Grandma Kelly's 89th Birthday

My husband's grandmother turned an amazing 89 a few weeks ago! The family gathered at Aunt Debbie's house to celebrate her birthday - it was so much fun to have us all together and to sing Happy Birthday to celebrate this woman who is so special to all of us!

Other than the color pink, I was given free license on the decoration of the cake, which was so much fun as I got to try out some new decorating tricks and tools I've been wanting to work on! Here's the cake!

The flower was made by cutting out ovals and using a fondant ball tool to stretch it out and make it more petal-like. Instead of making the flower the technical way with wires and such, I took each petaled oval and placed them on the cake, layering they around each other to create the flower and adding the center of the flower by making a little ball of fondant and creating the little divots in it by using a texture sheet I purchased at NY Cake Supply.

Another fun purchase I made at NY Cake was a crimping tool and a mold/cutter for lace borders. The crimper tool is something I've been DYING to try after seeing the amazing work done by The Caketress in Toronto. It's truly amazing how such a tiny tool can help make such a large statement on a cake. If you haven't seen her work before, you MUST stop by her site!! (links are below).

The lace border mold and cutter makes the band of fondant around the base of a cake tier beg to be noticed - I've noticed it on a lot of wedding cakes of designers I admire lately and was so psyched to finally try it out on a cake where I got to choose the design!

It was truly an honor to make the cake for Grandma Kelly's 89th birthday and it was even more special to spend the day with her and the whole family, with all the kids running around making her chuckle at their craziness - so sweet and such great memories!

Love you Grandma Kelly!! :)

Tara

Links:
NY Cake Supply
The Caketress 

Butterfly 1st Birthday

For sweet Mia's 1st birthday, her mom and dad threw her an adorable butterfly themed party - so cute!! They ordered a butterfly shaped cake and cookies in the shape of an "M" for party favors.

The cake was a gorgeous hot pink with green and brown accents (all to match the colors of the invitations and party decor). The design was based off a cake picture we found online by Dreamiedecors...so cute!!

The cookies were sugar cookies with a little hint of cinnamon, decorated in a light pink royal icing with a little hot pink fondant butterfly offset in the letter "M" to match the party theme.

I like that these three "M"'s lined up look like they say "Mmm!"

We were lucky enough to be invited to this sweet party and had a wonderful time celebrating with Mia! My boys loved the magician, the pizza, and the fun times they had with all the children in attendance! They still talk about one of the little girls who kept talking about "Chuckie Cheese" and whenever they see a picture of a butterfly they say "Miiiiiiaaaaaaaa's cake!!"

Happy Birthday 1st Mia!!

Tara

Polo Baby Shower

This yellow and blue baby shower was lovingly planned by the mom-to-be and her family - when I delivered the cake, they were all there together setting up for the party, it was so sweet to see!

They ordered TWO stacked shirt cakes and cupcakes with polo onesie toppers...here they are:

And the Polo Onesie Cupcake Toppers!

Congrats to the sweet mom-to-be!!

Tara

For Japan With Love {Blogger Day of Silence}

http://www.forjapanwithlove.com/

Glazed Irish Soda Bread Pops {Tutorial}

Top o' the mornin' to ya! With a name like Tara Kelly (and a maiden name like McDermott), ya better believe I'll be speakin' with an Irish brogue on this blessed day where we honor the great St Patrick! Ahh, St. Patty's Day, how I love ya!

I'd love for you to check out my tutorial on how to make Glazed Irish Soda Bread pops - my last minute inspiration tonight! I wanted to make something special so my wee ones have a bit of heavenly sweetness tomorrow morning to celebrate St. Patty's Day!

I thought about this idea over the weekend, but didn't have time to make Irish soda bread, so I thought my idea would be lost till next year...however, my dear Aunt Camille happened to make a loaf for us and dropped it off while I was at work today! Twas the luck of the Irish that made this possible!!

The hubs and I had a slice or two with dinner of course! Then, to try out my idea, I cut off the edges of the loaf and crushed it up in a mixing bowl.  I mixed up a small batch of an easy vanilla glaze (recipe at end of post)...

...and just like making a cake pop, I put some of the glaze into the mix of crushed up Irish Soda Bread and smushed it all together till it all came together!

I used my mini-cookie scoop to make small bites, rolled them gently to make them perfectly round , popped on the lollipop sticks and into the freezer they went!

After about 20 minutes I took the pops out, added 1 drop of electric green food color to the glaze and dipped away! I had added more milk to the glaze to give make the consistency thinner, so it was pretty drippy and ran down the sides of the lollipop sticks, but once it set it was super easy to clean off.

The small amount of glaze mixed into the soda bread and then the thin layer that covered the pop added a wonderful sweetness to an already delicious, simply sweet bread. To make this even MORE Irish, you could probably mix some Bailey's Irish Cream into the glaze - hmmm, I may need to try this again tomorrow night!

Heyyyy!! Who took a bite of my pop?!?! Was it a hungry leprechaun!?!?

Happy St. Patty's Day to you all! May the luck of the Irish be with you always!! ;)

Tara

Simple Vanilla Glaze

4 tablespoons melted butter

2 cups confectioners sugar

2 tablespoons of milk

1/2 teaspoon of vanilla

Melt the butter and mix it into the confectioners sugar. Add milk and vanilla and beat until smooth.

(Note: I made this recipe using only 1/2 the ingredients because I didn't want a lot leftover. It was really thick after I mixed everything together, so I added little bits of milk at a time to thin it out to the consistency I was looking for.

Winter "One"derland!

In the midst of the massive amounts of snow that fell in the northeast this winter, a sweet little girl named Annabelle turned one! Her mom planned an adorably themed Winter "One"derland party to match the weather we'd been having!  Such a cute idea!

I had the pleasure of making the baby shower cake for her mom, 30th Birthday Guinness Cupcakes for her dad, and her mini cakes with little angels on top for her christening!  I was so thrilled they asked me to do her 1st birthday cake as well - what an honor!

The cake was a snowy white with silver and pink snowflakes, a snow baby, a snowman and sweet little winter animals!

Snow Baby:

Another one of the snow baby! ;)

Penguin:

Bear:

Snowman:

And one more pic of the whole cake! ;)

Annabelle's mom sent me a picture of Annabelle sitting on the table next to the cake - it was such a sweet picture!! She looked so happy and proud to be 1 - and she should be! What a milestone!

Happy Birthday Annabelle!!

Tara

Celebrating Milestones

There are so many milestones to celebrate with family, and this sweet clan got to celebrate a baptism and a 60th birthday together!

The party took place in January, right in the middle of all the insane snowstorms we had in the northeast this winter! So the cakes were designed with the winter setting outside in mind! Pure white fondant, with silvery snowflakes as a simple but elegant decoration!

Here is the baptism cake:

It was vanilla cake with a decedent cannoli cream filling and vanilla frosting.

Here is the 60th birthday cake made to match:

This cake was vanilla cake with a nutella filling and vanilla frosting.  Yum!!

Congrats to this sweet family on the wonderful milestones they were able to celebrate together!!

Tara

Griswold Christmas Vacation Jersey Cake

"All the kin folk gather round

The lovely Christmas tree

Hearts are glowing full of joy

Sense the gifts that we're giving

And the love that we're living

Why can't it remain

Ohhh all through the year

Each day the same

Heyeah, that's what I wanna hear

I'll tell ya

It's truly amazin

That spirit of Christmas"

-"That Spirit of Christmas", Ray Charles, "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation"

One of my co-workers turned 30 in January! His sweet wife threw him a surprise party and ordered a cake for him to look like the Clark Griswold jersey from "National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation"! The birthday boy loves that movie and even has his own jersey that he wears around Christmas-time, especially when he's high up on the roof of his house decorating it with lights, ala Clark Griswold, for the neighborhood Christmas light competition!! ;)

The theme of the party was a casino and it was complete with casino tables, professionally run games and even dollar bills with the birthday boy's picture on them, which everyone used to "gamble"! The Happy Birthday sign was written out with fondant poker chips to match the casino theme!

Such a great theme for a 30th birthday party and a very creative design from my client who really thought of a special way to capture the fun spirit of her husband on his 30th birthday! (On a side note, the party was originally scheduled for a week before, but my poor client ended up in the hospital with appendicitis!! Somehow, she managed to keep the party a surprise from the birthday boy, reschedule it for a week later at their house, get him out of the house in order to get all the casino paraphenalia set up and surprise the heck out of him all while recovering from an operation...she is one tough cookie!!) :)

I was so thrilled to hear that he really liked the cake and actually went and put his Griswold jersey on for the rest of the party after seeing it! Loved making this cake and love the family it went to!! Happy 30th Birthday Bryan! And awesome job on the party Siobhan!! You guys rock!

Tara

"Domo Arigato..."

"...Mister Roboto!"

My sister and I often challenge each other to find a song that goes with any word that comes out of our mouths...sometimes it's a little scary that we can really come up with something for anything!! So I'm going to attempt to do that for each of my cakes! We'll see how it goes! ;)

This cake was ordered by my client for her son Benny's 1st Birthday. She threw an ADORABLE robot party for him!! She found the cutest party set online for modern robots and we designed the cake after one of the cute little guys appearing on the plates and napkins...I loved this cute little guy and had a hard time saying goodbye! ;)

All decorations were made of fondant and the cake got it's shimmery sheen from silver food color airbrushed over the fondant. (Drama! My airbrush broke when I was halfway up the cake! No worries though!!  I just handpainted the other half!)

The cake was carrot cake with caramel buttercream filling and vanilla buttercream frosting...so decadently delicious!!

Happy 1st Birthday Benny! It was an honor to make this cake for you! :)

Tara

The Lullaby on Broadway

"Come on along and listen to

The lullaby of Broadway.

The hip hooray and bally hoo,

The lullaby of Broadway.

The rumble of the subway train,

The rattle of the taxis.

The daffy-dills who entertain

At Angelo's and Maxie's!"

- "The Lullaby of Broadway", 42nd Street

I adore Broadway shows and showtunes and grew up singing along to many a tune with my dad (one of our favorites was "Together at Last" from Annie), sister and brother in long car rides much to my mother's chagrin! In fact, she did her own blog post after meeting long lost Ireland relatives who had musical talent and she finally revealed her true thoughts of our family's talent...OUCH!! Hahaha! ;) I guess I should have known how she felt after I got a karyoke machine for Christmas one year and she left the house when my dad and I were singing some Phantom of the Opera tunes...hahah oh well! Now I sing them to my kids who (at the age of 2 1/2) seem to love them!! (for now!) hahah!

This Broadway themed cake ordered by my client for her parent's 40th wedding anniversary was an awesome cake to start the new year on - it was so much fun to make!!  The theme of the party was Broadway, so we included fondant decorations representing Broadway shows (an admission ticket, popcorn (a yummy intermission snacks), a megaphone, a playbill displaying the names of the couple, a red carpet, stars and even a scene marker which displayed the anniversary year!)

The cake itself was vanilla cake, chocolate pudding filling and chocolate ganache frosting...so yummy!!

Details closer up:

This cake was so much fun to work on, so colorful and vibrant!! Best wishes to the anniversary couple - here's to another 40 wonderful years!!!

"I'm Gonna Knock You Ouuut"!!

This cake was ordered by my client for her dad who was celebrating a very important birthday - the birthday he celebrated after beating prostate cancer. He's a boxer, not only fighting battles in the ring, but also a battle within.  He's an inspiration to his family, and once I heard his story, he was an inspiration to me as well!

The prostate cancer ribbon was the "Happy Birthday" banner for the cake. Such a thoughtful cake design that his daughter came up with!!

God Bless!!


Tara