Two More Cakes!

Boy, it never rains but it pours! My daughter's friend saw, tasted and liked my grandson's graduation cake and asked me if I would please make one for her son who was graduating this past Saturday. So, I did. But today (Sunday) is another grandson's birthday, so I needed to make a cake for him, too. Now, I have never made two cakes for the same weekend, so I was curious to find out if I could pull this off. I started by baking the birthday cake on Wed. night. Then, I baked the large 12" x 18" cake on Thursday morning. I also made some of the icing that morning and crumb coated the birthday cake. I went to work at 12:00 'til 6:00 pm. Thursday night, I crumb coated the large cake and decorated the birthday cake. Friday morning, I iced and decorated the large cake and finished it up by noon time when I had to go to work. "Piece of cake!" No problem. Fortunately, everything went smoothly and I finished in record time. Here are some pictures of those cakes:


First, is the birthday cake for my 7 yr old grandson:
He wanted a beach cake----

(click on the pictures to enlarge)

Sand and seashells:

Beach umbrella--

Sand castle:

Message in a bottle:

See the little shark fin?

These pictures are of the graduation cake for Jonathan--


Borders:

Graduation cap:

Little scroll and some of the writing:

Another shot:

Overall picture of the cake:

I love making these cakes and I love to make people happy. And seeing the recipients so happy makes it all worthwhile!

'Til next time, Love ya, Jean

My Grandson's Graduation Cake!

I can't believe that he's graduated from High School! They do grow up too fast, don't they? So, I made his cake for the Graduation Party and I thought I'd show you the steps of making a cake. Unfortunately, I didn't take pictures of all the steps, there are way too many! I just did the basic ones. Please remember, I do not sell any cakes, so I am not a professional, I just do this for fun. The cake was white chocolate and the icing was vanilla buttercream. It tasted really good and I got lots of compliments on it.

This is a picture of the finished cake:

(click on the pictures to enlarge) Some of the ingredients--

The cake is in the oven--

Pretty close to being finished--It's baked and on the rack to cool--15 minutes. This is a 12" x 18" white chocolate cake. It smells awesome!

This is the little cake that will go on top of the sheet cake. It will be the bottom of the graduation cap.

This is the back of the cake board--



The prepared cake board--






This is what the cake lays on. It needs to be strong and stiff so that the cake doesn't crack when you lift it.


This is the graduation cap cake in the oven.

This is the vanilla buttercream icing. This bowl was full when I started to ice the cake.

Smoothing the icing--

It reminds me of ironing. Instead of clothes, I'm smoothing the icing on the cake.

All finished and pretty smooth--

The next step is to put on the writing and the borders--

This is the cap with the black icing on it. I put this on the cake last and then piped some borders around it. I made the mortar board from cardboard covered with black fun foam and placed it on top of the round cake. I had a gold tassel and I put it on the board and attached it with some black icing. It looked cute!

Here is how it looked--

I added some other details and a little scroll (diploma) tied with some red ribbon. The school colors are red and white--


Again, the completed cake----

Congratulations, Cameron. I love you and wish you all the success in the world. You've worked hard and you deserve it! Love, Grammy

I hope you enjoyed the "behind the scenes" of making a cake.

'Til next time, Love ya, Jean

It's been raining, raining, & raining some more....

While I've been cooped up in the house, I practiced my cake decorating. I had some 6" cakes in the freezer and I wanted to try a new marshmallow fondant recipe, so I made this little cake. These little ribbon roses are the same as the ones that are on the bottom of the cake stand. You can't see it because I accidentally deleted the pic that shows the bottom of the plate.
This was a sort of topsy-turvy cake but didn't work too well because all the cakes were more or less the same size. It was a fun one to do and I learned some things from it, so it was a good lesson. It was also delicious and my family was very impressed. (ahem).

I wanted to show you some of my flowers and how they have matured from my last post. The Rudbeckia is still sending out new flowers.

The Autumn Joy Sedum is in its full glory:

The ferns are starting to decline somewhat, but still have some life left in them. I love how they change color, just like the leaves on the trees.
I have not been able to garden since last week, as we have had 5 days of rain. Things are pretty soggy around here. My next day off is Friday and I hope by then things will dry out some.

I also wanted to let you know about a free giveaway!! It is of a Beach theme.

Joanne over at "my little cottage in the making", is having a drawing on Oct. 6 for *a cute Salt & Pepper shaker set that looks like seashells *a pale blue dish towel with shells on it *a pretty blue Yankee Candle called Willow Breeze *a tiny little ceramic box covered with seashells and has a small dainty blue flower on top *a pencil starfish *a beautiful floral tray. She has a very beautiful and interesting blog, so hop on over to Joanne's blog and enter her giveaway.

'Til next time, Love ya, Jean