30th Birthday Ballet Pillow Cake

This was my first attempt at a pillow cake.  Lucky for me, my great friend Sarah pretty much lets me do whatever I want in cake world when she orders a cake.  Since I had been wanting to try a pillow cake, this seemed like a fitting opportunity.

Vanilla cake with chocolate butter cream filling.  Dirty iced in butter cream.



The "fun" thing about this cake is that you have to cover it in fondant one half at a time.  So I did the purple and then had to flip the entire cake over...meanwhile praying that it didn't split in half during the flip.  I will pray a little harder next time!

Top/bottom successfully covered in fondant with an added seam and diagonal stripes.

A few fondant buttons and tassels.

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I made the ballet slippers using a template that I found online and added a fondant 30 to the top.

Super pearl luster dust was used to give a little shimmer to the top of the cake.

The final product.  Not too bad for my first pillow cake attempt.  :)

Karly's 4th Birthday Wiggles Cake!

I started with a 9" hexagon cake.  Chocolate/vanilla marble cake.

Covered with dark purple fondant and doweled to support the top tier.

The top tier is a 6" strawberry cake.

Covered with vanilla butter cream.

Stacked and ready to decorate.  This cake was pretty dusty from the corn starch used to roll out the fondant. hmmmm...

I really need to find someone who can model for me.  All interested parties should apply within! lol!  I think I rocked the car...but the Wiggles men looked like they morphed into frogs and somehow lost their necks?  It was my best effort.  It gives me something to work towards getting better at in the future! :)



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Finished product with stripes, diamond, and a green butter cream bead border.



All the Wiggles' friends are at the party! 

Tow Mater 3D Cake

Wow! Am I excited with how this turned out!  I was sent several Tow Mater pictures to consider while making this cake for Megan and Gavin.  This started out as a 12x18 sheet of chocolate chocolate-chip cake.  I cut three 6"x12" sections of cake. and stacked two of them on top of one another.  I doweled the center area where I was going to stack the cab of the truck. Then, I cut the remaining 6x12 in half and stacked it on top of one another to form the driver's cab.



This is a 1" sheet of styrofoam cut about 1.5" smaller than the cake. This will provide the gap under the truck so that the tires look like they're in the right spot.

Dirty iced-side view.

Dirty iced-front view

Dirty iced-back view.

Yes! Tow Mater is actually blue underneath all of that rust!  This is the base layer of blue and green fondant.

As soon as I covered the cake in blue fondant I made a small cut in the front and inserted a piece of paper towel to help form his lip in preparation for his teeth.

All black sections of the towing set up are dowels covered in black fondant.  I stuck them together with a little bit of water.  I used melted chocolate for the end piece.  The tow cable are peelable twizzlers.

Mater's eyes.  In hindsight, they're a bit small...but at least I captured the look of Mater.

I purchased wire at Micahels that was covered in brown wrap.  These will be Mater's side mirrors after they dry.

I used a cookie cutter and cut tires out of styrofoam.  Then, I put a layer of piping gel and fondant on the wheels.  I used a small circle cutter for the rims and dragees for the bolts.

Side panel of Mater's car. I used the fine tip decorating pens and hand wrote this on.

Front engine area.  I used a rectangular piece of fondant and a circle cutter to cut out the black part.

Mater's trademark buck teeth.

White fondant dusted with yellow dust with black fondant stripes.

All details are in place.  Now all that is left is dusting!

Back view...

I used 3 different colors of luster dust and "dusted" Mater's rust on to him.  I used bronze, aztec gold, and dark brown. My inspiration for the cake is at the bottom of the picture!

Final cake-back and side view.

Final cake-front view

Final-back view. 





Welcome to Sugar Plums: An adventure in Cake!

I've been doing cakes in my spare time for the last 4 or 5 years.  Like many other home bakers, I started out decorating cakes for family and friends.  Somehow it has really grown, and I'm doing one or more cakes every weekend.  I spend a lot of time researching the cakes that I create.  I get a lot of my ideas from website and other cake decorators from all over the world.  For complicated cakes, I always try to find a tutorial or contact someone who has created a similiar cake for help.  A lot of times, you can't find a tutorial with progressive pictures.  So, as I began my current cake project, I decided that I should start taking pictures throughout my decorating process.  It might just help out another cake decorator! So, with that, I will start with the cake of the weekend...Tow Mater for a little boy named Gavin who will be 3 this weekend!  Enjoy and feel free to ask questions or leave comments.  If you'd like to see more of my work, please visit: www.freewebs.com/anitamcmanus

Anita :)