Sweet Celebrations

wedding shower cakes and an update

 
Yum!  Chocolate is my favorite.  It's been a while, I know, so I'm going way back to May and try to catch my blog up.  What better to start with than this chocolate cake I did for a wedding shower.  It has chocolate buttercream icing and chocolate ganache on top with strawberries.  Talk about death by chocolate...

So for an update, we've been super busy.  But then again who isn't, right?  Summer was fun but over way too fast.  Then we moved into fall with school starting.  My oldest started first grade this year and my baby began K-4. 
 

Then there was soccer which took up a lot of our free time for a couple of months, but the boys had an awesome time.
 

And finally, I went back to work full time.  This has been an adjustment, but really not as bad as I thought.  After six years of working part time and the kiddos being in school and loving it, we decided it was time.  But the downside is I just don't have enough time to decorate cakes like I would like to.  I am planning to do a few here and there just because I enjoy it so much.  So I want to go ahead and apologize in advance if you ask and I have to turn you down.  However, please ask and the sooner the better.  If you ask me to do a cake for you now for say January, I can't turn you down because I don't really have any plans for that far in advance....most of the time.  ;-)

I will leave you with this wedding dress cake I did for another wedding shower.  Yellow cake, cream cheese filling and buttercream icing.  Have a great weekend!

 

zebra lingerie

I've done several of these cakes, but this one was a little different with the zebra print. My sister in law (who is recently engaged I might add.  Congrats Claire!!!)  helped with a lingerie shower for a friend and asked me to do a zebra print version of the lingerie cake.  It was fun to do!

The cake was chocolate chip with chocolate butter cream filling and white butter cream icing.  The zebra print was fondant.

wedding cake crisis

Have I mentioned that wedding cakes scare me?  Yeah.  They scare me.  Mostly because that's a very special day for two people and ruining their wedding cake just isn't an option.  However, I agreed to do a wedding cake for a good friend that I go to church with. 

This cake, by the way, is the one I promised to show here almost two months ago.  I'm not too eager to show it still, but since I promised and all here goes. 

I'm not particularly ready to show it off for two reasons.  One, there was a small cake crisis involved and two, I was also in the middle of a camera crisis so I don't have very good photos.

The crisis involved the middle tier of a three tier cake sliding ridiculously bad, me freaking out, taking the cake apart, re-stacking it, cake was still sliding, taking apart again and removing the sliding tier only to be left with a two tier cake that wasn't really so great.  The bride was completely understanding and sweet about the whole thing but in the end I was greatly disappointed.

This is the cake...

The theme was fall.  Some fall flowers were added, but I didn't get pictures of that.  The bride wanted an all ivory cake and I added the fall leaves and such with some gold dust painted on them.  The bottom tier was chocolate cake with nutello filling and the top tier was white almond cake with buttercream filling.  The middle tier that was still very edible just not pretty was yellow cake, with cream cheese filling and strawberries.  I blame the strawberries.  The cake was covered with marshmallow fondant which is why I could take it apart twice without too much of a mess.

  

bridal cupcakes

We had a bridal shower for a special lady at church a couple of weeks ago.  I had read about and seen so many pictures of beautiful cupcake stands and I saw the shower as a perfect opportunity to try one out. 

First I had to make the stand.  If you google cupcake stands you can find lots of instructions, but here's a site to get started.  I did it basically like this, but in between each tier, I used a glass container full of decorative glass balls to match.  Here is the finished cupcake stand.

Now for the cupcakes.  As you can see I went with the colors pink, blue and chocolate brown.  I made some yellow cupcakes and some chocolate cupcakes with delicious chocolate chips inside.  The icing was an assortment of chocolate buttercream and white buttercream (colored pink of course).  To finish them off I  made little flowers out of fondant.  

These were so much fun and I loved how it turned out! 

Now I'm off to work on this beautiful lady's wedding cake (gasp)!  Wish me luck and look for pictures next week.  Have a great weekend! 

my first wedding cake

Finally, at last, I'm sharing with you my very first wedding cake.  The picture to the left is a little teaser, but first let me explain. 

I was extremely nervous to do a wedding cake for anyone so my policy was I DON'T DO WEDDING CAKES.  Never say never....

My aunt, after a long story with many details that I won't go into,  met someone special, fell in love and they decided to get married.  After years of thinking she would never marry and being perfectly content with that, God, in his amazing love, sent her someone.  Someone who would love and cherish her as she does him.  Someone to share this life with, to share her hopes and dreams with and to share her Christian walk with.  I think she deserves this awesome blessing and so did her Father God!

 

So Aunt Sammie asked me to make her cake.  She made me feel completely at ease saying that it didn't have to be fancy or super duper perfect.  She knew that I could do it and wanted to build my confidence.  I wanted to be able to bless her with a pretty wedding cake.  So it was settled.

I was pleased with the way the cake turned out  and so were the happy couple.  The cake was all white almond (which is my new favorite by the way) with buttercream filling.  I covered the cakes with beige fondant and we went with a little bit of a grape theme.  So without further ado, here are a few pictures.