Fall Leaves Cookies

Wedding Dress Cookies - Gluten-Free

Shimmer and Shine Cookies

Paw Patrol Cookies

Anniversary Cookies

These cookies were for my aunt and uncle's anniversary! She loves the Atlanta Braves and he enjoys geocaching, so there are cookies that represent both of them :)

Monograms and Flowers - Gluten-Free

Cheer Cookies

University of Tampa cookies

I've done quite a few different cookie orders for my friend Alyson Powell, so when she came to me with a request for University of Tampa logo cookies, I was so excited for the challenge!

It wasn't so much a challenge to create the outline for the logo, but filling it in with the white, red, and gray icing... that was quite an ordeal.

Here's a pic of the actual logo for reference:

Road Sign Cookies

These road sign cookies were for a 16 year old's birthday party. No super-fancy photos for these - just a quick shot before delivery!

Fox Cookies

Fox cookies for a baby shower!

Back To School Cookies

To all my teacher and administrator friends - have a great start to the new school year!

I was very excited for the opportunity to make these back-to-school cookies for my Whitefield Middle School teacher friends!

When I saw "lined paper" cookies on Pinterest, I was eager to try out the effect with my blue and red edible food coloring markers :)

Are apples too cliche for a teacher gift?

Another opportunity to use my Rolkem Super Gold dust :D

"2 Legit 2 Quit" Gold Drip Cake

An alternative title for this post would be "The Murphy's Law Drip Cake" or maybe "How I Discovered I Was Definitely Not Legit Enough." Just about everything that possibly could go wrong with this cake... did go wrong. Read below for the full lamentable story, or if you're short on time, just scroll down to the bottom to see the unfortunate final photos.

1. The first attempted chocolate cake layers I baked completely crumbled out of the cake pans (I've never had this happen before - the mixture of "goop" that I use (equal parts flour, shortening, and vegetable oil) has always worked perfectly at encouraging cakes to come out of the pan smoothly)
2. For the second attempt at baking the chocolate cake layers, I tried to avoid the crumbling by lining the cake pans with parchment circles. However, one of them immediately sunk down and cratered when I took it out of the oven, making it unusable.
3. Third attempt at chocolate cake layers with parchment circles: successful.

4. My batch of Italian Meringue buttercream frosting absolutely failed, and I had to start over with American buttercream.
5. I had tested out Candy Melts last week to make sure they'd work to create the drip effect, and they worked perfectly. With this cake? The first two batches of chocolate burned. I tried using a different melting method with the third batch - it still burned. Finally, I decided to use royal icing (the same kind of icing I use on my cookies) to create the drip effect.

6. The royal icing (which usually dries very fast on cookies) absolutely WOULD. NOT. DRY. I needed it to crust over before I could paint it with my new Rolkem "Super Gold" dust. By 3:45 a.m. I decided to stick it in the fridge overnight in the hopes it would be dry by 8 a.m.
7. At 8 a.m., the icing had just barely crusted, but was still wet underneath. I was able to carefully paint the Super Gold over the drip. I sighed in relief that the issues with this cake were over.

And then I put the cake in my car.

Remember how I mentioned the royal icing was still wet underneath? The vibrations of the car caused multiple icing mudslides.

I've successfully transported buttercream cakes, fondant cakes, multiple-tiered cakes... but a cake with wet royal icing on top will not transport.

Even though the final result was visually less than impressive, I'm still confident that the cake tasted great. I'm also going to figure out what went wrong with those silly Candy Melts and try again to make a great-looking drip cake.

*sigh*

Unicorn Cookies

One of the most fun cookies to date! Danielle S. bought me these unicorn cookie cutters specifically for her upcoming birthday, and she knew exactly what she wanted - unicorns with rainbow manes.

To make the rainbow swirl manes and tails, I included purple, pink, blue, and yellow icing together in one bag. Each squeeze of the piping bag created a slightly different variation - each unicorn was unique!

I also mixed my gold and bronze luster dust together to put some shimmer on the unicorns' horns and hooves. I'm so pleased with how these turned out!

Mickey Mouse Fondant Cake

Whenever you start a new hobby or activity, there are certain long-term goals that you consciously or unconsciously set for yourself. When I started working with cakes, I knew that at some point I wanted to learn how to work with fondant. It was certainly not an immediate goal, but one I knew I would come to eventually.

When a former co-worker and current mommy-friend contacted me about making a Mickey Mouse cake for her son, my Pinterest research revealed a whole bunch of impressive, beautiful cakes... all covered in fondant. The ones decorated with just buttercream frosting looked decent, but I knew deep down that if I was going to make this cake, it would have to be with fondant. I gave myself one week to experiment and learn the basics of working with fondant.

First, I made a little 6" cake and practiced with covering it in fondant.

I was very pleased with how this first attempt turned out - it was a little uneven around the bottom, but the top and sides didn't look too bad at all. Several practice cakes later, and I was ready to get started on the Mickey Mouse cake.

Above you can see the bottom 9" round red tier and the top 6" semicircle black tier. One of the biggest issues I had with this cake was the rippling/bulging on the sides of the round tiers. You can clearly see the different layers inside the red tier. Was the fondant so heavy on top that it was squeezing the icing out from between the layers? Were there gaps between the layers that the fondant settled into? Still not sure. More research is in order.

Once all three tiers were made, I used wooden skewers to stack them and keep them in place (since making this cake, I've learned that there are even better materials to use for stabilizing and supporting cake layers which work much better than wooden skewers - thick milkshake straws! A very experienced, very sweet cake maker shared this tip with me just hours after I finished assembling the cake tiers. I'm looking forward to trying out this method on my next multi-tier cake). See how sketchy the bottoms of the tiers look at the moment? I wanted to find some way to hide those rough bottom edges.

The experienced cake maker I mentioned earlier also gave me some great advice on molding fondant (like for the Mickey ears): mix some tylose powder into your fondant to make it a bit more firm and sturdy. These Mickey ears would never have stayed upright if I had made them using the same fondant that is covering the cake. Tylose powder saved the day!

To hide the rough bottom edges, I rolled out some thin ropes of fondant and made a little border around the bottom of each tier. They weren't completely even, but after about 18 attempts, I decided that it was as good as it was going to get. I also cut out some white fondant buttons and made a red fondant bow (again, with the tylose powder).

Finally, the big white fondant "4" completes this birthday cake for a very sweet little 4 year old. I can't tell you how much fun I had making this cake and beginning the process of working with fondant! What sort of cake should I try next? :)