Cake Galore

For the last few years I have fallen in love with cake/cupcake decorating. I love looking through some of my decorating books - completely in awe of the talent that some bakers possess. I have tried my hand at cupcake decorating and have been mostly pleased with what I have come up with (considering I have had no training to speak of), but I haven't done a lot of cakes.

Well, this past weekend we celebrated Norah's birthday. Kristy asked me if I would be willing to help her make a cake and I of course said I would. Kristy and I talked about what we would make and there were moments in the planning when I doubted our ability to make the cake we wanted. I have to say, I am extremely pleased with what we came up with and how it turned out.

After church on Saturday, Kristy, Aimee and I got together to assemble cupcakes and cakes for the party. Let me tell ya, it was no short process. Thankfully Kristy had baked the cakes and cupcakes, made the icing and the fondant all ahead of time, so that all we had to do was the actual decorating. The longest part was definitely creating the colours in the fondant. My hands were quite sore after all that kneading.

the process....

All that work definitely required some wine - my hands were died purple, so holding the cup myself wasn't really a possibility. Thank goodness for good friends :)

the finished products....

I LOVE how vibrant the colours turned out!

After about 4 hours of intensive labour, both the cupcakes and the cake was finished. I think we all went to bed exhausted, but glad we did it. It was definitely worth the 4 hours, however, cutting the cake on Sunday at the party was a little sad after all the hard work we had done only a few short hours before.

The look on Norah's face made all the hard work worth it!

About to make the first cut....ouch! It stung a little.

It was a great first fondant cake. I would love to one day do this a little more professionally and sell them, but we'll see where that goes. I think I need a bit more practice first. Aimee's birthday is next. We'll see what we can create!