More Cakes...

Here are a few more of the cakes I've done in the last few weeks:

Our nephew had his baby blessing on the 15th of March and my mother-in-law asked me to make a cake for it. I couldn't bring myself to do some cutesy baby boy cake and so I was trying to come up with something more creative. His name is Nash (J. Nash to be exact). I thought it would be fitting to make a camoflauge cake with his name in it like 'M*A*S*H'. It's a little hard to see the lettering next to the light tan color (an unforseen problem until it was too late)...

but now I know (and knowing is half the battle...GO JOE!)

I also wanted a good excuse to try a baseball cake. And since Rand and his brother LOVE sports and especially baseball, I thought I'd go ahead and make two cakes for the occasion.

We had a ward Relief Society birthday celebration enrichment last week. I said I'd make a cake (another excuse to practice) and I really didn't know what I was signing up for. I'm sure a simple, single layer cake with brown frosting on top would have been fine. But I thought I'd try to make it more 'fun'. And again, I started the piecing together and frosting of the cake WAY too late (the cake arrived 30 minutes after the start time.) I kind of had to rush the frosting part of it all (hence the blue isn't really the correct navy color of the RS Seal, and the gold looks a little more orange that it should.) I would have liked to have had everything a little more 'clean' looking, but oh well. Next time, right!

This cake was 12" round (first time making it that big) and had three split levels (it was two 12" cakes, each cut in half.) The cake was chocolate, the top and bottom filling layers had real raspberries and the middle layer had chocolate pudding.
Oh...and sorry Candace, but it was just a box mix for the cake!
(Time is money and the box mix was cheaper! Maybe someday I'll be more domestic!)

A girl in my ward was throwing a birthday party for her husband. At first I didn't think Rand and I would be able to go and offered to make a cake for it in our absence (equal trade, right?!)

Well, her hubby is a carpenter. I knew that with my limited skills I would have a hard time recreating the look of wood (I didn't have tons of time to practice or research it)...so I settled on something that was seeminly a little easier; a tool box.

Again I didn't plan my time well and the frosting part of it all took so much longer (especially using fondant for my first time ever!) I really wish I would have started this the day before because it could have turned out SO much better. But I was running

so late and had to super simplify thing

(and I didn't get the frosting as smooth as I wanted it.

The perfectionist in me is so bugged!)

And just for fun:

On St. Patrick's Day I took some plain cupcakes into my work, along with all my decorating tips and bags, and we had a cupcake decorating party. Here is a lot of what we came up with

(we will definitely be keeping our day jobs!)

Sadly the cupcake that our student accountant made was eaten before taking this picture.

He created a nice T-account form atop the cupcake!

Oh, and I also make some fun chocolate and vanilla treats the night before to bring in.