The customer requested that I include the birthday boy on the cake, wearing his favorite blue t-shirt and brown shorts.  Originally, the plan was to have him on the boat, surrounded by some fishing gear.  But as I was putting the cake together, I decided to go a slightly different route.  I thought it would be more fun to have him dozing with a fishing pole, and still catching a big fish!  The fish was made out of fondant, and I got the look of the scales by brushing the food color on.

The fishing pole was made of wire, covered with fondant (two wires, actually – the second, thinner wire for the fishing line!).  Strangely enough, the hardest part was the fishing hat.  Hats are always tricky for me, making certain that I have the shape of the hat correct, while also making it look as though it is sitting on an actual head.  I think I got it to look pretty good, and combined with the relaxed position of the body, it came out just like I wanted.  I decided to use blue foil paper to really give the sense that the boat is sitting on the water, and used white buttercream for the splashes.

I think this one came out pretty darn good!

  The customer requested a fearsome looking wolf.  Originally I was thinking of having a wide open mouth with teeth ready to bite, but after some consideration, I thought that having the snarling look with teeth bared was much more wolf-like.  I also noticed that wolves seem to have teeth primarily visible at the front of their mouths – another thing unlike some other animals.  I tried to really match up the teeth with pictures I found of wolves.

 One big challenge I faced with this cake was trying to make the surface of the cake look like fur.  I didn’t want to use buttercream, because the texture created would look thick and matted, and wolf fur looks softer and brush-like.  I was intending to try using a large brush to apply some speckled texture to the cake surface, when all of the sudden I remembered an effect I had once gotten out of my airbrush.  By turning the air pressure nearly all the way down, the color came out of the airbrush in the exact speckled texture I was looking for.  The bottom layer of fondant over most of the fur (except where the fur was intended to be white) was a deep pink color.  Over that I layered ivory, and then black to create the varying colors found in the  wolf’s fur.

I was thrilled with how this cake came out – I think this ended up being one of my most successful cakes!

  Another challenge with this cake was the color – all white, and nearly all white, cakes leave less margin for error.  I was pleased with how I was able to make the musculature of the head come out with the sculpting.  Once that was complete, I added the purple and pink shading to reinforce the shape.  I was especially happy with the unicorn’s nose – I think it really came out looking like a horse’s nose…

 The unicorn’s horn was made of fondant and supported by a wooden dowel.  Once I made the unicorn’s horn gold, I thought that the design needed some additional gold to balance out the look, so I added gold to the tips of the unicorn’s mane, ears, it’s beard, and made it’s eyes gold.  I think this really helped make the mythical aspect of the unicorn pop.   All in all, I was very happy with the results!

First birthday cakes are always fun, and this cake was no exception.  It gave me a chance to remake the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse design, and this time I took a slightly different approach.  Instead of trying to simulate the grass with a sheet cake covered in green buttercream, I chose to cover the cake board in green foil.  The advantages were a brighter green color (to contrast with the red and yellow colors in the cake) and it gave me more cake to use in the various structures.

  The ears of the cake and the bottom of the sphere were made of styrofoam, but everything else in the cake was edible.  I used airbrush color for the black and red, but mixed the yellow and blue colors into the fondant.  The blue slide had a wire support inside, but otherwise was all fondant.

  This design is a challenging one, because of all the different building shapes, that don’t look like standard buildings.  Getting the proportions correct, while still have the right number of cake servings is always tricky.  I was very pleased with how the white glove house came out – much better than my first attempt.  Also, this time around I was able to get some details on the shoe house, such as the mini-door on the side.

  Another feature of 1 year old birthday cakes is that the customer will often ask for a “mini-cake”  to give to the child that they can get messy with.  In this case, I made the mini-cake look like “O’Toodles”, a character from the cartoon that always provides four tools (one a mystery tool!) for Mickey and friends.  In this case, I added some birthday related “tools”.  Also, at the customer request I covered this cake with buttercream instead of fondant, to make it easier for the birthday boy to get messy with it…

The glass is shaped like a glass that the groom uses regularly.  I used a platform to lift the cake portion on a “stem” and used four different layers of airbrush color to make the golden brown color of the beer.  I added a bit of shading to the white fondant on top to suggest the foam of the head of the beer.  The bottles I painted with dark brown food coloring, and was able to get a “shine” texture because of the nature of the painted color, which nicely simulated the glass beer bottles.

The logo for this beer was trickier to replicate than I thought it was going to be – it was simple black on the orange background, but the shape of the shark, combined with the shape of the circle around it and all of the text made it a challenge to get everything on there properly.  Also, hand painting the font below the logo was time consuming – it was an unusual font with letters in different locations.  All in all, I was pleased with how this came out.    And the cake flavor was Spice Cake with a Cream Cheese Filling, to go along with the Punkin theme.

I spent a lot of time working on the logo for the Speedway.  The “Southside Speedway” text was tricky in that it was an unusual font style, and really needed to fit properly within the off-center oval.  I hand-painted all of the colors and the dark text.  The white text was piped on with royal icing – I generally prefer to draw or paint lettering, but that can’t really be done with white text on a darker background.  I was really pleased with how the logo came out, and the customer seemed really pleased with it.

The Lucky 13 cake was a HUGE success!!! My son and everyone loved, loved loved it!

Thank you so very much!!! I will absolutely be in touch for future cakes for our events.

Thank you again! Christy

Bob, I can’t tell you how well received your Hokie Bird/VCU Dental cake was!!!  Everyone loved it and thought I was just a genius for finding you and designing this cake. I have pictures of every angle and especially the VCU logo to give to many of the dental students (also from VT) who were at the wedding and not the rehearsal.  Really, everyone went gaga over your cake and was thrilled to hear we have a cake maestro here in town!!

Kelly, our caterer, who met you at the door, said you were so nice and she could’nt understand how you transported it here!   The cake was such an impressive size and we set it up in the living room right in front of the fireplace and after dinner did toasts and cut the cake (which was not easy and everyone had an opinion as to how to do it!).   It was delicious and the carrot cake is now a tradition in my new daughter’s family as her parents and many aunts and cousins have used carrot cake.  I can’t thank you enough for fitting us into the schedule and for making our son’s and now daughter’s weekend so memorable.

Thanks,  Jan

Bob, Please forgive me for not writing to you sooner. I hope you’ll forgive me when I tell you how much we loved the cake you made for my son’s rehearsal dinner on April 9. Of course, I expected it to look good, but when I arrived at the restaurant and the BARTENDER was talking about it, I knew it must be incredible. I had to wade through a crowd of gawking, picture-taking admirers to get to it, but when I actually saw the cake, I was blown away!  It was a HUGE Hokie Bird, exactly as I had asked – sitting on a log, compass in hand, with a pack on his back. It was all I’d hoped it would be and more. Everyone, including the restaurant staff, was amazed by your work and the incredible detail you put into every feature! Several guests were surprised to learn it was a cake. They thought it was a sculpture! The VA Tech alumni were especially thrilled – one even told me it looked like a something straight out of the university bookstore!

As much as we enjoyed looking at your work of art, we enjoyed eating it more. The cake was delicious! It was obviously made from scratch, and even people who claimed not to like fondant were raving about how great it tasted. Don’t tell the bride, but one guest confided the next day that your cake tasted better than the wedding cake!

Your business cards were in high demand, and I anticipate you’ll receive a boost to your business. You certainly deserve it! I’m attaching a few photos of the cake. I highly recommend you replace the Hokie Birds on your website gallery with one of these! And if you ever need a recommendation, please don’t hesitate to share my contact information with potential customers.

With warm regards, Lori