Rapunzel, Rapunzel...

My little big girl celebrated turning 4 this weekend, and she is quite the Tangled fanatic!  So, inevitably I made her a Tangled cake...and not just ANY Tangled cake but a 3D Tower and the works!  This was the most time I have ever put into a cake and I nearly cried having to cut into it!  This took 3 days of prepping and baking and mixing and one all nighter to get this right!  I hope one day she appreciates how much I love her for creating this thing!  I have posted some of the step by step instructions that went into this and maybe one day it will inspire you to try something too!

For some crazy reason baking the cake was one of the hardest tasks...and usually it isn't!  I found a 5 Star recipe online for a wonderful chocolate cake, so I tried it.  1st one, completely slanted off the pan.  2nd one, a little less slanted, could've made it work, but then wouldn't come out of the pan (never had that issue before!) So frustrated!  3rd one, got it to be pretty level but then it wouldn't come out of the pan except in little pieces (way to moist!)  So I stopped trying to make the stupid cake from scratch and made box cake!  It worked just fine but at this point, what began as probably the simplest part of the process turned into the worst!  I also made a Bavarian creme filling that was super yummy and "injected" it into the cake!  

The Infamous Tower!

I made this puppy out of rice krispy treats, which is great for making structures because it forms into almost anything!  Then I covered it on modeling chocolate, which is a lot harder to work with that I had thought. Maybe I let it sit in the fridge too long... I dunno!  But it looked pretty cool! Next time I think I will stick to fondant!

I covered the cake in a chocolate frosting that was to die for, almost tasted like fudge!  Made some trees using waffle cones and piped greenery onto them.  They looked awesome! I used a 6x6 square and a 6 in round to make the hill you see in the back, and then sculpted that a little bit. Lesson to Learn: don't put the rice krispy structure directly onto the cake....too heavy...cut out cake so it sits on board!  Would've been smart, because it later caused the tower to lean...significantly! 

This is the fun part! This is where the cake comes to life!

I made a river out of piping gel, (doesn't taste so hot just fyi), made rocks out of modeling chocolate, started piping grass!  

Almost There!

This is what the near finished product looks like, before I add the figurines that I purchased!  Not too shabby!

What really adds to it is when you put all the little details in! The only thing I wish I would've added was more flowers throughout the grass and vine with flowers around the edges but I literally didn't have enough time. And I would've liked to had made a cut out in the tower for Rapunzel to stand in and have her hair drape down from the window ledge!

The Birthday Girl!

Hello Kitty

This was adorable!  For a little miss turning 3, how could you not love Hello Kitty?  I wish the lens of my camera hadn't been fuzzy...This was all hand piped and turned out great!  And this was actually the first gig I actually got paid to do!  (Yay me!)

Bieber Fever

You know how these 11 year old girls are!  Bieber Fever baby!!!  My friends daughter was having a joint birthday bash, so I threw together a 9x13 to celebrate these girly girls and their love for the Bieb!

Sweet 16

My dear nice turned 16!  Holy Cow!  So I made her this fun and spunky 2 tier cake, which actually read in the sheet music "You've Had  A Birthday Shout Hooray!" I love when I am told that I went above the expectations of the recipient!  

Baaaahhhh Baaahhh Black Sheep

My first attempt at a pull apart cake!  SUCCESS!!!!  My friend had this cute sheep invitation for her little girl, and she really wanted the invite to come to life!  Sweet!  I can do that!  (I think???)  So I made a base sheet cake and make cup cakes to form a whimsical sheep!  Add some royal icing flowers, and it was superb!

The Hubs Ultimate Dream

My hubby would love nothing more than to own a boat!  Unfortunately at this time, we can't afford to do that, but I thought what fun it would be to try and create one for his birthday! So this was my birthday wish to him, that someday oneday he would get his boat, but for now, he'd have to settle for the edible kind!

Topher

My bro is Disney's #1 fan....he loves the movies, he loves the parks, he loves the company...so its only fitting to give him something that represents that part of him!  I had come up with this awesome idea, that didn't come out so hot in the end.  (Oh well, I attempted!) I wanted to make a movie film strip/reel around the cake, with the cake part being like red draped curtain (I know...stop laughing...it looks nothing like that!)  Some of the fondant got too soft and wouldn't hold and then the film strip tore and then the biggest snafu of it all was I had the cake frozen prior to decorating it, and it didn't thaw all the way.  So the filing was partially frozen and the inner cake was frozen! Oy!  What an embarrassment but hey, its family!

A First

Sadly, my mother-in-law never had anybody make her a cake and the woman was turing 76!  That's just wrong!  I was in crunch time, so I didn't have time to whip something magnificent out, so I whipped out the tried and true flower pan!  (Old ladies like flowers, right???)  At least I made an attempt to give the woman something she had never been given since she was a small child!  (Gold star for me, right?!!!)

Mr Man

This was for my little mans 2nd birthday!  And what 2 year old doesn't like Thomas?  So here went another attempt at fondant for the train, but the base cake is buttercream!  This was so fun to take my cake skills to the next level, crafting and molding Thomas out of rice krispy treats, then dirty icing it and then creatively using fondant.  Yes, I am a beginner but hey...I thought it was pretty cool!  And my little dude LOVED it!  It broke my heart to throw the Thomas part away...took about a week!  

Bird House Fetish????

My mother, I love her dearly, but the woman has a serious bird house fetish!!! So my husband thought he was really cute when he came up with the idea to make her a "Bird House Cake"!  I thought this one rocked!  She is a chocolate lover, so everything was chocolate!  The bird house I sculpted out of pound cake, which I probably wouldn't do again just because it was too heavy and started crushing the cake it was sitting on...rice krispy treats work much better!  The only unedible thing on here is the bird, which is from a craft store, (its kind of above my skill level to use modeling chocolate and create fun things like that! But someday!) It was a great hit, everyone got a good laugh but most of all, it looked great and tasted scrumptious too!

Twilight Geeking!

So, for us Twilight Geeks, we had a dinner/movie event the night of New Moon...so I made a vampires delight cupcake!  Velvet cuppy cake filled with chocolate pudding, topped with awesome cream cheese buttercream frosting, drizzled in blood (red food coloring) and red sprinkles!  They were AWESOME!!!

BoBo's Success Story

K, now this was fun!  We were having a surprise birthday lunch at Olive Garden for my lil sis!  This was only my 2nd fondant attempt...and I might say it went pretty well!  She loved the cake, it tasted incredible and I even had people come up to me in asking where I'd boughten the cake!! Such a confidence booster!  I was stoked to say, "I did it myself!"  

The Littlest Princess

This is such a fun learning experience!  (Sometimes!) I was completely stoked to make this cake, and then I flubbed!  I made this awesome pound cake, with strawberries and chocolate ganache filling, and low and behold the strawberries started sweating, anddddd it was my first attempt at fondant!  Oy!  I wanted to make this beautiful pattern, which didn't turn out so well, and then with the filling oozing that didn't work out so well!  But hey, she loved it!  Livin' and Learnin' one step at a time!

Gma's Birthday!

This was just a quickie, but I wanted to make sure my grandma knew how much she means to our family!

My Little Monkey

Happy Birthday to my little monkey!  This is another one of those"oh crap" moments.  I didn't have time to make frosting, so I used some canned frosting and didn't know that it didn't have the holding quality that actual buttercream does.  So it looks like blobs.  Another lesson learned!

I also made some cute monkey cuppy cakes so we had enough to go around!  I think I got the idea for these in the Family Circle Magazine!

My Little Man's #1

I will post my successes along with my failures, and this my friend was one of my failures!  The frosting was too runny, and wouldn't hold.  I didn't allow myself enough time to make them to the best of my abilities and I felt like it was one big flop.  And of course everyone is always so polite and said they loved it, but we are our own worst critics, so I feel like I could've done far better!  Live and learn!

A Salute To My Man!

Happy 30th Birthday to my soldier!  I always love doing cakes that tie into the person they are for and what they represent, so it seemed only appropriate to bake a cake for my Utah National Guard Soldier!  I use hershey bars as the tracks, crushed oreo's as dirt, candy rocks, whoppers for windows and one of those cookie stick things that taste so yummy for the gunner!  This cake was a lot of fun to create and it tasted pretty good too!

BoBo's 24th!

Here's to using decorative cake pans!!! This was a fun little ditty I pulled together, also learning how to use icing tips!  I thought it turned out pretty cute!

Sponge Bob Square Pants

I found this great idea online, where they used different things like ding dongs and twinkies to help create this fun little guy.  His body is a 9x13, and I cut divits out of him for that "spongey" appearance.  His shoulders are twinkies cut in half, his feet are swiss cake rolls, his legs are twinkies and his thighs are ding dongs cut in half.  And then just pipe and frost till your hearts content!!!

Pugsly

My first piping experience!  Oh-my-lanta...I had no idea how sore your hands get!  My baby girl was turning 1 and she was just adorable.  We have a pet pug, which of course you know that pugs snort ALOT!  Well, my little girl would imitate that snort and walk around doing what we call "puggy nose"!!!  So on behalf of our pug and my little girls birthday, I created a pug cake.  This was fun to figure out which cake pans make what sizes and how to make features to scale.

Sonic the Hedgehog

This was my very first "decorating" experience. My then 5 year old son was absolutely in love with Sonic, but we really couldn't find a store that made Sonic cakes.  So my sister and I found a pillow, and literally laid it on top of the cake and cut it out and then pieced all his spikes and ears on with tooth picks!   For me it was a true victory and he LOVED it!  I think I cried a little when we had to cut it, but it was a great beginning!

And this is me....

I'm just a girl from Utah, who has found something thats fun to experiment with.  Its always challenging but I love it!  I hope that you find something that encourages you to try cake decorating on your own, and if not, at least enjoy watching me fumble my way through this experience!  I am married to a wonderful man who constantly pushes me to try new things and for that I am very grateful!  I hope you like what you see, and as always, your comments are always welcome!