mmmmm RUM!

For some reason around this time each year I start craving being poolside or beach side, lots of pretty new bathings suits, and rum punch! This year was worse then most, possibly because I could actually indulge myself in all of them since I am back in Florida and not longer still freezing my booty off this time of year in DC. Even after spending a few days at the pool, getting 3 new bathing suits, and having a few rum punches, I still couldn't get it out of my system. So I went on a baking adventure to find some cake recipes that included rum as well. But since I need people to help me eat all these creations I decided to throw a Caribbean themed dinner party, with jerk chicken, plantains, and of course RUM PUNCH!! It wasn't very hard to find some friends who were willing to go along with this with me. Needless to say, I was very excited!

I had a really hard time deciding what type of cake to go along with this little dinner party. I needed to 1 have rum in it, and 2 fit the Caribbean theme I was going for with all the food. So I started thinking about all the time I have spent in the Caribbean and what types of desserts I had while there. Of course the first thing that came to mind was Rum Cake! DUH! When I was in Jamaica I couldn't turn around without having someone shove rum cake in my face. And it is just oooh so yummy as well.

Then I remembered that while I was in Puerto Rico I had the most amazing food I have ever had. My husband and I visited there while on a cruise. Once we docked we immediately hailed a cab and told the driver to take us away from the tourist traps near where the ships dock and to a local favorite. Best thing we ever did! He brought us to this little place quite a ways away from the rest of the cruise ship passengers to a little place where we were the only Americans there. It was the best food I have ever had. While there I for the first time had tres leches cake (or three milk cake, so aptly named for the 3 different types of milk in the recipe) and I fell in love. So yummy!

So there was my dilemma, two delicious cakes to attempt, both fit the theme perfectly, but I could not decide. I was leaning a bit towards the rum cake, and asked my husband which he preferred, he in true fashion, chose opposite of me. One vote for each... So I opened it up to my guests to help me decide. They were no help at all! One couple voted for rum cake, one couple voted for tres leches. Sigh... What was I to do then but to make both then!?! hee hee

I know they aren't my usually decorated cakes that I post here, but I decided that this might just turn into a blog about all of my caking adventures, decorated or not. So I included pictures of these little yummies

I started my making a traditional rum cake, but instead of making it in a bundt pan, I decided to make them as mini bundts. After realizing how difficult it is to get batter poured into a mini bundt pan I quickly decided to make a few of the and then bake the rest of the batter in regular cake pans.

Here are my yummy little bundts after drenching them in a rum soaking syup. mmmmmmm!!!

This is my oh so yummy tres leches cake. If you look closely you and see the sweetened condenced milk the the cake is soaked in along the edges of the cake. Again mmmmmm!!

I know that this one looks pretty boring compared to all the other pictures I post, but I decided to include a picture of the rest of the rum cake that I baked in a regular pan, iced in vanilla buttercream. This one ended up being the favorite for most!

After an entire day at the pool, lots of rum punch, and lots of cake with rum in them as well, I have officially cured my need to anything rum for a while. As for pretty bathing suits and lots of sunshine? That is a hopeless case, I am a Florida girl afterall!

Lots to catch up on!

I have been horrible about keeping up with my blog. Probably because I keep up with the facebook page and no one really reads this, that I know of at least. Since I am starting to finally get some business after picking up shop in DC and moving to Fort Myers, Florida I have decided it is time to dust off the old blog again. My business cards have this site listed as a website and how horrible would it be for new customers to look at my blog and see that I haven't done anything in over a year and a half!? So after painstakingly uploading pictures of almost every cake I have made over the past year and a half, my stories about how these cakes came to be will be short and sweet. I promise to keep you better updated with all my fun cake stories though. So starting from the most recent and working backwards, here we go!!

This is a wedding cake I made for an old friend, whom I love dearly! She was having a giant dessert buffet at the reception, but still wanted a giant cake even though she didn't need to feed a ton of people with actual cake. This is what we came up with.

Now, you might be saying to yourself "self, that is a huge cake for not needing to feed many people." It is all an illusion though! The top 2 tiers are the only real cake here. We designed this monster to be mostly cake dummys with only the top being real cake. Let me tell you, cake dummys are much easier to work with then real cake! If you ever decide to try your hand at fondant I highly suggest going online to a cake supply shop (I prefer www.globalsugarart.com) and purchasing a few of these bad boys to practice on. They come in all sizes are pretty cheap and if properly taken care of can be reused. Or at least I am hoping they are because I plan on using mine a lot!

Anyways, the cake came out FANTABULOUS!! I had a few minor anxiety attacks when the first flower I made came out way to heavy to stay on the cake. Another when the final flower fell off the cake as I was setting it up. Fortunately I was able to fix it. Another freakout happened when the cake tiers almost slid completely off the fake tiers. Their wedding/reception was at the White Orchid in down town Ft. Myers, beautiful venue!! It is an old building though and it is raised because it's right on the river, meaning that the floors aren't excatly level and the shake when someone walks through the room. Apparently someone (probably me) went walking though the room before the cakes had set and the proceeded to slip almost all the way off before I noticed! Fortunately I caught them and fixed it right up before any damage was done! PHEW!!!





This is a bridal shower cake made again for some awesome friends. The bride to be is in love with Christian Louboutin red sole shoes. So I was asked to make a replica of any red sole shoe and add some cake to go with it. I thought it was pretty great that the requested portion of the cake wasn't even cake at all. So I have free reign to decide what the cake itself would look like. I thought that making it a "favorite things" cake incorporating some favorite bridal eccentials would be fun. Every bride needs some great bling, and what better place to get that then from Tiffany's!? And of course, every bride needs something special for the wedding night right? So I made a Victoria's Secret shopping bag to go with it.

I am pretty pleased with how the cake came out. I am a total perfectionist though and wish the shoe was more exact. The shoe I (and I use this term loosely) replicated has a slingback strap which I couldn't make work :( so I nixed it. It also has a logo scripted on the sole which I didn't want to butcher since its small but elaborate, so again nixed. Besides that though, it is pretty close so I am pleased.

This cake I made for a girl I used to babysit for waaaaaaaay back in the day. She just turned 25 so its obviously been a while since she has needed a babysitter! She loves the beach and likes to enjoy a cocktail while relaxing there. Who doesn't though? Right? So this is "Ashley" enjoying her cocktail on the beach. This was my first attempt at making a person out of gumpaste and besides giving her ginormous boobies, she cake out really great!

This is a birthday cake I made for my niece. She loves kitties, and hello kitty is the epitomy of cute kitty's. Another fun note about this cake is that she really wanted a pink cake, so i added some pink food coloring to a vanilla cake and then added sprinkles on top of that and we created pink sprinkle cake! It looked so fun when cut into!

This is a birthday cake for another niece. The last week of february/first week of march is very a very busy birthday week in my family. Four birthday in 7 days! She wants to be a teacher when she grows up and wanted a "teacher cake" This is what I made for her.

My son, one of the four birthdays in a weeks time, is obsessed with Mickey Mouse. He had been begging for a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse cake for months prior to his birthday. He loved loved LOVED his MMC cake!!

My first fondant cake I ever made was a Christmas present cake. So in honor of that every Christmas I make a Christmas present anniversary cake for a random Christmas function. This one came with me to a dinner with a bunch of friends, we hadn't all been together since last Christmas and since we were all in town we all caught up at dinner one night. A "Tina cake" as they call it was a must for dessert!

A dear friend of mine got married this past Christmas as well. I was so honored when He asked me to make his wedding cake! They wanted to have cupcakes but still have a cake to cut. It came out great!

Here is a close up of the cake before it was delivered and set up with all the cupcakes.

Most of my customers are friends. Which is fun! I made this for another friend who's little girl was turning 2. She loves sesame street, especially cookie monster, so this is what I came up with. I wanted to keep in Sesame Street tradition and make it in bright primary colors, have lots of the SS friends on it, and of course, it needed an educational element hence the abs's and 123's.

All the SS friends came out awesome, except big bird.... he looked like he had a rough night. I was still very happy with how it came out. Here are some close ups of the monsters.

Cookie monster!

Elmo

Oscar the grouch

Ernie and Gover.

Another baby shower cake. This one was made to match the invitations sent out. It was jungle themed. I had a blast making all the animals on this cake!

This was for my nieces 1st birthday party. Yes, I have a LOT of nieces, no nephews... She loves puppies and pools, so we have a puppy in a pool!



I had a lot of fun making all the small details for this cake. I especially like the rubber duckies. Fun note about this cake, I live in Fort Myers, my brother and his family live in Vero Beach, 3 hours away and on the other coast of the state. So I had to make all the pieces to this cake at home, then traveled 3 hours with it in the back seat of my husbands truck. Oh, and it got to share the backseat with my 2 kids and all their stuff to occupy the during the drive! Amazingly the cake made it in over without incident and was then assembled.

One of my nieces, yes another niece(!) was having a cake walk at her elementary school and asked if I would donate a cake for her. Wait, you want me to make a super cute cake for you to go up against a bunch of store bought cakes and recieve a ton of exposure for it?? Let me think... OF COURSE!!! It was the weekend of halloween so I decided to make one of my favorite halloween cakes, the little monster. I made 2 so she wouldn't be temtped to try to win the won I donated and our families had dinner together afterwards and had monster cake for dessert.

This is a wedding cake. The wedding and reception was at the Pink Shell Resort on Ft. Myers Beach. A beach wedding deserves a beach cake! They asked for it in the blue to match the guys shirts and to have seashells on it.

These pictures are a little out of order, but whatever! I made a wedding cake for a friend of some of my friends, the bride works with my mom as well. Her (now) husband wanted a grooms cake as well. he found this great cake topper, you know the one with the bride dragging the groom? Well the one he found played off of that. It was a bride dragging the groom off of the couch, there were gaming console remotes and coke cans everywhere. It was great! he wanted it on the cake since it fit so well with them. She said no, but he could have a grooms cake with that topper if he wanted. His game of choice is a game called portal, this cake has images from that game on it.

This is the wedding cake that went with the grooms cake. This was my first official cake after moving to Florida and I hadn't expected the humidity to effect the cake as much as it did. The cake was fine until it left my house for the delivery. Once it hit the humidity that fondant on the bottom tier started to sag a bit. By the time I got the venue the entire front of the bottom tier had folded over! I was devastated!!! Fortunately I was dealing with the most laid back bride ever and she didn't seem to mind. It was definately leaning, but in the grand scheme of things it wasn't so bad. But I am a perfectionist and need it to be perfect. I hated myself for a long time afterwards and even considered giving up cakes! I am not going to let some stupid moisture in the air beat me though! So I will take better care to make sure the stupid humidity won't kill another cake!

This was my last cake in the DC area. So sad!! But I went out with a bang! This bride wanted cupcakes but still wanted to have a cake to cut, so we made a giant cupcake tower with a small cake on top. She wanted gerbera daisys on the cake and cupcakes, and since she had 3 flavors of cupcakes we decided each flavor would have it's own design. Oh how I hated daisys by the end of this! I made over 300 gumpaste flowers. It took over a week to get them all made!! But the end result was worth it!

My husband LOVES anything to do with anything Sci-fi. So for his birthday being the good little wife I am, I made him his very own star wars cake. It was a surprise, he had no clue it was coming. When he walked up the stairs and saw this waiting for him in the kitchen I had a very happy sci-fi nerd hubby!

These cakes were made for a couple of girls graduating from Potomac Falls High school. They wanted their cakes to be graduation caps for their high school and to also have the colleges they were heading to be represented as well. This is what we came up with.

A dear friend of mine was having a baby so of course I demanded that I make her shower cake. They decided on cupcakes and wanted owls since the nursery and the shower invites were owls. I hand cut each one of these stinking owls which took FOREVER! But they are so cute!!

I had been dying to make a ducky in a barrel cake for so long. So when a friend asked me to make a cake for a baby shower she was planning but had no ideas what she wanted it to look like I jumped at the chance to convince someone to let me make this. She loved the idea and I loved that I finally got to make one!!

This baby shower cake was made to match the crib bedding. I got to use my nifty little gumpaste gun that my hubby got me for christmas for the first time which made me oh so happy too! I had some issues with the turtles head. It didn't want to stay on!! It was pretty heavy and kept falling away from the body. I don't remember what I did to fix this problem (serves me right for waiting a year to post about it right?) Alls well that ends well though and the turtle kept his cute little head!

A birthday cake for a giant Steelers fan. Oddly enough there are a lot of Steelers fans in DC. Guess the redskins stink enough that people jump to the next closet team? no clue. Anyways, the birthday girl was turning 50 and her friend throwing her the party thought it would be fun to make her a jersey with her last name on it and her age as the number. I loved how this cake came out!

This is a baby shower cake I made for a friend of mine. I absolutely love the baby converse and use any excuse to use them on a cake.

Sweet 16 birthday cake for a friend of mine who was having a dance party. We decided to go with a 60's/70's tie dye cake with smiley faces and peace signs. She LOVED it!

Schools for schools is this really great organization where a school in the states adopts a school in Africa. Potomac Falls High school is adopted a school though this organization and asked me to make a cake for a lock-in fundraiser they were having. So I made matching cakes for both P-falls and the school they adopted and added a cake in the middle that is the Schools for Schools logo.

I was bored one afternoon and since we were having dinner with friends that evening who were expecting a baby boy I decided to make a fun cake for dessert.

I love beach cakes! This is the second version of this cake I have been able to make. This one was for a 40th surprise birthday. The birthday girl loves the beach. I changed the top around from the last time I made this cake, I added an umbrella and if you look closely you can see a maragrita glass with a sugar/salt rim and a book. I love making all the little details so much!

Birthday cake for a guy who loves poker. I was very excited to make a poker table cake!

My daughters birthday cake! She loves Disney Prinsesses and The Princess Frog had just come out so she requested a Princess Tiana cake. She loved it!

Likewise, my son is obsessed with Disney Pixars Cars. So this was his birthday cake. When it was finished he gave it a kiss, I think that means he liked it.

40th birthday cake for a guy who likes cigars. His wife requested a cigar humidor. Usually when I have issues with cakes its a design element that give me problems, not so with this one. This one had me in tears during the baking phase!! I went through about 3 cakes that were destroyed upon taking them out of the pan! I greased and floured the pans like normal, I have no idea what went wrong. After 3 failed tried I found a new chocolate cake recipe and tried that one instead. It came out of the pan just fine and tasted amazing! So even though it gave me trouble I got a new recipe out of it. Silver lining? I say yes!

I love this cake! The day of this wedding was the 2 days after I got home from a Disney vacation with my family. I didn't want to turn the cake down due to lack of time, so I jammed all of it into 1 day. I worked straight up until I had to leave to deliver it then slept for a LONG time!

If you have stuck with this long long post this far, you will remember that I mentioned that I make a Christmas present cake each year and bring it to a party or other Christmas function. This was 2009's Christmas cake.

I was asked by Riverside Church in Sterling VA to donate a cake to their Share Christmas World Market. I don't remember all the details, but all sorts of crafts were donated to this market and all the proceeds went to an organization that I am not remembering at the moment. I think it was something to support something in Africa. (dang! never again will I wait this long to post about my cakes!!) I donated a cake for both the church and for the Young Life table at the market as well. I got a bunch of orders out of this donation as well. I love free publicity that turns into lots of orders!

So that ends my very very long post!!! I will do a much better job at keeping this updated now :o)