Happy New Year!

Cake balls that we're taking to a New Year's Eve party tonight. Along with a gorgeous rose spray from Doug's garden. I was trying to make these cake balls look SO festive ... but now they just look like eyeballs at best. Oh well. They taste wonderful. The purple and chocolate ones are spiked with rum, the pastel ones are rum-less.

Happy New Year 2

Another view.

Purse Cakes

I love them. This one is an artist's (mine) rendering of a lady's actual favorite purse. It forced me to do what I never wanted to do before -- create frosting roses. Now I LOVE frosting roses! Chocolate cake, buttercream icing, fondant covering and royal icing roses and trim. YUM!

Weather or not

This young birthday boy has a fetish for The Weather Channel and all things weather related. I did my best to represent his birthday party invitation and address his weather passions. What a FUN cake to make!

One Brave Mother

This mom is hosting a gingerbread house decorating party for her daughter. All I have to do is provide the cake. I get the easy end of the deal!

Model T

Yes, the Tin Lizzie's wheels are melting thanks to recent humidity levels ... but is is this not the coolest cake for a car aficionado?

There's a New Teacher in Town!

The University of Houston has produced a new Elementary Ed Teacher!

Merry Christmas!

A fun little 8" cake. Stay tuned for 7 more cakes and several dozen cookies over the coming weekend. And to all my friends and family -- my apologies if you haven't heard from me lately. I'm up to my ears in buttercream and it doesn't combine too well with my keyboard. The girls are harping on me to get the Christmas letter done to enclose with the photocard that we at least DID get done -- some two weeks ago. So stay tuned. You're not forgotten. In fact, I think of you all most every day -- and wish I could electronically send you each goodie I make every time I post a new picture.

Time, time, time. Where do I find more?

It's beginning to look a lot like ...

... Christmas! These fondant lights were a lot easier to place on the cake than our tangled strings are going to be to place on our tree tonight! A simple holiday cake for a dinner party.

Nutcracker Ballet

For a young lady who's performing in same. Toe shoe, ballerinas, Christmas presents and holiday garlands with ornaments ...

Baby Girl Shower Cake

Can you even STAND how cute those little pink gumpaste booties are???

Here Lies My Youth ...

A very clever fellow decided to host his 50th birthday party in a funeral home ... deciding to have his own funeral while he was still alive so he could hear all the grand eulogies ... then party with all his friends afterwards. This is a huge 3-layer chocolate cake with a tuxedo-ed Ken doll ensconced therein. For those who don't like cake, there were these ...

The Party Favors

A mixture of chocolate and vanilla shortbread tombstone cookies with crushed Oreos in the bottom of the bag for dirt.

Turning 35

Not a person -- a company. How about THAT for an amazing accomplishment in this day and age? 35 years in business! They threw a big party to celebrate, and I had the honor of crafting the cake. Cake decor was taken from their party invitations.

Eldest (photog) daughter was my delivery assistant, and got a great shot of the cake with the company Christmas tree in the background.

Ten Lizzie

For the most charming 10-year-old you could ever meet. Her party was to be at a beauty salon ... all the girls were getting their hair, nails and makeup done. This cake was based on her party invitation. While the pearls aren't edible, all the makeup on top of the cake was crafted from candy clay. My new favorite medium!

Izzie is One!

For a very special one year old. The cake decor was based on her birthday party invitation. I did her baby shower cake, too, which was based on her nursery decor. If I should have the honor of being asked to do her sweet-sixteen birthday cake, would that make me old????

Bugs Slugs Dirt and Mud

Another little boy cake. Although one day I'm sure I'll be asked to do a bug and dirt cake for a little girl. The bugs are plastic, the dirt is crushed oreos and the mud is royal icing. The #5 cookie on top is for the birthday boy's own enjoyment.

Chocolate Decadence

Ohhhhhhhh my! Just a tiny little simple cake, but loaded with dark chocolatey goodness. Sometimes simple is best.

Star Wars

Silly me. I had no idea 3-year-olds these days are totally into Star Wars. Now I know. I went through dozens of ideas for his cake before finally (thanks to inspiration from my local 8-year-old boy) settling on this (rather short and squatty) R2-D2. After all, who doesn't love R2-D2? Total cake and buttercream body with fondant accents. His arms are rice krispie treats covered in fondant.

Tea Party

For Miss Ellie. Who is turning four today. She's also a bit under the weather with whatever crud is going around Houston right now, so I hope this cheers her up a bit.

Pea in a Pod

Just a tiny little cake -- a personal gift to the mother-to-be on the occasion of her baby shower. She gets to take it home and eat it all herself if she wants!

Cornucopia

I love Thanksgiving. I love the symbology of the cornucopia. And I finally got to do a cornucopia cake. Fondant apple, oranges, squashes and grapes. Delicious cake and buttercream everything-else.

My midwife's youngest son just turned 40

And we met him when I was PG with daughter #2 ... when he was still in high school. Now exactly HOW old does that make ME???? Please don't do the math.

Anyway ... it was his birthday this weekend. He's all growed up now and sells orthopedic braces quite successfully for a living. So I made him a cake.

The words around the cake were: "Brace yourselves ... Chris is 40!"

Harry Potter

Just a small little 6" cake for an adult Harry Potter fan ... but I must say I do rather love it. This was a whole lot of fun to research and craft. Is that quidditch broom cool or what? My golden snitch could probably use some work, but everything else rocks -- as far as I'm concerned.

Flashback!

This cake was requested by a young man turning 12. He wanted a "Psychedelic '60's" cake, three-tiered, and he told me to let my imagination run wild. He and his friends are totally into The Beatles, The Ramones, and All things '60's. How cool is that?

Thank goodness for Google. I was only twelve myself when the Psychedelic '60's were in full swing ... so it's not because of old age that I needed a little help remembering what to put into this cake, right?

Happy faces, love beads, tie-dye, flower power, and peace and love, dude!

Pink Princess

Once again -- can you even IMAGINE having a princess cake like this when YOU were a little girl? (I realize I'm older than most of you reading this by at least 2 decades, but) ... I remember when those little plastic ballerinas stuck on the top of a simple birthday cake were SUCH a thrill for me.

Now I'm infinitely fortunate to be able to take flour, sugar, butter and a few other ingredients, and make so many birthday dreams come true.

I have the best "job" in the world.

Cooking Lessons

Ohmigosh is this the cutest thing ever, or what? This was a birthday party for a darling little girl turning 4, and her birthday party was at a "kitchen table" type place where the little party goers were taught how to make penne pasta and ice cream sundaes. The party invitations featured pink aprons, hot pads, kitchen mitts, etc.

Birthday girl wanted pink cake, inside and out, so that's what she got. She also got a satin-white textured tablecloth on top of the pink cake, all decked out with four sundaes (because that's how old she is), four silver spoons, an apron, a bunch of oven mitts and hot pads, a bowl of penne pasta, and a vase on the table with the "flowers" spelling out her name.

Happy Birthday!

Do the Splits!

This cake was for the cutest little 3-year-old gymnast. It had me stumped for one long sleepless night, trying to figure out something clever to come up with for the gymnastics theme ... but I was finally hit with inspiration about 5 hours before this cake was due. And voila! This proud little gymnast doing the splits on top of her psychedelic gym mat was born. Just wish I'd gotten a better angle on this picture so you could see her little tongue sticking out.

Cake Truffles

These delectable diminutive delights somehow just pop into your mouth and disappear. Again and again and again. A secret blend of cake, icing and whatever other delicious flavors I might feel like adding, rolled into spheres, dipped in chocolate and decorated with (in this case) fondant fall leaves kissed with a bit of gold.

Apologies to my cake groupies

I know some of you have been going through withdrawals since I haven't posted a picture in a couple of weeks. I actually made 4 cakes last week, but was so pushed on my timing (for reasons that will be explained below) that I didn't get any pictures. I did a really cool teacher cake, an amazing martini glass cake that was actually a Cosmo since the party colors were hot pink and black, a simple 'just cake' cake, and an amazing artificial knee cake. Plus a few dozen Halloween cookies.

Reasons why you didn't get pics of those cakes:

Right after completing the Baby Boy Baptism cake that you're now bored with looking at, Doug and I were invited on a last-minute trip to Galveston, to go out on a pontoon boat at sunset to see the Dolphins swim and jump and dive and do everything else that they do, along the Intracoastal Waterway. Then we could spend the night at a friend's friend's beach house, and mosey our way back home sometime late Sunday afternoon. I frantically do a load of laundry, Doug packs our bags and a cooler and loads the car, I clean up from cake-baking and lock down the house, and we call eldest daughter to let her know we're leaving, and to come Sunday morning to check on things.

Well ... we nearly lost our lives on that fateful pontoon boat ride. Think Gilligan's Island/Titanic/Poseidon Adventure. I won't go into detail, but suffice it to say our adventure involved the pontoon boat being beached on a sandbar with 3" of water over it at late dusk, right next to the Intracoastal Waterway (where the dolphins were supposed to be swimming); several ocean-going vessels that were NOT pleased with us and our position/strandedness; a dog (one of 3) on the boat who decided it would be huge fun to go for a swim, and leapt off the deck to do so; big cold winds and water and waves; encroaching darkness; multiple males jumping in the water to push us off the stranding sandbar/save the dog; the blessed relief that the boat's motor actually re-started; a freezing 20-minute ride home against big winds and In The Dark; me clutching a teeny little Chihuahua to my bosom the entire time in order to save his life and prevent him from going for a swim; finally returning to the beach house to change into dry clothes, only to discover that Doug had failed to Put Our Suitcase In The Car.

No problem. We were all actually a bit giddy about surviving it all -- but DARN glad the boat's motor didn't shear a pin when we hit that shoal/shell/sand bar. It seems the Intracoastal Waterway had recently been dredged. Just our luck.

Then the next day ... we find out that the little island nearby that we jokingly said we'd just go hang out on and sleep all night if the motor didn't start and the Coast Guard wouldn't come ---- is named Rattlesnake Island. For good reason. Also -- the area we were in is known as Alligator Alley. Also for good reason. And even more than that -- another friend who fishes there frequently said he goes fishing there because he catches BABY SHARKS in those Intracoastal Waterways

We're all fine, of course, but we feel like 15-year-olds rather than 55-year-olds. I may have foreshadowed it a bit while we were frantically packing the car to leave and I said, "Gosh, it feels like a high school road trip!"

My Aunt now insists that Doug and I can't take another weekend trip unless we pass our itinerary by her, first.


So, yeah. I'm trying to catch up from almost losing my life.

Many more cakes to come. Stay tuned.

Bill Cosby Sweaters

Middle daughter is winging her way to Seattle to visit her old college roommate. They are invited to a party Saturday night -- everyone in attendance has to wear a Bill Cosby Sweater. We thought it would be fun for me to make some BCS Cookies to take along.

Baby Boy Baptism

A two-layered white almond sour cream cake carved into the shape of a cross ... slathered with buttercream and decorated with a fondant bow. Yum. I'd like a slice of that with my morning coffee right about now ...

Two Cakes for a Hand Surgeon

This larger cake is for her birthday party celebration in the office, and the cake below is a smaller cake for her to take home and enjoy with her family.

The design on top (in royal icing) happens to be a topographic relief map of the human hand giving the "okay" sign. (No way could I do most of my cakes without my BFF Google!)

They had discussed in the beginning wanting a cake shaped like a hand giving the "okay" sign. I most definitely could not figure out the physics on that one, so they agreed to just a sheet cake with two hands drawn on top.

Well, I knew that just wasn't going to be awesome-looking enough for my cake standards, so I came up with this.

As it turns out, my muses were speaking directly to me. This is the position they put your hand in when they take an x-ray, and here I have an x-ray-looking-ish hand on the top of the cake. Who knew?

The Hand

I was originally intending to make this a pretty, delicate female hand with nail polish, a sparkly ring and a pearl bracelet. But it turns out to be darn hard to craft small slender fingers out of a 2" tall cake and have enough cake left for more than once person to eat. Once I got the fondant on this one, it was obvious this was going to have to be a man's hand.

So I made up the story in my head that this was a granddaddy farmer who got his hand caught in a hay baler and came to this lady hand surgeon to fix his hand so he could go back to providing for his family -- and keeping everyone else in the community fed. Thus, the blue chambray work shirt cuff and the hand lying in a bed of grass. Or alfalfa sprouts.

I'm hoping her little kids will get a huge kick out of this cake.

Fall Festival

It's that time of year again. This one is going to Annie's preschool's Fall Festival for the cake walk. A little 3-layer spice cake iced in buttercream and covered with fondant. Then I painted the whole thing with "Tiger Lily" luster dust mixed with a little Everclear. It kind of glowed in the dark.

Winnie the Pooh

He sure does like his hunny. This one wasn't for a child -- but for a grown woman who happens to love everything Pooh.

A tisket, a tasket ...

... a bronze and golden casket.

This was created for a local family-owned funeral home's grand opening celebration. Doug built their funeral home a few years ago. And they recently finished building on the addition. Tonight is the party to celebrate the completion. And here's the cake!

Bridal Shower

A simple little last-minute bridal shower cake. The bridesmaids are wearing champagne satin gowns, thus the champagne-colored fondant 'pearls' around the borders. It's 5 am. I'm suddenly craving a piece of that cake!!

Boo!

You've heard the story of the shoemaker's children never having any shoes, right? Well, here are some cookies for the fam. My son in law complained that I never make chocolate cookies for him, our daughters complain if there's nothing sweet to eat whenever they stop by ... so here's my answer to them all. 8 dozen Halloween cookies in the last 4 days.

Just. For. Them.

And anyone else who stops by, of course.

Happy Halloween!

(That's a way cool witch's hat in the background, but I need first daughter's photo skills to make it show up properly.)

Calling all purse freaks ...

I finally did it. A Louis Vuitton. For a friend of mid-kid. Is it just gosh-darned darling or what? Yes, I know, the pattern isn't EXACTLY the LV thing ... but I do my own version of it so I don't get sued for copyright infringement by the big and nasty LV Lawyers ;-)

This happens to be a carrot cake. Let's hope the recipient thinks my version is at least somewhat comparable to her grandmother's.

A Bear Knits in the Woods

Interestingly enough, this cake is for yet another 90-year-old matriarch, provided by her granddaughter. How cool is that?

It seems she growled at her kids when they were little, thus earning the nickname "The Bear." And she has proceeded to knit up a storm all her life ... so this is what the granddaughter and I came up with for the cake to celebrate her monumental birthday.

(It's the bottom cake tier in green that represents the woods.)

And those are her authentic knitting needles.

Now come on ... how fun is that?!

Let's Play Bridge

A special note to all "K's Cakes" addicts out there ... this is the second month of the monthly treats that the world's best granddaughter is providing to her 90-year-old grandmother for the year ahead. (For those of you not addicted to my blog yet, reference "Cookies for the Matriarch" in the August archive.)

The matriarch is a major bridge player, so this month was a bridge cake that she can serve to her friends at the next bridge game. Those are red ribbon roses on top, but they sure don't look like it in this picture.

Spidey!

I finally got a chance to make a Spiderman cake today. How. Much. Fun.

My first Spiderman, and my first experience airbrushing a cake. Spidey was fun, but oy vey on the airbrushing. Trust me, I protected the entire local environment in the kitchen from overspray and did a darn good job on it. However, I had NO idea that invisible particles of red mist were filling the kitchen and proceeding to fall upon all horizontal surfaces. All counters, tabletops AND the darn floor.

Oh well. It was still fun. Next time I'll don a hazmat suit and mask, and do it outside in the back yard.

I think he's so cool ...

28

This Oklahoma grad is celebrating her birthday (guess which one?) in a local venue while watching the Big Game (which is in Dallas) on TV. I hope her hubby is planning to give her some kind of big prize if Oklahoma scores her age!

Happy Birthday,Dougie!

A topsy-turvy cake for hubby's birthday today. Bottom layer is a carrot cake in the shape of a tool box, middle layer is a chocolate tipping-over paint can, top layer is a while almond sour cream flower pot. Wish you could see the silver clasp on the tool box better -- it's my favorite part of the cake. And that's spilled dirt from the flower pot on top (aka crushed Oreos) around the bottom border

If you know Doug, you know why the girls and I chose these 3 themes for his cake.

Almost party time!

Well hello, Charlie!

These cookies are on their way to Michigan to welcome our new great-nephew onto the planet. Since he can't eat the cookies, I'm hoping his big sister (whose first initial is also a "C") will get to eat them all. Eventually.

Baby cookies. SO much fun.

Aaron's Birthday STRIKES again!

A cute little birthday cake for one of mid-kid's co-workers. He's been with the company 12 years and absolutely LOVES to bowl. He's a bit freaked out about turning the Big 4-0, so the managers thought it would be nice to get him a cake that might brighten his mood about it all. I hope he loves it! Giant orange and yellow "4" and "0" candles will sit on top.

Sunshine, Lollipops and Rainbows ...

... anyone else old enough to remember Leslie Gore? Now I can't get that song out of my head. Anyway ... this was for a 13-year-old who loves blue skies and puffy clouds and rainbows and flowers. Not a bad batch of things for a 13-year-old to love, these days. Banana spice cake with buttercream icing and fondant. Mr. Sol is all gumpaste.

Prima Ballerina

For a cute little six-year-old who wanted a Ballerina Cake for her birthday. This ballerina is taking her bow in her buttercream frosted tutu. White almond sour cream/chocolate chocolate chip marble cake. Yum.