FORE-ty!!! A Very Golf-y Birthday

So this weekend, one of my co-workers (at my day-job), commissioned me to make golf cupcakes for her fiance's 40th birthday party. This was SUCH a fun project - I felt like a kid making little tiny golf clubs, golf balls and flags! The best part, in my opinion, was the birthday boy leaning up against the flag for the "19th hole", with beer in hand and golf clubs off to the side. I hope he got a round of golf in on his birthday weekend!

For the cupcake tower, I used, for the first time and definitely not the last, an amazing product from The Cupcake Tree. This was their mini-cupcake tower that holds up to 100 cupcakes. What an awesome product! So sturdy, and you can decorate the tower any way you like! Very affordable, well made and definitely a hit in my book!! They also have ones that hold up to 300 cupcakes AND they make square ones too. They have great examples of decorating ideas on their website as well - check it out!

Kids Stuff!

The past 2 weeks have been a lot of fun - I had two orders for kids cakes/cupcakes where I really got to experiment with making fondant and gumpaste animals. It was really fun!

Can you tell me how to get....to Sesame Street?

First up was a Sesame Street themed 1st birthday cake for my best friend's son Matthew. I was so psyched to do this cake for them, 1) because Matthew is a little cutiepie and 2) because I can't believe my best friend from high school and I are now at the point in our lives where we're going to our CHILDREN's birthday parties!!

The 3 tier cake was all yellow cake with vanilla filling and frosting. It was decorated all in primary colors with beading around the base of each tier and there was a Sesame Street character on each level - Big Bird, Cookie Monster, Elmo and Oscar. We also made a smash cake for Matthew in the form of a giant cupcake!

The Smash Cake

Jungle Boogie, Jungle Boogie...

Next up was my nephew's 4th birthday! He had a jungle themed party in a park in Hoboken - the perfect location and a beautiful day! We made vanilla and chocolate cupcakes with chocolate and vanilla frosting. For the kids at the party, each had a choice of a cupcake with a fondant jungle animal face - there were lions, tigers, elephants & monkeys to choose from. For the adults, there was a giant swirl of frosting on top. A little melty in the August heat, but it's my opinion that everyone should be licking their fingers at the tail end of eating a cupcake anyway! :)

Cakes in July

The last few weeks have been so busy with work, cakes and vacation, so this is the first chance I'm getting to post!

Wine Theme Bridal Shower Cake

A few weeks ago, I was asked to do a bridal shower cake for a wine themed party. The bottom tier was 3 layers of chocolate cake with raspberry filling between one layer and white chocolate filling between the other layers and frosted with white chocolate frosting. The top tier was red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting.


The cakes were covered with ivory fondant and I used champagne colored pearl dust to achieve a marbelized look. The grapes bunches were made of fondant as were the beads around the base of each tier.

Beach Ball 2nd Birthday Cake

This past weekend, I had a beach ball cake due for a 2nd birthday party. This was a really fun cake to make, especially because it was a sculpted cake and I got to get creative with the sea creatures that lived in the ocean at the base of the cake!

The base cake and one of the ball cakes were made with vanilla cake with vanilla pudding filling. The base cake had white chocolate frosting and the ball cake had dark chocolate frosting. The second ball cake was devils food cake with chocolate pudding and white chocolate frosting.

This was the first cake I've ever painted on and I have to say, I loved it! I was nervous as I started, because I felt if I messed up, I'd have to pull off the fondant and recover the cakes...but it turned out to be great to work with the food coloring paint and create an ocean-like quality on the base cake. Painting the beach balls was awesome too.

I hand sculpted the sea creatures and added the delicious graham cracker sand and after 15 hours of work, was SO excited with how this came out!

Yankee Stadium Cake

A few weeks ago I was commissioned to make a Yankee stadium cake for a 1st birthday party - I was pretty excited to try it! I'm including pictures of the progress...it was a yellow cake with raspberry filling, vanilla frosting, and covered with fondant. After baking the cakes, filling and stacking them, I carved the cakes into the shape of the new Yankee Stadium. Next, I carved out the center of the stadium - to be honest, I couldn't believe how easy it went!

I then frosted the cake, rolled out the fondant, and (expecting a big struggle to get the fondant over the cake without cracking) got the fondant on and smoothed down in ONE attempt! I was really excited. :) My twin boys and husband were napping, so unfortunately I had no one to share my excitement with - haha - so I waited until my husband woke up and came in to check on the progress...by then I felt like I could be cool and professional about it, so when he opened the fridge and was like "Wow! It looks great!" I was able to say "Aww, thanks!" But inside I was beaming with cake dork pride ;)

I had made all the signs for the stadium the night before, so I was able to start attaching those to the outfield fence right away. I laid out the field in green fondant, the bases and baselines in white, and finally a black fondant base for the stands. I used confetti sprinkles for people - that was really time consuming getting all those on there! But I loved how it looked when it was finished.

I finished off by adding the "YANKEE STADIUM" sign out front and adding the tall archways that appear on the new stadium as well...and couldn't believe I was finished! Hope you like how it turned out!

Heavenly Bites Cakes

A website is nice, but a blog is so much more personal! I've decided to start one for Heavenly Bites Cakes so that everyone can get to know the behind-the-scenes action and how my cakes come together!

To elaborate on who I am, I'm Tara Kelly - the owner, baker, decorator of Heavenly Bites Cakes! I'm the mother of twin boys (9 months old this week!) and wife of an awesome, sweet and supportive husband...I work full time for a cable news ad sales division in client service, but make time for what was a really fun hobby and is now becoming a thriving business at night after work and after the babies head off to dreamland!

Heavenly Bites Cakes began as a small idea in my mind put there by family and friends who, after my sister and I took cake decorating classes for fun, said that I should really consider cake decorating as a business. I laughed it off for a long time, but really came to enjoy learning new decorating tricks and found myself researching "how to" do something for cakes a lot!

One night, when I realized the huge satisfaction I got from laying fondant over a cake and getting no wrinkles at the edges for the first time, I realized I was a huge cake dork and denying it any further would just be foolish! :) So I made myself a website (http://www.heavenlybitescakes.com/) and some business cards, got a few gigs from friends and acquaintances, started building a portfolio and sooner than I imagined, Heavenly Bites Cakes was born!

I've had a lot of laughs, long nights, aching feet, and great satisfaction as each order has been made and delivered, so now I want to share it all with you out there - whoever might be interested! :)

Stay tuned for posts about my latest cakes!