Diabetes Bites!

This is a total oxy moron. Beleive it or not, I did not make this cake for Natalie.

If you know my family, you know that my 4-year-old daughter has type 1 diabetes. This cake is made to replicate the tester that she uses to check her blood sugar several times daily.

However, this cake is not for her. It is for her Grandpa. He was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes (completely different) earlier this year. Now Natalie has a diabetes buddy...sort of.

Usually the screen on the tester shows a number indicating the amount of sugar in your blood. Sometimes, when your sugar is too high, it reads ER or "ERROR". I felt it was approprate to put that on this cake as it is not at all diabetes friendly.

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Winnie The Pooh

I am a total sucker.

To be clear, I do love to get paid for my services as a cake decorator. However, there has been more than one occasion where in a casual conversation someone mentions a cake they are going to make for a birthday or special occasion and they proceed to tell me that they are going to buy a character pan and frost in various colored stars.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! DON'T DO IT!!!...I want to scream at them. And sometimes I do.

In this case I pretty much threw myself at this good friend of mine who dared to tell me about the cake she was going to make for her darling boys' 1st birthday. Instead, she came over and for a very fun few hours, we made the following cake together.

note: Now that you know my weakness, please do not take advantage of me.:)

Alas, I did not make the figurines. They are toys for him to play with after, or during, the cake eating.

His name is Brandon.

I've been wanting to do "Doingies" on a cake for a while now. I love the look of the bees.

(For those of you who did not graduate from culinary school, "Doingy" is the technical term for an object attached to a cake via spring.)
note: "Doingy" is not a real term and I have never been to culinary school, taken a cake decorating class, or even made 2 identical batches of chocolate chip cookies.

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Garden Party

Fondant is a new medium for a lot of people. I get a lot of questions like,

What does it taste like?
What is it made of?
Are you supposed to eat it?
Is there frosting underneath it?
What colors can you do?

Well, crappy gum (worse than fruit stripes!), sugar and gumpaste (among other things), only if you want, yes, and any color you want.

Usually once these basic questions are answered, I take the order and we understand each other.

This was not the case here.

I must start by saying that I really like the lady who ordered this cake. She has become a good friend and I enjoy the projects she sends my way. In this case, she wanted a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and then decorated with lots of flowers and butterflies. No problem. I asked what background color she wanted on the cake and she said "chocolate". I explained that the cake and frosting were both chocolate and that the fondant will cover all of that. She said, "Sooo, chocolate". Then I explained that the fondant doesn't have a flavor and can be made any color you want without affecting the flavor of the cake. She said, "I want it too be chocolate fondant." I paused and said, "So you want brown fondant!!!" Problem solved.

All the other colors were pastel so it was a bit of a question mark how it would look all together. Fortunately it all looked great and she LOVED it!!!


The butterflies are their own story. I found a method of making butterflies with chocolate using 2 colors and blending them together. I tried it out a couple of months ago and it sooooo did not turn out pretty like the picture in the book. They looked much more like some of my preschoolers art projects that she's brought home, no offense Natty. However, when she said she wanted butterflies, I could think of no other way to make them, so I gave it another go.

It's the orange and pink thing there amongst the flowers. They're not perfect, but they're better than my first attempt.

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Princess Jasmine

Usually when someone approaches me for a cake, they give me the theme and I have 2 or 3 different ideas that come to mind. The diffficult part is deciding which elements to use and how to make them come together cohesively.

My daughter asked me months ago if I could make a Jasmine cake for her birthday. In 2 months I had a total of 0 ideas. For whatever reason, this has been one of the most difficult cakes for me to nail down. Every time I thought I had something, I hated it and threw it out.

I decided to just start on it and see what happened. I knew the colors I wanted to use and that was it, so that's where I started. Here's what happened.

It's simpler than I usually do, but I think it works for a 4 year old birthday party...and she likes it!

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