Piglet 1st birthday cake

Another round cake with stuff on it-but pretty cute!

The top tier is vanilla bean cake with strawberry buttercream filling. The bottom tier is strawberry cake with vanilla buttercream. Piglet is handmade from a combination of fondant and gumpaste (will use a higher ratio of gumpaste next time...he took FOREVER to dry!)
The flowers are gumpaste and the details are all hand-drawn.

My little sister, Deni, will love this one!

Soccer anyone?

I got an email from a woman who wants a special cake for her father's 60th birthday. He is, apparently, a big soccer fan. So, this is my first attempt at a sphere-shaped cake. No, I did not buy the cake pans and instructions from Wilton...this is all me!
I used a pyrex bowl to bake two halves of a sphere, and a single layer 8" round to fill in between them. The cakes are chocolate fudge, the filling is chocolate ganache. I stacked it, with much trepidation, and iced it with buttercream.
I found a website that had the formula for the size of the shapes based on the circumference of the circle, and got cutting! It kind of worked. Near the base I had to free-hand some of the shapes, but the grass camoflages it pretty well.
The scarf is the only way I could think to include the symbol of his fave team, so I made the little patch and stuck it on a fondant 'scarf' to lay beside the ball.

Score!

1st Birthday Barn

It is Oliver's first birthday, and the family is moving to the country....so A Barn Cake!
This is vanilla cake with buttercream. I made a 9 x 12 and cut it into 3 sections to stack it. The roof pitch is just hand cut. The roof covering is MMF and so are the animals. The grass is vanilla frosting and the pathway-graham crumbs! Finished off with some Peek Frean doors and Voila!!

A piece of cake!

My niece has a Christmas-time birthday, and I was asked to make her cake this year. She is now 19. She is quirky, which I love!! So, I decided on a quirky cake! It was to be eaten after our Christmas dinner, so it didn't need to be very big.
It is one layer of vanilla, one layer of chocolate with chocolate fudge filling. It is covered with buttercream.
Yumm!!

Frosty the Snowman cake

This is a cake that I made for a repeat customer! She had me make a Tigger cake for her son's birthday a while ago...emailed me a couple of weeks ago to see if I would do 2 more cakes for her....for CHRISTMAS!! She picked them both up on Christmas eve. She would have picked them up sooner, but I didn't want them to be stale by the time she ate them!
This is marble cake, with buttercream icing. The broomstick and hat are fondant/gumpaste. Isn't he cute!!??

Slip covers

My neighbour had a new challenge for me-slipcovers for her WHITE upholtered dining chairs! She has two young'uns and the white just wasn't working for her! I suggested a denim or canvas cover, for toughness and washability.
So, I got a chair and the material (and some FANTASTIC red buttons) and set to work.
I love them! I now wish I had inappropriate, white, fabric chairs so that I could recover them!

New body for "Baby Dander"

They just don't make $10 dolls from Fields the way they used to.....wait a minute! Yes they do!! Lately Ezra has taken to dragging this large doll around the house, calling him "Baby Dander" (baby Zander, after his cousin)! It was purchased at Fields, at least a year ago.
Well, Baby Dander began to fall apart. The cloth body was made from the thinnest, cheapest material ever and the stitches were about as far apart as they could be and still hold the stuffing in!
So, I decided that if Ezra loved "Baby Dander" so much, I best do something to make him a little more sturdy. I waited until after Ez was asleep last night, and took the doll. I cut him all apart! Yikes! He was kind of freaky looking as a doll-even more freaky looking as parts!
I pinned and cut and stitched and by lunchtime today we have a new, improved "Baby Dander"! I made his new body out of an 'up-cycled' receiving blanket. It improves the babe two-fold, he is made of sturdier stuff, and he appears to have some clothes on! (Ezra prefers his babies al fresco!)