Nutty Chocolate Cake

 

Happy Birthday cake!  Milk chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream (except for the roses-those are regular b/c) with walnuts and pecans!  

A Quick Birthday Cake

I met a new neighbor who came by with another neighbor to order a cake for two days out.  Yikes!  How could I say no, especially when I was in my jammies and looking like he had totally interrupted my Lifetime movie-thon?  (umm...okay, so maybe he had)  BUT it was an order for a birthday cake for his wife and since they are new in town and I love to make birthday cakes and I had the time I took the order!

 

I forgot to take a picture before I left home so here is an in-the-car-delivery photo!

Dark chocolate cake with caramel drizzle filling and a light whipped buttercream and chocolate frosting ensemble.  YUM!

FedEx Picnic 2011

We attended the annual FedEx/ALPA family picnic at the Anchorage Zoo this past Sunday and this year I made a small cake and cupcakes!  I haven't found a large cupcake stand that I'm impressed with enough to buy yet so I had to improvise.  It worked well for this occasion in particular!  There were four dozen more cupcakes hidden under the table that eventually disappeared along with all of these, so I guess everyone liked them!  It was a great day at the zoo, rain and all!

Cupcakes were vanilla with purple and orange specks and fluffy buttercream frosting.  The round cake was chocolate pudding with fluffy buttercream and an edible image of the logo.  This cake went to the couple that did all the work arranging the fun picnic!  

Roses

This was a practice cake (just to see if I could do it!) and it's now on its way to Otavalo. I hope the Santillan family enjoys it!
White cake (from a box...gasp!) with buttercream frosting.

Flowers and a 10-minute BeNi cake!

It's rough when your birthday is December 26. And often you get gypped out of a cool cake. Even if your mom is "Ni."

This year "Ni" did a nice cake for her daughter earlier in December. Here's what it looked like:
For the actual day of birthday, the December 26th birthday girl requested a crab cake. That is, a cake that looked like a crab. But who wants to bake a cake the day after Christmas? There was half of a cake in the freezer that became this little sand crab creature -- a 10-minute deal and the birthday girl loved it! One thing to keep in mind is that while crushed graham crackers make great sand, it also goes flying when the birthday candles are blown out.
Happy 7th Birthday, CBR!

65th Anniversary Cake (on the road with BeNi Cakes!)

After shipping my supplies via FedEx down to Memphis and finding the other needed supplies at a local grocers, here is the anniversary cake that I made "on the road!"

A few things I learned were that brands of pure cane confectioners sugar and humidity changes and electric ovens make HUGE differences in how frostings and cakes work! But I also discovered a fun, new-to-me thing... It is SO yum and yes, I bought a few cans to take home so now I'm sure to find it in our town when I get back. :)

The cakes were white with Solo Cake and Pastry Raspberry filling and buttercream frosting. The dark red mini carnations and sprigs of mint are real.

By the way, this was a cake for my husband's Grandparents. They will be married 65 years in December and we had a little surprise celebration for them at Thanksgiving while the whole family was gathered since some of us won't be in town for Christmas.

Soccer Cake

Happy 2nd Birthday, Eric!

Carrot cake with buttercream frosting and fondant soccer balls with buttercream details. Making hexagons with frosting is a little tricky....as is finding plastic soccer balls in Quito and wire in my basement!

A Killer Whale of a Cake!

Ok, so I know I'm supposed to call it an orca. This spyhopping orca was made for Andy's 11th birthday and he loved it! We're studying sea creatures in science this year and he requested a sea creature cake. Thanks to http://www.cakecentral.com/ for the inspiration!

The cake was two layers -- a white cake with blue swirls (which turned out quite cool looking) on top of a chocolate cake (we called this part the abyss). Frosted with buttercream frosting and fondant sea creatures. Did you know that sea snakes have paddle-shaped tails? They're also supposed to have stripes. The orca was formed with Rice Krispie treats and covered with buttercream frosting.

"Imagine if..."

It's the theme of the Alaska State Fair this year. Basically, imagine anything you want coming true.
Now think of a Birthday cake idea.
Specifically for a gal who likes to travel.
Put them together and what have you got...bippity, boppity, umm...sorry, too much Cinderella around here lately.

A BLUE RIBBON WINNER!!!

The North Star Bakery in Wasilla sponsored the contest and though there weren't a lot of entrants, it was still a fun time.

I took the cake to my friend's Birthday party afterward and she loved it. In fact, it fed the whole restaurant, guests and workers included! Everybody loves a piece of Birthday cake.

Lilac Birthday Cake

A friend ordered a 50th Birthday cake for her mom and requested lilacs...here's what we created.It's so fun to have my sister in town visiting for a few weeks. It was especially nice to have her help making all these little flower petals.

Chocolate cake with raspberry filling, marshmallow fondant and buttercream fondant, buttercream dots and chocolate branches!

Elmo Loves Cake!

I don't have overly wonderful photos of this cake, but it was really cute! It had some fondant yellow stars with fondant blue and red letters on toothpicks that spelled out the birthday boy's name, and those went into the red dots on the top of the cake. I didn't put them in for the delivery drive though so no good picture. Sorry!
The cake was white cake with a lovely strawberry and real whipped cream filling. Buttercream frosting and fondant accents. The bottom red border is all "2's" since this is a birthday cake for a 2 year old!