Turkeys for Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I feel very blessed.  I love what I do and I feel so fortunate to have the opportunity to do it.  I'm especially grateful to be able to do this with my parents.  I am incredibly lucky to have them by my side helping, supporting and encouraging me.  For this I am forever grateful.

This week we've been very busy (another blessing!) and I'm happy to share with your our Thanksgiving creations.  We are so happy that our desserts were a part of so many Thanksgiving celebrations, hopefully making many tummies happy!

Turkey Cupcakes

Process of the Turkey Cakes

Turkey body & platter.

Feathers after being dusted, before being glittered.

Turkey with feathers on the platter.

Turkey Cake #1

Turkey Cake #2

I wish you a wonderful Holiday season and hope that you had a great Thanksgiving!  If you are shopping tomorrow, best of luck to you!  Next up in the Holiday cake department, Christmas cakes!

James Bond Auction Fundraiser

I attended Catholic school (Lansing Catholic HS & IHM St. Casimir) from Kindergarten to 12th grade, so Catholic schools have a special place in my heart.  When one of my favorite customers asked me to make a donation to St. Martha's fundraiser I was more than happy to be a part of their evening.  Rather than donate a small cake, I thought dessert might be fun!

My favorite part: The olives!

The Suitcase

This was just a fun cake celebrating a 50th Birthday.  When designing a cake with a client I often ask if that person has a special hobby or something really important in his or her life.  In this case, the recipient loves to travel, and in fact just returned from a trip abroad.  Having never tackled a suitcase cake before, I jumped at the chance!  I absolutely love designing something for the first time!

First we had to start with our cake.  You cannot bake a suitcase, you need to carve it.  It started as two 7" square cakes with buttercream filling in the middle.

After covering the cake with chocolate fondant and adorning it will a few details, such as the handle and buckles, we ended up with a petite suitcase!

Art Deco for the Christman Company

Although this cake was made in February 2008 (wow, I cannot believe it was that long ago!) it is still one of our most memorable cakes.  This cake was ordered by the Christman Company in Lansing.  It was made for the grand opening of their new headquarters in downtown Lansing.  It is a beautiful building!  We were so honored to be a part of their celebration!

We knew this cake was going to be fun, so we took the time to take several photos of the process, since it's always a bit of an adventure!  I have been looking forward to sharing them with you!  I hope that you enjoy!

Phase One: Stacking the Cake

This is our blank canvas.

Phase Two:  Decorate!

Piece by piece...actually now that I think of it, that's the name of a song from a CD that we listened to on repeat while we made the cake!

Attaching the strips of fondant with water using a paintbrush.

Carefully attaching each glitter dot with piping gel.  A bit tedious, but I was still having a ball!

It's coming together...

Final touches Tuesday morning.  You know it's a Tuesday because you can see the GF bread baking in the oven!

Ta da!  It's finished!

Edible Gift Box

Happy Birthday!  This cake was created for my college roommate's ( and good friend) mother last week in celebration of her birthday.  I absolutely love making cakes for special people in my life.  It brings me great pleasure to be a part of the celebration.

Britt and I were roommate's our freshman year at Albion College.  Britt and I are very opposite in some ways.  I am bright colors and pastels, she is rich jewel tones.  Our mothers are the same way, thus where we get our style!  So when she asked me to make her mother's birthday cake her only request was no pastels!  :-)  In college it was as though a line of color separated our spaces.  My side was hot pink and lemon yellow and her side was rich burgundy, gold and amber.  It was a fun room!  There was certainly no lack of color!

I will be making Britt's wedding cake next September and I cannot wait!  She told me to "just make something!"  This will be fun.  I think my only guideline is "no pastels."  :-)

Unfortunately, photos never do a cake justice.  The texture on her mother's cake was achieved through the use of colored dusting powder.  It had the look of velvet on top of deep purple fondant.  It was so pretty.

Britt's family loves buttercream, but we couldn't make the box look real unless we used fondant.  So to make up for it I split all of the layers of the kahlua fudge cake (for all flavors click here) and alternated buttercream and chocolate ganache in between each layer.  It looked (and hopefully tasted) divine!  I'm sure with all of that buttercream and ganache they did not mind the fondant one bit!

Happy Birthday, again!