MARIO!

When I was in the hospital last year, my ward doctor totally looked like a Mario Brother. Even weirder, he is a French doctor in a German hospital.

Anyway....

A totally ripped off version of a Mario Bros. cake I found on a Google search.

I have no idea who/what any of these characters are, and my frosting is lumpy.



But the recipient was happy.

He is in the 4th grade at The Kid's school. I also delivered some cupcakes to his class on his actual birthday. I'm guessing he liked them because he came out into the hallway and gave me a hug. What 4th grade boy gives hugs?? Totally awesome ones, that's who!

This cake is rainbow with crusting buttercream frosting and fondant details.

Omaha Beach (sort of)

I think that this might be the very first cake I was ever paid for. It was for a little boy who loved WWII and those things military.


I had actually invisioned the cake being alot bigger, but had no way (at the time) to make it as big as I saw in my mind. There should have been much more to the cliff and the beach, but it just did not work out. The birthday boy was happy though, and spent much of the day driving the tank up and down the cake.


This was a chocolate cake covered in (store bought) buttercream frosting.

It's A Girl!!

A cake for a baby shower.

I have to say, I love the brown and pink color scheme. I wish I had been that creative when The Kid was born. I think we went with green and purple.

Lots of cute pink flowers.


And a crown. There was a crown on the invitation to the shower, so I just went with that and added it to the top.

The top tier of this cake was chocolate, and the bottom was white. They are both frosted in chocolate fudge buttercream. Fondant and gum paste accents.

Leapin' Lizards!!

This was supposed to be a Bearded Dragon cake, but the sculpting mojo was thin on the ground this weekend. So luckily I was able to find some little lizards at the toy store.

I created rocks with carved pieces of cake and marbled fondant. I crumbled bits of cake to create the sand and dirt. And used the rest of the fondant to make some little stones to place around the large rocks.

The grass/hair tip came in handy to fill in some areas and create a fuller more realistic environment.

This cake was 1/2 chocolate, and 1/2 white with chocolate and buttercream frostings.

YEAH WOLVERINE!!!!

Oh yes.

Total geek out moment. Seriously, my favorite X-Man ever, even before Hugh Jackman and his rippling biceps.

I really puzzled over this one for awhile. How to depict Wolverine on cupcakes???

OK, granted he looks a little more like Nite Owl from Watchmen (Movie, not graphic novel), but it was pretty much what I could do with fondant. And yes, I recognize that there is a costume difference going on here. The black hood is from waaaaayyy back in the Golden Age, I think the blue and yellow is more recent. But I'm not sure, it's been awhile since I've looked at comic books.

The X and the claw slashes were a pretty obvious choice for the other cupcakes.


Here is a slightly better picture of the decoration. This is a shrinky dink I made at home. It started out the size of a standard letter sheet of paper, and shrunk down to that size. I put a hole in it so that the birthday boy could use it as a keychain or whatever afterwards.

Funny thing is that he was questioning me about why Wolverine was dressed in that costume. OMG!!! Hello it's only Wolverine drawn by Jim Lee!!! Well, he's only 7, I'm sure he has never even read the comic books, just seen the movies. I suppose he can be forgiven.

But someone should really educate him....the youth these days...

These are rainbow cupcakes with buttercream and fondant.

Thomas the Train Part Deux

I don't normally care to do the same thing on a cake more than once. I like to think of my cakes and cupcakes as "custom". You know you're getting something that no body else on base has had or ever will have.

That saying, this might be the first time I've had to repeat a theme for cakes.

I've made Thomas the Train cupcakes in the past, and this weekend there was a request for a Thomas cake and cupcakes together.

Luckily I found these cute Thomas and Friends whistles somewhere, so I did not actually have to make a replica of Thomas (which would have been hard).

And I repeated the same faces as last time on the cupcakes.

I think the smiles might be bigger than the last batch, but there is something cute and appealing about these to me.
These are all chocolate with buttercream and fondant.

Cherry blossoms and NKOTB

This is another one of my first cakes.

My friend likes cherry blossoms, and LOVES Donnie Wahlberg from New Kids On The Block. She even went to see them in concert when they came through Germany.

Here is the cherry blossom side. I was still working with the pre made frosting from Wilton. This was before I discovered the joy that is home made buttercream.

Here is Donnie, doing that move they made famous. He is actually hanging from a hook that is stuck in the cake, so if you touched him he would swing from side to side. I was quite proud of this little touch.

And a shot from the back. This was called the "bewbie cake" because it looked a little like a frosted boob. My friends are all perverts.


Ahhh, the days before crusting buttercream...

Lenae's Birthday

I don't know if it's that obvious, but I'm a military spouse. Not a typical one, being that we have only moved three times since being married. Still, I find that it's hard to make and keep friends. Mainly I would say it's my own fault since I prefer alot of alone time, and have a sort of anti-social personality, and as The Husband says I have too many opinions, and an inability to keep them to myself.

Anyway, I have few close friends from the military community. But things sometimes have a funny way of working out.

I knew Lenae from our last base, she is fun, and our children get along. Our husbands had never met, but there were high hopes there. Well, she moved here to Spangdahlem exactly a year to the day we got here. Come to find out, our husbands DO get along, and we've been trading BBQ's at eachother's houses at least once a month.

Tuesday was her birthday.

Guess what Lenae's favorite flower is.


It's like a field of Sunflowers. This idea came from the book Hello Cupcake!

Here is Lenae looking fantastic as usual (I hate her!) even at Thirty-mumblemumble...


As a bonus birthday present, it turned out that her birthday fell on the same day as the first day of kindergarten. So Lenae sent her youngest son off to school, and we celebrated with cupcakes and margaritas!

Monkeys and Army Men

Long time no cakes. School has started, so the house is a little busier than usual. No time to sit on my behind in front of the computer.

Anyhoodles, on to the cakes.

A twin birthday party. Boy and a girl. Their theme was a county fair. There was a watermelon spitting contest, bubble gum blowing, pie eating, and a whipped cream fight to top it all off.

Instead of making a fair themed cake, I made some plain cupcakes and provided the frosting and decorations. This created a new contest, the cupcake decorating contest. Unfortunately I did not take pictures of the final entries, I was too busy hiding from the sugar induced mayhem.

The birthday boy and girl did get their own individual cakes and candles to blow out.

Monkeys for the girl, and army men for the boy.

Army men was a ye low cake with chocolate fudge frosting. First time using a new crusting chocolate buttercream recipe. It was smooth, and tasted fantastic. Of course I roughed it up a little bit with the incoming cannonballs.

The monkey cake was lemon with lemon frosting and fondant details. The lemon frosting was pretty tart, but yummy, and piped really well.


I finally perfected my scalloped border piping technique. Yay me.