My Cakes

With 6 birthdays in our house (not counting mine) I get lots of practice making cakes.  While a Cake Boss I am not, I at least try.

Here is the majority of them:

My very first. Caleb's 2nd birthday.  This started as a way to prove to my wife that there was no reason to pay someone to make a cake for our kids when I was perfectly capable of doing it myself.  Had I known what I was getting myself into....

Followed by a treasure chest for Will's 4th Birthday.  I was using rolled butter cream for the covering back then.

Then my father-in-law had a birthday.  My first experiment with marshmallow fondant.

Somehow my father-in-law got the next cake too, when he retired.

Josiah had a luau theme for his 1st birthday.  I completely abandoned rolled butter cream and went completely with the Marshmallow fondant at this point.  Also Experimented with airbrushing .

Dad turned 60 and I thought this was appropriate for him.

I just wanted to play with decorating techniques for Mom's birthday that first year.

Okay, so most of these are not in order of when I made them, because I sort of when crazy, and my wife also liked to donate my time for her friends to have cakes.  This is one I entered into a men's cake contest at church.

A knitting basket for my wife's friend

Josiah's 2nd birthday cake.  The bugs were made from rice crispy treats.

A cake for my wife's birthday out with the girls.  They took it to some restaurant.  It was full of as much chocolate as I could get in it.

This is the few cake I got paid for.  It was for a first grade girl's dog birthday party.

When we had a girl, I didn't get a lot of choice in what her first cake would look like.  Mommy had her own plans, I added my own touched though.  I also first attempted gum paste flowers.

This was Caleb's 3rd birthday cake.  He stuck with the Cars theme requests for a few years.

Will asked for Rex the Clone Trooper for birthday #6.  I first experimented with modeling chocolate on this cake.

My brother-in-law's groom's cake.

The ONLY wedding cake I ever attempted.  I learned a lot with this cake.  This was the second wedding for both the bride and groom.  They requested a fun topsy turvy cake, and these were their wedding colors.  I even had fillings to match including orange dreamcicle, key lime pie, ans raspberry.  What I didn't do was reinforce the structure of the cake, and as you can see, a ew hours after it was done, it was starting to sag.  Still it held up for a while, but by the time I got it to the church and assembled, it was starting to really wobble.  the dowel rods I had used for supporting the stacks of cake were twisting and cutting through the layers and minute by minute it became more and more unstable.  It made it through the wedding, sort of.  At least it was still upright.  It didn't actually collapse until the bride  was walking down the stairs to the reception.  She never saw it in one piece. But everyone ate it, the bride and groom laughed it off.  I was deeply humiliated in front of about 75 people, but everyone said it was delicious.  And I learned 2 things.  Never put fondant on cake that is still frozen, and never build a cake more than 2 layers thick without using a cake board between the 2nd and 3rd for support.

Josiah's 3rd birthday.  He really asked for a shark cake.  The water was made from melted sugar. (I burnt myself pretty good too.)

This one was for our neighbor's son. 

This was was strictly to brown nose the teaching staff when Will was in kindergarten.  Karlye helped with the decoration on this one.

My brother also make cakes for his family.  We collaborated on this one for my grandmother's 80th birthday.  I made the sewing machine out of rice crispy treats.  David did the fondant work.  She loved it. I think it was a special birthday for her.  It was the last birthday we had with her.

My all time most favorite cake.  I made it for my friend and pastor for his birthday one week before a long awaited kidney transplant.  The kidney itself was made of red velvet cake.  Marshmallow fondant was used to cover it,  Blood and general sliminess was achieved with corn syrup.

This cake was made in trade for a week of kenneling our dog.

All I can say about this one is that my 5 year old wanted me to make the Sarlac pit from Return of the Jedi. 

I made this for my wife's last baby shower.

This was Grace's 2nd  birthday cake.

Will wanted a bull riding cake for his 7th birthday.

I made this for the birthday of a guy at out church who was restoring a '54 Chevy pickup.  The only other cake I ever got paid for.

This year Caleb wanted a Lord of the Rings cake this year for his 6th birthday.  This was Sauron's tower, Barad Dur, made out of modeling chocolate.   And yes, that is the actual inscription on the ring as written in the books, in Elvish.

Will of course needed a Lord of the Rings cake for his 8th birthday.  Well, close enough.  This is Smaug the dragon from The Hobbit.

And Finally Elijah's first Birthday, and my most recent.  Remember what I said about never using more than 2 layer without a cake board for support.  Yeah, as you can tell, I tried to break that rule.

There were a few others that may have been overlooked.  I'm sure there will be many more to come.  I think I will blog the creation of any future cakes.  I'm sure you can't wait.