Two Birthday Cakes

Yay for cake! After completely disappearing off the face of the (blogging) world for the past month and a half, I'm finally back! I'm extremely sorry for the long absence. If anyone is to blame for my absence, it's certainly not me. I blame summer vacation combined with MCAT prep. I'm also extremely sorry to say that these are my last two cakes before I take the MCAT in March. I will probably blog about a few cupcakes and cookies here and there, but nothing big and fancy like the two babies I made this weekend.

Now... on to the baby photos! ;)

The first cake I made was of a very rare coin handmade out of gold during the era of 13 colonies. There are only a few in the world, each worth millions of dollars... says my brother. If you want to know more about it, you can easily do an internet search for the Brasher Doubloon.

Here is what a real one looks like...

http://www.centralstates.info/history16.html

And here is what the cake one looks like...

Made for my brother's co-worker David, who is a coin collector.

The next cake was for another of my brother's co-workers. Her name is Helen and she likes Louis Vuitton purses very much. 

The front

The side

The back

The side tag, inscribed with the words 

"Louis Vuitton

Paris"

The zipper

And the thing you close the zipper with

Happy Birthday Helen and David! 

I hope you enjoyed your cakes :)

**Edit!** For those of you who were wondering, the purse cake was a white almond sour cream cake with cream cheese buttercream filling, and the coin cake was a devil's food cake with chocolate buttercream filling, covered with chocolate ganache. Both cakes were covered and decorated with homemade fondant.

Anatomy Cake

Today was the talent show for the Pre-Med program that I'm in, and I decided to make an anatomy cake for everyone.

Here it is before surgery...

And after...

Oh, wow, I guess the "surgeons" just couldn't stop themselves.

Look at all their fancy operating tools! ;)

And now, a special treat for you- a video that my older brother put together! The video condenses two days of work into 2 minutes, and in my humble opinion, it is very fun to watch.  So please, enjoy! :-D

Wedding Dress Cake

I made this cake for my mom's co-worker Michelle.  Everyone at my mom's work had a bridal shower luncheon for Michelle, and my mom was responsible for bringing the cake. So what does she do? She asks me to make one, and honestly, it was a lot of fun :)

Everything is edible, even the dress, which is made of cake and fondant. The roses and rose petals are made of fondant as well and brushed with luster dust (edible glitter).

I think my favorite part was the bouquet of roses because of how hard it was to make it. It's no more than 1 inch in diameter with about 16 tiny roses.

Oh, and putting the sugar pearls on was pretty meticulous as well.

Actually, my most favorite part was coming back from class and seeing this...

I'm glad it tasted as good as it looked :)

Congratulations, Michelle! 

I hope you and Tim have a blessed marriage!

Teddiursa Graduation Cake

My cousin graduated from high school last week, and for his graduation party, I made him a cake of the Pokemon Teddiursa, who is one of his favorites. The open book says "Congrats JV! Class of 2010."  Teddiursa's head, ears, arms, feet, and tail are made of Rice Krispies treats, and everything else is cake. I think my cousin really liked his cake because after decapitating Teddiursa and eating the ears, my cousin carried the head around all night.

He took lots of pictures with it...

Proposed with it...

Played hot potato with it...

And he even got everyone to dance with it! 

I understand this sounds a little weird, but honestly, it was the most fun I ever had playing with cake. You should try it sometime ;)

Congrats, Cousin, and good luck in college!

Love you!

Pink Birthday Cake

It feels good to be back :) I've been so busy this past month that I've barely had time to even breathe!  Well, maybe not that busy, but you understand what I mean.  I recently started my MCAT classes and things have been tough, so blog posts between now until I take the MCAT (probably March 2011) will be sporadic, and sometimes rare.  Yes, I understand that's probably not the best way to keep your interest in my blog, but "Professional Cake Decorator" comes second on my to-do list.  First things first!

I made this cake for Deborah's 20th birthday. She's a wonderful person and an amazing friend, so this is my way of saying "Hey, I think you're awesome."  The cake is Funfetti with strawberry jam filling and cream cheese icing.

And finally, the obligatory "cutting the cake" picture:

Fondant tends to darken over time, hence the darker pink color. 

Just a little FYI, in case you freaked out about the color change :)

Happy Birthday, Deborah!

Yoshi's Graduation

I can't wait until Friday to post because...

1. I will be extremely busy Friday.
2. I'm way too excited about this to wait.

This post is for an amazing person- Tiffany.  She's smart, funny, nice, and she's graduating from college and going to medical school.  So here is the cake I made for her to celebrate her accomplishments. Congratulations again, Tiffany and good luck in the coming years!

Curiosity Mixed with Fruit Puree

I have one more week of school! My finals are next week and then afterward, I can enter baking mode like crazy! I'm so excited.  Sorry I couldn't post last week; I had an Organic Chemistry exam on Friday then a Histology practical on Monday. It was a terrible week for me.

This week, however, I found some time to bake.  We had a ton of fruit so I threw some strawberries and blackberries into the blender along with a cup of sugar. I liquefied the fruit and strained out the seeds, leaving me with about 2 1/2 cups of smooth and delicious fruit puree.

I actually had no idea what to do with it.  All I knew was I wanted to eat some. So I did. It all started with.. What if I did this? then.. Hmmm, how about this? and the next thing I knew, I had eaten this fruit puree in four different ways.

Fruit Puree Dessert #1: Throw it on Ice Cream

Sorry, no picture here. I was so excited to eat it that I forgot to take a picture!

Fruit Puree Dessert #2: Sugar Cookies with Jelly Centers

This is actually very simple.  First I thickened about 1 cup of fruit puree with 1 Tablespoon of cornstarch.  Then I cut out two cookies with the same cutter, cutting out the center of one of those cookies with a smaller cookie cutter. Baked them and ta-da! cute cookies!

This cookie was baked with a special someone in mind :)

Then I "glued" the cookies together with a bit of royal icing and decorated.

Last, I filled the centers with the cooled fruit.

I love that you can make all kinds of shapes.

Fruit Puree Dessert #3: Mini Pies

I had some leftover cookie dough so I lined a mini-cupcake pan with dough and poured a little bit of fruit in the center.  After they were done baking, I had mini-pies no larger than a strawberry.

The inside

It was really really good.

Fruit Puree Dessert #4:  Mini-Popsicles

After indulging in more calories than I needed, I figured I should freeze the rest of the fruit to keep it fresh. Then I remembered how much I loved to make my own popsicles when I was younger.

I found these tiny cups lying around the house.  

Since they were small enough, I used toothpicks for the popsicle stick.

I used a piece of aluminum foil to hold the stick in place while it was freezing overnight.

The next day, I ran the outside of the cup under cold water for a few seconds. It easily slid out in one perfect popsicle piece.

Even my little brother thought they were delicious.

And I hope you do too!