my design. I ended up featuring "Emo Crys" (at the request of the birthday boy),  his skateboard (which I made interactive so said birthday boy could play with it), "Meaty" the bulldog, the show's city skyline, and miscellaneous "urban"/skatepark paraphernalia. I've never been able to make a character stand up before, and barely did it this time.  There is obviously a trick to this and my mission this week is to go forth, deep into the bowels of the intraweb, and FIND THE #$%! SOLUTION.  Happy 5th birthday to Hayden, an utterly gorgeous kid who I got to meet briefly when I delivered this cake.  Although he seemed somewhat nonchalant about the cake - he did seem to want to touch that skateboard pretty bad - and that made me happy in my heart. Man, I hope when he got home, his mom let him roll that thing all over the house.  Then eat it.  Ew.  (Unless you're 5, that's kinda gross.)  White almond sour cream, vanilla bean filling and icing, fondant decor. Crys and the palm were doweled, but everything was 100% edible, as always.

Woodland Nursery Bedding Cake! (Click any photo to make it bigger.)

Here's the finished "Woodland" baby bedding-themed cake I did for a baby shower recently. I must confess, making this cake was almost as much fun as designing it because of the sweet little accents.  Cake was white almond sour cream with vanilla bean filling and icing.  All accents were fondant and everything, as always, is 100% edible. 

COMING SOON: Woodland Nursery Baby Bedding Cake. (Click photos to see them bigger!)

Mommy-to-be was using bedding (called "Woodland") for her new baby's nursery. The hostess of the shower asked me to design a cake for them based on that. I always go looking for ideas and inspiration when I get a new cake, but I could literally not find one thing done in this theme anywhere - not Google, not Flickr, not my trusty old Cake Central. Nothing. Zip. So I just had to start from ground zero on this one. I went searching for coordinating materials, so I could find a nice big flower - and I found a gorgeous pink floral and a perfect damask. I had so much fun and I learned a lot designing this cake. I learned it's better to just do your own thing. Have an idea of what YOU want to do - and then, if you must look to others, do it only AFTER you have at least a shell of an idea of what you want to do. 

Two gorgeous coordinating material samples (above).  I used the two-tone flower in the first sample as the basis for my cake's fantasy flowers.

And here's the final "draft" of what the cake will look like (LOL once again @ my mad MS Paint skillz).  I'll post the actual cake photo tomorrow.