A Rosette Frosted 89th Birthday Cake

A sweet client ordered an 89th birthday cake for her grandmother...in the shape of an "89"! She left the decorating up to me, letting me know that some flowers would be okay...I was so excited because I've been wanting to try a new buttercream decorating trick I saw on I am baker's blog (link below)!

The buttercream is piped on using a flower tip so that when it comes out, it looks like large, (butter)creamy, delectable rosette's! I was thrilled with how it came out, giving the numbers of the cake an unexpected look of softness, rather than the straight lines of smoothed buttercream...

I used a frill cutter to give the "Happy Birthday Vera" letters a place on the cake to stand out among the buttercream rosettes, added some little fondant roses around the base of the cake and a large pink fantasy flower on top as well.

Details:

Happy 89th Birthday to Vera!!

Tara

Client Testimonial:

"Hi Tara,



Just wanted to take a moment to thank you for the beautiful and delicious cake you made for me and my family. It was very impressive; I received many compliments on it. And I loved how you decorated it. (Much classier and more age appropriate than my sprinkles suggestion!) Anyways, it was enjoyed by all and I just wanted you to know.

Thank you,


Anita

Links:
I am Baker

Sweet Baby Blues

Sweet baby Luca was christened in February and I was so honored to make this cake to celebrate his special day! His mom, Lauren, ordered a delicious combo - one tier was a s'mores flavor (graham cracker cake, marshmallow fluff filling and chocolate buttercream and the other tier was a white cake with chocolate pudding filling and vanilla frosting. Here's the cake!

The little baby blocks were made out of fondant...

The bottom tier was quilted and the top tier had stars and mini edible pearls dotted around the cake.

God Bless Luca Jax!!!

Tara

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.