Cake Decorating with Kids - Part 1

My girls are involved in a group called Keepers at Home. It's like a Christian version of girl scouts where they can earn badges or charms for learning different life skills, or learning about different animals, sports, or academic subject areas. Today, I taught the younger half of the group about cake decorating! We split the group in half (younger girls & older girls) for this activity so it would be a little less chaotic. And I hosted it at my house. So, today we had about 7 girls and their moms here.

I taught them smooth icing, piping dots and lines and letters with the small round tip, as well as making shapes with the large round tips. I also taught them stars, flowers, zigzags, etc. with the star tip. They each practiced on a sheet of wax paper. Then they each got to decorate their own cupcake (and eat it if they wanted to). I was really impressed by how even these younger girls really paid attention and caught on to what I was telling them.

I had lots of fun, and I think the girls did too. It's always interesting to see the artisic kids being creative, and the serious kids concentrating; then there are the ones like my daughter, Hayden, who just PILE on the icing so they can EAT IT!!! (I must admit -she comes by it honestly!)

HSM2 Cake-tastrophe (almost)

Here's a picture of my latest creation. (Actually, if you'd asked me last night, I would've said it was my LAST creation!) Obviously, it's a HSM2 cake for my friend's daughter (& my daughters' friend), Lexi. When she requested a High School Musical 2 cake, I had to turn to my favorite cake decorating website for ideas on this one. So, that's where I got the idea for laminating the printed image. (Believe it or not, there ARE some brave souls who have drawn all those characters with icing. I'm way too lazy for that, though.)

So, the icing is white buttercream, sprayed blue on top. The border is supposed to look like waves (but I was kind of in a hurry). I just painted a few blue stripes inside the bag before loading it with the white frosting. The lettering is fondant painted with gold & silver sparkle dust. And the image of the characters (Chad, Sharpay, Troy, Gabriella, Ryan & Taylor - scary that I knew 5 of the 6!) was printed from a website, cut out and laminated.

Hopefully it holds together. I have a feeling it may fall apart when we cut it tonight, though. The top layer broke into about six pieces as I was transferring it from the cooling rack to the cake board. (Then I shattered into about a million pieces!) But I finally pulled myself together, put the pieces in order and glued them in place with buttercream. One of the biggest challenges in cake decorating (besides not licking my fingers) is fixing my mistakes, or making things appear to work out. Thankfully, most of my mistakes are only seen by me! Keeping my fingers crossed.....

****UPDATED to add : The party was fun, Lexi LOVED her cake, and best of all...it didn't even fall apart. Anyway, what if it had? People have to break it up to eat it anyway, right?! I got lots of compliments on the flavor/moistness of the cake too. It was a Duncan Hines French Vanilla mix with some extra stuff added in (including White Chocolate pudding mix and buttermilk instead of water). Yum-O!****

Christmas Cookie Tree

This is a Christmas Cookie Tree I made several years ago. Now they sell kits to make these (with the cookies already made), but I actually rolled out all the sugar cookie dough and cut out the star shapes with a set of graduated-size star cookie cutters I bought specifically for this project. I made quick-pour fondant icing to cover the cookies. The snow tips are royal icing with mini-M&M ornaments. Turned out pretty cute, but it was a lot of work, and I haven't made another one since!

I made this cake for a surprise birthday party for my neighbor (Stewart). I copied one I found on CakeCentral because I had never seen The Family Guy show. I guess this baby character is named Stewie, so I wrote, "Stewie's 38! What the Deuce!"

The blue background is all done in buttercream; Stewie's head and body are covered in fondant. It was like making a puzzle, but it was pretty fun. I used Wilton black icing for the outlines, but next time I would use something easier to work with, like black piping gel.

It was hard to get a good photo angle on this cake because of Stewie's 3-D head. Anyway, this is the first cake I've made in a little while, so I felt a little rusty at times, but everyone at the party seemed to enjoy it. I just hate when they make me cut the cake, though!

Star Wars cake

This was my son's 5th birthday cake. It was actually pretty simple. Just a matter of matching the buttercream color to the table decorations. The important parts (Anakin & Darth Maul) were plastic. Gotta love doing a relatively easy cake once in a while!

character cake pans

...vintage Strawberry Shortcake for my niece's birthday.

... the Batman pan re-purposed as "Bibleman" for my son's 6th birthday.

... Barney, of course. "I love you, you love me..."

2-month anniversary cake?

Last night I ran into the couple who hired me to do their wedding cake in August. I had made them a 3-tier square cake with white scrolling on the sides. It turned out really well, but their cake topper was too large to fit on top of a small anniversary cake layer, so I asked the bride if she wanted me to just make it separately for her to freeze, or if she'd rather have me make a fresh one next summer. She thought about it and decided to just have me make the anniversary cake next August, when they will be celebrating their first anniversary. Then it would be freshly made, not frozen, and it wouldn't take up room in their freezer all year.


Anyway, last night at this costume party, they kindly made a point to tell me how great the cake was, and how much they loved it. I thanked them, and then the bride told me how much her groom was (already!) looking forward to the anniversary cake. She said, "He can't stop thinking about it. He's already been asking me, 'Doesn't she owe us that anniversary cake?'"


Umm... it hasn't even been two months yet! It's a good thing I didn't give them one to freeze, or it would probably be gone already!