"It's A Boy" Baby Shower Cookies       I've had a few orders for specialty cookies lately.  I've enjoyed playing with different designs.  This weekend I made four dozen baby shower cookies.  I found some wonderful ribbon that said "It's A Boy" on it.  You can see it tied around each treat bag.  The mommy to be was excited to pick up her cookies.  I had some left over bottles and took them to Blossom Music Center for the Rod Stewart concert this weekend.  I gave them to the pipe band that my husband is a part of so they could have a bottle before performing :::smiles:::.  Everyone seemed to enjoy them.  The band got to open up for Rod Stewart, so we were all pretty excited!    Below you will see pictures of the wedding shower cookies I did last month.               Three Theme Birthday Cake   I made this for one of my best friends.  Her children all have birthdays around the same time, so they decided to throw one big birthday for them all this year.  Instead of doing three different cakes, she decided to do one cake with three themes.  I really enjoyed making the fondant fairy and the sorting hat.  Matt doesn't know it yet, but he let me borrow his army guys for his cake.  :o)  Happy birthday everyone!!!         Baby Wishes       I made this baby shower cake for a girl that I work with.  I had a lot of fun making the baby this time.  The quilt turned out great as well.  I'm really enjoying making the sculptures.           June Wedding       I made this cake for a bridal shower at work.  Yellow cake with strawberry filling.  Buttercream icing and roses.  I was pretty happy with the design and how it turned out.  I look forward to doing more stacked cakes as this was a lot of fun to design and put together.   Baby Makes A Splash       This is one of my favorite cakes so far.  I had so much fun making it and I was really happy with the end result.  This was a strawberry cake with strawberry filling.  The planks on the side of the tub are fondant.  There are edible sparkles on the top of the cake that you can't really see in the picture.  I hand sculpted the baby, duck, and boat.  I have bath towels around the outside of the cake.     Graduation Order       Well, this was a busy cake-making week.  I had a big graduation order to do with a Micky Mouse theme.  This 3d Mickey was a challenge, but I was happy with the end result.  The humid weather made my icing act up a bit, but overall he turned out pretty well.       Watermelon Cake     I really enjoyed creating this watermelon cake for a picnic themed food day at work.  The cake was strawberry with chocolate chips in side to look like the watermelon seeds.  Everyone really enjoyed the strawberry cake.  I was torn between doing this cake and a different style watermelon, so I made the other one too for a birthday cake later.     Icing Princess Cake     This cake was a lot of fun to make, but it took a lot of prep time.  I had to make the fondant ahead of time.  The castle and little princess are not edible, but are made out of fondant.  I used store bought fondant for the toppers.  I made my own fondant for the cake because it tastes so much better and is a lot easier to work with.  Overall, I was really happy with the way this princess cake turned out.  I hope that the girl that is getting it for her birthday enjoys it.         Cadbury Egg Cake       Thanks Sandy for all of the pans that you gave me.  I told you that I would put them to good use.  My husband actually came up with the idea to do a Cadbury Egg cake with the egg pans that were given to me.  I made my own chocolate marshmallow fondant for the first time to color it with.  I put a cream cheese filling inside and tinted part of it yellow to look like the Cadbury Egg filling.  We brought it to my family’s house for Easter dinner and included the actual eggs with each slice of cake.  This was a lot of fun and tasted fabulous!            Crocheting Basket Cake     I made this cake as a combined birthday cake for my mom, dad, and brother.  I had a lot of fun designing it!  I guess this one is more focused on my mom since she loves to crochet.  I was really happy with the way that it turned out.  The only thing on it that wasn’t edible was the three crochet hooks that I stuck into one of the balls of yarn.  I made little round cakes for the balls of yarn, so no they aren’t big giant globs of icing.  :o)  The dog is made out of fondant and also edible.  Wilton Cake Decorating Course 2 Final Cake   I finished the Wilton cake decorating Course 2 class tonight.  The class was a lot of fun and definitely worth taking if you would like to learn more about making flowers.  The class that I took was at Grandma’s Cupboard, which is my favorite cake shop in the Green area of Akron, Ohio.  I don’t think that they have a website, but their address and contact information is below.   Grandma's Cupboard   1297 Krumroy Rd Akron, OH 44306 (330) 784-1712 I had a lot of fun doing this cake!  It’s nice going through a class with other people that have the same types of questions.  I learned a LOT from this course! AKRON & DISTRICT PIPE BAND CAKE My husband and I worked on the logo together for this cake.  I got to show him how to roll out gum paste and cut it out.  I was going to do a color flow pattern, but I didn’t have time to let it dry before hand.  I was really happy with the end result.  My husband is in a bagpipe band and we brought this cake to the annual dinner meeting in February of 2008.  “Pipes and Drums, Buttered Rolls” is an inside band joke that most people wouldn’t get.  :o)  I really enjoyed putting this cake together.  I added some elements to it that I’ve been working on in my Wilton cake decorating class. Polymer Clay Creations I love to sculpt with polymer clay.  I started doing this a few years ago.  If you would like to try it you can look at www.sculpey.com and get tips and project ideas.  I made this cake topper for a fall cake that I did in 2007.  It’s important to make a base for the topper since you don’t want to put the baked clay creation on your cake unless you get a good food safe sealant on it first.  Many wedding cake toppers are also made out of polymer clay. GARDENING CAKE I had a lot of fun designing this gardening cake.  I made the little signs on the computer and glued them to tooth picks.  I got to play with gum paste again when I made the gardening gloves and flowerpot.  I made a little mold out of plastic wrap so the flowerpot could dry to shape.  You can learn a lot about working with gum paste if you look for articles online or on the wilton.com website.  I thought that it would be great fun to do another one and use crushed up Oreo cookies for the dirt.  Maybe next time.      COOKIE MONSTER CAKE   I worked on my first real 3d cake tonight, the cookie monster cake.  I used the Wilton teddy bear pan and trimmed off the ears to make the body. I learned my lesson about this pan that it will be much better in the future to use the Wilton cake release or cooking spray instead of my regular Crisco and flour to prevent sticking. Make sure that you coat the core very good or you will have trouble with it sticking like I did. The outside of the pan came off very well, but the core was tricky and actually caused part of the belly to come off, which I managed to fix with some icing and a leftover cupcake. It's also imperative to let the cake cool for the entire hour to ensure that the structure is totally sound before you try to move it. Follow the cooling instructions carefully for this pan if you try to attempt the cookie monster cake. Decorating the cake was a lot of fun. I just used a hair/grass tip to do the royal blue tinted icing. Make sure to start from botton to top to get a good "hair effect." I used gum paste to make the eye balls, which I feel are the most important part of making the cake look like Cookie Monster. I put tooth picks in the back of the eye balls and pushed them into some styrofoam. I heated up some icing in the microwave and poured it over the eyeballs. In hindsite, white melting chocoloate would have been great for glazing the eyes as well. I wanted to get a shining plastic look. I used a tube of black gel icing to do the dots on the eyes and cooled them for about 20 minute to prevent dripping. When trimming the cake you will use a serated knife to take off the ears and cut out the slit for the mouth. I used the flat side of the basketweave tip to ice the mouth black. I had a lot of fun with this cake once I got past the baking and cooling stage. If you try to make it send me a picture and let me know how you do. I'd like to see someone try an Elmo cake with the same patern. Have fun!!!