I made this custom cake for my mom’s 50th birthday, which now that I think about it was the first birthday cake I had made. She is a book lover, so this was a perfect theme for her. The catchy titles on the books, compliments of my boyfriend, were our way to nudge at the 50th birthday without being obnoxious!
The cake was chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream, and the brown cover of one of the books was chocolate fondant. So delicious!
I made this cake for my boyfriend. He used to be a scout in the Army, and his cavalry hat is sitting on a bookcase at our house. I passed by it one day and thought – “Now, that would be a fun cake!”. So I surprised him with it later that day.
The hat wasn’t to scale, but I made it a little smaller since it was just for us to eat. The cross sabers were the hardest part, since they were so small, but a good set of Exacto knives and a steady hand did the trick! The crown portion of the hat was the actual cake that I carved and covered with fondant. The brim of the hat and decorations were all done from gum paste. I didn’t have my airbrush set up at the time, so I just used black food coloring to get it as close as possible…it took a lot of coloring!
This was another cake I made for the fire station down the street. There are several shifts there, so I figured I would take another cake to them during a different shift for some of the other guys. A few of the guys were there from when I made the fire truck cake, and they got really excited to see another one. They are very supportive and so happy to eat the cake!
The fire hydrant cake was vanilla with vanilla frosting. I was changing the cake recipe slightly just to make it a little fluffier but still hold up to being carved.
I needed some practice with making decorative items out of fondant, so I decided to try to make a bow. After the bow was finished I just made a square cake, covered it in fondant and plopped the bow on top. I didn’t even think about the colors when I made them. And this was the result!
It makes me think of a package the Joker from Batman would give out….creepy!!
On a side note, it takes a little extra time for the fondant to dry compared to gum paste, but it is very smooth and has a lot less chance of cracking, especially on those hot Austin days!
We have a friend that works for an ad agency here in Austin, and I decided to make them a custom cake since I needed to test my chocolate chip cake recipe. We thought typography would be fitting for the theme of the cake since he’s a designer.
The black and white fondant was very striking with the letters running down the side. I was happy with the way it turned out, but I think I’ll use something else for the letters next time. These were a little tedious to make. But it turned out well, and it was pretty neat because the outside of the cake and in the inside of the cake were black and white! Most importantly, the people at the ad agency thought it was delicious!
I made this tiered cake for a friend who just bought a house. She really liked some lemon cupcakes I made a while back, so I decided this was a good time to experiment more with that flavor. And when I say she really liked the lemon cupcakes, I mean she REALLY liked them. So I made both the cake and frosting lemon flavored. The yellow fondant with the green and blue accents turned out really well. It looked so festive!
The funny thing about this cake was I made it during the week so I could take it to where my friend works to surprise her, but I forgot that she took the week off to get situated in her new place. So we ended up eating it. Now I owe her a cake!
I had a little bit of cake left over from the Ronald McDonald House cake and decided to ice them and cover them with fondant. These made for a great, portable snack, (kind of like a cupcake) so I wrapped them up, put them in a baggy and placed them on our mailbox for the mail man.
He was really excited to see them! I hope he enjoyed them!
There’s a new Ronald McDonald House about 5 minutes away from where I live. The volunteers there are really great people, and I wanted to make them a custom cake to show some support for what they do.
The entire house is made out of cake, and the design on the front was made from fondant and gum paste. I tried to keep the feel of the Ronald McDonald House logo design – how the outline of the house is hand drawn and not perfectly straight – and modeled my lines in that same form. Each side of the house has a plaque that has a part of their slogan on it.
When I took it to them, they were kind of speechless. I really don’t think they expected it and were taken by surprise. About a week later I got a couple thank you cards in the mail from some of the volunteers. 
I am so glad they enjoyed it!
After my first tiered cake, I wanted to make another custom cake, so I made this fire truck cake for the fire station up the street from where I live. I was really excited to make it because it was my first cake vehicle!
When I took it to the firemen, they were really excited about it. The first reaction I got was “you made this?!?”, followed up with “and this is cake?!?”. It was complete with a ladder, hose, ax and, of course, a dalmatian dog. I really got to experiment with structure and stability with this cake. It took some good planning and execution to make the cake stand up on the wheels.
I can’t wait to make another vehicle out of cake!
Up to this point I had been focusing more on making custom cakes to understand their structure, but felt I needed to make a more traditional cake so that I had some practice under the belt with that as well. So I made this cake, which was the first tiered cake I had ever made.
I needed to practice making circles and ovals, which were pretty hard with the limited tools I had, so I thought I would make a simple tiered cake and pipe them all over it. It was a little rough in the beginning, but I got a lot better by the end. This cake also ended up at T3 in Austin where it was thoroughly enjoyed!
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