When I got home on Monday night I got a phone call from my dentist asking me to make a cake for the next day. It was for one of the women in the office who was leaving.  The cake was nothing too fancy, just a yummy chocolate cake with vanilla buttercream. I added some royal icing flowers to pretty it up a bit and did a reverse shell border around the top of the cake for something a little different.

I have been wanting to try out some new techniques so I decided to make another display cake for the Farmer’s Market. I had always wanted to try doing a fondant overlay so that’s what I did. I covered around cake dummy in pale pink fondant and let it harden. Then I covered in another layer of chocolate fondant letting the fondant cover the cake base as well to look kind of like a hat. While the chocolate fondant was still soft I used small cutters to cut out the chocolate fondant letting the pink fondant peak through. A laser level came in handy to make sure I made the design straight. I finished it off with a pretty ribbon and bow with a criss-cross design from a textured rolling pin. I topped it off with a patchwork daisy also in the pale pink color.

To stretch out the last few days of summer I decided to make a “Tropical Oasis” cake to put on display at the Farmer’s Market. For the past two weekends I have also been going to Rice’s Market in New Hope, PA to do some advertising and the display was a big hit there as well.

The cake is covered in marblized blue fondant to look like a clear blue ocean. To get the beautiful swirls I combined light blue, dark blue, and white fondant. I kneeded it just to combine so that the colors were not completely mixed together. The cute sea animals I made using a silicone mold. The floating island is sand colored fondant covered in brown sugar and the palm trees are made of gumpaste dusted with green petal dust and wired together with brown florist tape.

These adorable mini three tiered cakes with a paw print pattern were for a 1st birthday party this weekend. The cakes were yellow cake with rich chocolate frosting covered in white fondant. The black paw prints were painted on using black food coloring. They were wrapped in a paw print cello bag and tied off with paw print ribbon to match.

I had to do a Valentine’s Day demo at Michael’s Last weekend. I made some heart shaped sugar cookies in various sizes. Instead of using the flood-in icing technique I have done in the past I used modeling chocolate in pink, red, and white to decorate the cookies. Modeling chocolate is made by melting white or dark chocolate and then adding some corn syrup. The result, once cooled, is a chocolate dough that can be molded, cut, and shaped any way you can imagine. You can do with it many of the same things you can do with fondant and it tastes really good because it’s CHOCOLATE!

Besides modeling chocolate I also used some royal icing to make a cornelli lace design on some of the cookies, and colored sugar also adds a nice touch.

I’ve finished teaching 3 cake decorating courses at the Michael’s Arts and Crafts in North Brunswick and they were a lot of fun. I will be teaching Course 3 in January so I decided to make another display cake to put up in the store. I used a lot of the techniques that are taught in Course 3. The cake is covered in white fondant and the Poinsettia design was done using a technique called brush embroidery. A blue fondant ribbon borders the bottom of the cake and little blue snowflakes were piped on the side.

For my second demonstration at Michaels Arts and Crafts I decorate a variety of Holiday cookies to look like ornaments as well as snowflakes. A combination of Royal Icining and Color flow was used to get the various effects. The gold and silver accents were done with luster dust mixed with a little lemon extract and then brushed on the dry royal icing.

This weekend I had to give my first demonstration as a Wilton Method Instructor at Michael’s Arts & Crafts. The theme of the demonstration was Halloween treats. I made some pumpkin, ghost, acorn, and leaf cookies cookies. The cookies were decorated by first outlining them in stiff royal icing. Once that was dry they were flooded in using very thin royal icing. Once the flood-in icing was dry enough some detail, like the eyes and mouth of the pumpkins, could be added using medium-stiff royal icing.

So about a year ago I was accepted to be a Wilton Method Instructor (WMI), however it wasn’t until recently that I found an opening available in my area. WMI’s are cake decorating instructors that have gone through the all three Wilton Courses and are certified by Wilton to teach the Wilton method of cake decorating through. Courses are usually offered through craft stores, adult education programs, or vocational schools. I will be teaching at the Michaels Crafts in North Brunswick, NJ.

My first class will be in October so to help promote it I created a autumn inspired cake to display in the store. I used all of the techniques students will learn in the  first course.

July 5th is my father’s birthday and my parents often visit me in NJ around that time. It has become almost a tradition that I make him a birthday cake every year. He absolutly loves the Entenmann’s yellow cake with chocolate fudge frosting, so I wasn’t surprised when I asked him what flavor he wanted and he told me to make it like the Entenmann’s cake. I did just that, a yellow cake layered with chocolate ganache and covered in chocolate fondant. I airbrushed a tropical sunset scene on top (since my parents now live in Florida and my father loves it there) with a blue seashell border around the bottom to finish it off.