Sweet Sixteen

Here's a sweet 16 cake for a girl who's birthday happens to fall close to Halloween. Instead of trying to combine both halloween and a 16th birthday, we chose to use the halloween colors orange, green, and purple to create a fun and festive sweet 16 cake. I am really happy with how it came out, and really love the color combo too!! The cake is vanilla with a dark chocolate buttercream.

Happy Halloween!

My little boy, who is 2, became obsessed with this cake. He has recently become obsessed with bugs. He claims any bug he see's as his pet and names each one spiderman (and no, none of his "pet" bugs have been allowed in the house). So he was very excited about a spiderman that was allowed in the house! He kept running into the kitchen to see it and to blow it kisses and say "aww it's spiderman!" Youhave to admit, the spider is pretty cute, right? haha!!

Again this cake resulted out of my post wisdom teeth boredom. I read a ton and figured I'd read a lot while I was recovering from having my wisdom teeth out, but the pain meds left me not really able to focus on the words in front of me, so a lot of baking happened instead!

This is another recipe I have been wanting to try for a while. It is an espresso cake with chocolate buttercream. I like to send new recipes to work with my husband so he can share it with his co-workers and I can get a lot of opinions on it. This recipe consisted of actual ground espresso beans in it, so it came out with a grainy texture that I wasn't expecting. Due to that and the fact that espresso isn't everyones favorite flavor it came back with mixed reviews. So I will be working this recipe. I already have some ideas in mind as to how to make it better and am excited to see how it turns out after I play with the recipe a bit.

One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish

A friend of mine had her baby boy 4 weeks early, and was in the process of decorating his room in a Dr. Suess theme when the little guy decided to make his surprise appearence. I had also just had my wisdom teeth out and was bored out of my mind with nothing to do and had been dying to make a pumpkin spice cake. All these things combined resulted in this cake! I didn't want the design to be to crazy since one I was still recovering from my surgery, and two I was giving the cake away, but I still wanted to be able to make it fun and cute and try something new.

The hat is made out of gumpaste, and since I've never made a gumpaste sculpture that was this big before, or that stood on it's end, I wasn't expecting the weight of it to keep sinking into itself. I'd get it to look the way I wanted it to look, stand it up to dry and then when I'd go back to check on it it would be half the height and the bottom of it was 2 times thicker than the top! So needless to say, a project that I thought was going to be super quick and easy turned into something a little more challenging, but I am happy with how it came out.

The cake itself is a pumpkin spice cake with a cinnamon buttercream, which has become my new favorite cake! It is O so yummy!