Momma This Momma That

May is the month for mothers, especially mine. She gets to enjoy celebrating Mother's Day, her anniversary and birthday. What a deal. That meant I got to make a cake for each event.  My fav and def my best looking/tasting was her birthday cake celebrating the B.I.G. 60. It was my first time making chocolate ganache and practicing my piping and embossing skills. Black food coloring is most certainly not suitable for the messy bakers and even though I'm rather tidy I still have a purple hue stained on the counter top. Oopsie....  I'm a huge fan of ribbon bows so it might be my signa-cha look although I am going to try to mix designs up as much as possible. 

The anniversary cake was not so successful.  This is the cake I would rather not share but will do so to show that making mistakes is part of the learning process.  I attempted to created a quilted look and it was supposed to be two tiers but the top tier collapsed.  The quilting pattern was way off because I decided to free hand it instead of using a simple stinkin ruler.  Then I tried to fix it by covering it with buttercream then scraping that off and pouring sprinkles on top. Yuck. Moving on....

My mom helped me create the flowers for the M-Day cake.  We used gum paste for the first time.  The paste dries super fast so it was tricky getting the petals to keep from cracking or breaking.  I like this cake except for my last minute leaves which remind me of the flowers I used to draw in 4th grade and the fact that I did not discover edible glue till weeks later so the flowers kept sliding off. Not my best work but I'll give it a solid sorta cute.      

Lavender Lumps

My first cake was actually created last April. I didn't want to tackle anything too disastrous so I played it simple using pre-made fondant and an easy cake recipe. My biggest mistake was watching the How To clips after I finished the cake. I always think that I can just do some light reading and be able to recreate the masterpiece. Silly me! Still proud though, lumps and all. The pre-made fondant was not easy to work with and tasted exactly like what it was...store bought. It's such a scam. I threw out the remaining fondant and refuse to use it ever again.  It's all homemade from here on out!