Icing Smiles Part Two!

In a previous post on the blog I spoke about the amazing organization called Icing Smiles. In a combined effort with bakers across the country, Icing Smiles provides birthday cakes for critically or terminally ill children and their siblings. Please read my first blog to understand why this organization is SO important to me. I had been called upon a few times to provide a cake, but I kept having conflicts with my schedule... until Mia. 

Mia was born on December 20 with a congenital heart condition called Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome (HLHS) and in short, the left side of her heart was severally underdeveloped. You can read more about Mia's journey on her mom's Facebook page. She's seriously a trooper and I couldn't wait to meet her. 

Mia was going to be celebrating her second birthday on December 7 and once I confirmed my availability I was put into contact with her mother, Christi. She informed me that Mia is in LOVE with the show Paw Patrol and the character Skye. Once again, I had never even heard about this show so I spent a few hours online researching to get an idea for her cake. In my research I discovered that Skye was a cockapoo and if you've read my very first blog entry you'd know that my sweet puppy dog, Sophie, is in fact a cockapoo! I immediately messaged Christi about Sophie and offered to bring her along when I delivered Mia's cake. Christi and Mia were 100% on board. I think that Christi and I were actually more excited about the whole thing than Mia... And Sophie for that matter. Sophie HATES wearing things. Coats, costumes, bows, you name it. She will literally stand there and look at you as if you just de-stuffed her favorite squeaky toy.

Skye wears this pink get-up so I had to make Sophie wear her pink coat for the delivery! 

Sooooooo getting back on subject!!! The design of the cake was actually pretty simple. There are six puppies on Paw Patrol, so I made each of their badges to go on a side of the cake. 

They were made from gumpaste that I then colored with edible markers. I also made Mia her own personalized badge that had a gold heart with her name in the center... and I forgot to take a picture of it. 

The front had the Paw Patrol logo and a bright, pink '2' for Mia's birthday. 

The top of the cake was a different story! I made Skye by carving/sculpting Rice Krispy treats, which is the most time consuming part for me when I'm making 3-D figurines. I'm really a perfectionist and if one part looks 'off' to me then 9 times out of 10 I'll squish up the figurine and start over!   

Once I had Skye's head and body made, I covered them in a layer of buttercream, smoothed them out, and then covered them in fondant. I then added all of the details including her goggles and aviation hat, backpack, tail, ears, eyes, arms and legs. I was so happy with how she turned out!

On the day of Mia's party, I got Sophie all dressed up in her jacket and we made our way down to the hotel where her family was having the event. I unfortunately couldn't bring Sophie into the hotel but Mia got to meet her in the entry way of the lobby and Sophie had kisses for everyone. Wouldn't be an issue if she didn't have such stinky, puppy breath! 

When I opened the cake box to show Mia her cake, she immediately started smiling. She recognized Skye in an instant and couldn't contain her excitement. I picked her up and showed her Skye and the different parts of the cake and we got a few pictures together. 

As I started to leave, my emotions got the very best of me and I started crying. Christi thanked me over and over again for the cake but I told her the honor was all mine, and it really truly was! Mia is such a little fighter and has been through more battles in her first 2 years that most people won't even face in their lifetime. I just kept thinking to myself how miserable I was when I was sick and then diagnosed with Lupus and how much I needed a distraction from all the doctor's visits, lab tests, and hospital stays. Mia's condition is SO much more critical than mine, so I could only imagine the break they all needed from the medical hustle and bustle they go through each day. I was honored to be part of the distraction that day and doing her birthday cake put so much into perspective for me. Life is so precious and so many people take it for granted. I often ask myself, "Are you doing enough? Are you making the world better by being in it? What else can you do to make a difference?" And it dawned on me as I was writing this blog that hopefully by sharing this story, it'll inspire others to have the same mindset. I wish that I could spend the rest of my life providing cakes for Icing Smiles, but unfortunately I do need to make some sort of income haha. But can you imagine how much better our society would be if each day, every single person did ONE thing to help someone else. Ask yourself if YOU are making a difference, and if not, what's stopping you? 

Thank you for reading! Always,

Sarah 

An Evil Minion took over my kitchen!!!!

So the last few weeks probably went down in the books as, "The Weeks of Unthinkable Hell." I've been tested in so many ways and really had to get my act together and my head back into my business. There was no better way to do that than with the Evil Minion cake! This cake was for one of my most loyal customers. She has three little boys and we have so much fun coming up with each of their birthday cakes.

For anyone that is unfamiliar, a Minion is a character from the movie, "Despicable Me," and the Evil Minion joined in the sequel. Below is a picture of a normal minion on the left and evil minion on the right. Game on!

I started the cake by stacking two 8" cakes. I probably doweled the bottom cake more than necessary...umm better safe than sorry? The top cake needed to be rounded to help give the illusion that the Minion's hair was sticking straight up. I applied the buttercream and smoothed it out with my handy-dandy scraper. Where can you find one of these little guys, you ask? Home Depot, my friends! The cake had to then be refrigerated for a couple hours to chill the buttercream.

Next up, I mixed the fondant to match the purple of the Minion. I used AmeriColor Violet and Regal Purple, and honestly it's just trial and error with color matching. P.S. that's the reference picture that I used throughout the process to make sure my colors,  dimensions, and placement were all correct. 

Making the eye was actually a lot easier than I expected. I made the white background from gumpaste and then marbled the purple with a darker shade of purple for the center. Then I added the pupil and a small white accent for a little jazz. Next, I did the little eyeball compartment...is there a technical term for this jammer? Hmmm.. either way I used silver luster dust spray that's made by Duff Goldman (aka the Ace of Cake's dude) to make the compartment look metallic. I really love Duff's product line which you can find at Michael's and Walmart. 

 At this point I started to slack on taking pictures, mainly because I like to work quickly through the Final Scrape/Roll Out Fondant/Cover Cake in Fondant/Trim Fondant stage. I consider all of that one, big stage! It's essential to move quickly through these steps to avoid the buttercream from softening and the fondant from cracking.

Above, you'll see the steps where I added his teeth, lip, and the base of his overalls. My go-to adhesive for decorations on fondant cakes is chocolate. I try to use a color that is similar to the fondant covering the cake, so I ended up using Wilton's Lavender Chocolate Melts. The bond is almost instantaneous which is huge since I don't have the patience to stand there and hold decorations against a cake while the royal icing or piping gel dries. 

Then I attached his arms and hands! His arms actually face backwards and he only has three fingers. I used the purple fondant for the arms and black fondant for his hands.  I finished the smaller details of his overalls, adding "stitches" along the borders, buttons, pants, and his feet. Every part of his lower body was made from the black fondant. 

I used the chocolate to adhere his eye, then added the band and hinges for the eyeball compartment. I used piping gel to get the band to stick around his head. I'll use piping gel when the decoration is lightweight and doesn't have to support any other decorations. 

The very last element of the cake was adding his crazy hair! I used very stiff royal icing and used a star tip to pipe the icing all over his head. I had to work in sections and layers in order to get the height I wanted. I would pipe a layer, let it dry for about 15 minutes, and then add the next sections. I seriously just kept piping until I ran out of icing haha and I was pretty satisfied with the final product. 

This cake was SO much fun to make and it really did knock me out of my funk! Hope it brought a smile to your face, as well! Thanks for reading and for all of the support! 

Always, 

Sarah 

Soooo about that....

I vaguely remember making some sort of statement way back in July about trying to blog more and clearly that went over well. It's now October and I finally have a free minute to enlighten the masses with my cake knowledge. My deepest apologies to those who have been sitting patiently, checking my blog for a new post each day. According the my page insight thinger-ma-bob there actually is one person checking it each day... buuuut that might just be me. Who knows!!! 

Wedding season is slowly coming to an end and I have to take a second to look back over the last few months and feel so incredibly blessed. I wouldn't have made it through this time without the support of my family, Boyfriend, and closest friends. I faced the harsh reality of being a business owner and what I have to sacrifice in order to better my company. I haven't taken a vacation since last February, I only had one weekend off over the entire summer and that was to torture myself in the Tough Mudder, and any amount of down time I have I don't have the energy to do much more than watch reruns of Breaking Bad on Netflix (don't you dare judge me!). I've lost a lot of "friends" and I say that with quotation marks because I assume that these people weren't truly my friends in the first place. I'm busy all day, every day and I invest whatever free time I have into the people who bother to send a quick text or leave me a voicemail to say that they are thinking about me. Yes, I'm well aware that telephones go both ways but for the first time in my entire life I am putting 100% of my energy into something for ME, and if that makes me a selfish person then so be it. My business is my passion and I don't think that most people would understand the time, effort, and sacrifices that one has to make in order to build a successful business. So I'm going to keep trucking along, count my losses and blessings, and look forward to the future. 

So now that I have that little ramble off my chest, and if you're still reading this then let's move onto one of the most stressful and amazing cakes that I did this summer. The snowmobile groom's cake... dun DUN DUUUUUN! The bride, Melissa, and I grew up together in the same neighborhood. She's an incredible person and when she contacted me to do a cake for her fiance, Coty, I jumped at the chance to work with her. Coty and his entire family are HUGE snowmobile fans... snowmobilers?... Uhhh I don't know the correct lingo.. but whatever you get the point... they LOVE snowmobiles. Melissa wanted me to make a replica of Coty's sled and I was sold. The bigger the challenge the better. Ok, who the hell am I kidding?! I lost a lot of sleep over this cake. Every night before I fall asleep, for some reason my brain decides it's going to go over every worst case scenario that might ever arise with a cake and cost me precious hours of beauty rest. 

When Melissa and Coty's wedding week arrived, I was on a mission. Melissa had sent me a ton of photos of Coty's sled but I was having issues visualizing how I was going to carve the cake, which led me on a field trip to Rusty Palmer, which is a huge snowmobile dealer about 45 minutes away from my humble abode. Once I got there and saw a sled similar to Coty's, everything seriously clicked in my mind. 

I had to do a trial run with styrofoam before I started hacking away at the stacked cakes. So I sat outside on my back porch and left a massacre of green foam everywhere, but at least I knew what I was going to do with the cake! 

Then it was time to bake, fill, and carve the cakes. I had to use two 9x13" cakes in order to get enough servings and create a cake that was in proportion to the real thing... because I'm OCD like that. Next up I had to get the whole thing covered in buttercream for a crumb coat. Crumb coats basically remove all of the crumbs, cover the rough edges, and serve as the building block for carving details in the cake. The first picture is the first crumb coat and then the second picture is after I smoothed it out. I had to go back in to some spots to cover up thin areas of buttercream but this part is always crucial because once a cake is covered in fondant, then every single bump or flaw will show up... at least it does to me. 

I dropped the ball in taking pictures throughout this process so you'll have to forgive me for skipping some steps. But basically the next steps included covering the cake in black and white fondant. I had to use black for the seat area and white for the front part of the sled (again, I apologize if I'm not using the correct lingo).  All of the detail was done with gumpaste and fondant.

Next up, I had to get the windshield on and make the indents for the lights.

Hooray for lights!! I found these little lights at Michael's a while back and they are great because they have tiny little batteries in them which eliminates the need for wires and battery packs! 

Then it was just about adding the final details. The track, the speedometer, the handlebars, the taillight etc. 

Once I had the cake on the board that I was going to transport the cake on, I was able to add the skis. I had also made some awesome foot rails (seriously, I need a snowmobile dictionary!!!) buuuut they broke into about 12 pieces when I tried putting them on.  No use in crying over spilled milk! The very last finishing touch was adding "snow" which was fluffy royal icing that I sprinkled with clear sprinkles. 

And here, my friends, is one of the professional pictures that Miss Amanda, of Amanda Krieg Photography took for me. She has a ton more on her Facebook page so make sure you check them out. 

When all was said and done I loved this cake. It challenged me in so many ways and when I sent a picture to Melissa before I delivered it, her reaction made EVERYTHING worth it. The long hours, the sleepless nights... everything. Making my clients smile and giving them something that they can always look back on and remember with such fondness.. it makes my job worth it. 

Thanks for reading and for your continued support! 

Always, 

Sarah 

I like books too... especially if they involve Harry Potter.

I would like to consider myself a reader. Before I got into the whole cake business, I often had my nose buried in a book during my free time or while I was mindlessly working out on the elliptical at the gym. Now that I don't really have an abundance of free time I have found that I really miss reading. Like Harry Potter! I'm a HUGE Harry Potter nerd and will proudly admit it that I have read each book multiple times as if each time was the first time. I miss Harry Potter... I miss reading... oh my gosh, enough about that! 

This cake was ALL about books and I looooved it! It was for a bridal shower that had an entire literary theme, including the cute invitations that were a play off of the Penguin Publishing Group book covers. I'm so, so fortunate to share this cake with professional pictures by Amanda Krieg Photography. Amanda and I went to high school together and she conveniently is also my neighbor! We are both in the beginning stages of starting our own businesses, so we have decided to work together and help each other as much as possible. Love her, love her work, and would LOVE if you supported her as well! : ) 

On to the cake!!!!! 

I decided to stick with the whole Penguin Group theme for the books. The mother of the bride helped to pick out the titles of the books, with the top book being the bride to be's favorite. Well, her favorite book is actually, "Their Eyes Were Watching God," but the M.O.B. suggested we play around with the title and change it to, "Her Eyes Were Watching Ryan." Too cute! 

All of the little penguins, book spines, and placards were made from gumpaste. 

Each book was covered in white fondant and then I wrapped them individually in three bright colors, purple, turquoise, and orange. I then went in with a fondant cutter/Wilton tool that I don't know the name of, to make the page indents. 

I added two extra decorations to pull the whole cake together. I made a bookmark out of gumpaste that said, 

"To mark your spot,

And save the date.

June 11, 2013

She will wear white,

He won't be late."

I also made some reading glasses out of black gumpaste. They were a last minute addition... as in I made them an hour before I delivered the cake. 

I really enjoyed working with the mother of the bride to make this cake so personalized and one of a kind. Hope you enjoyed the pictures and I'm sorry I've been slacking with updating the blog. Spring is a busy season for cakes but I'll do my best! 

Thank you for your support and for reading! 

Always, 

Sarah