Knock! Knock!!

Hello! Remember me? What?? Okay, so my last post is dated Jan 2010. And yes, that was 9 months back! But, if you thought I was going to let my blog die of neglegence, you are so wrong! It certainly has been a long time but I had some major stuff taking up the time. One of it was moving! We had to move from Richmond to Maryland due to my husband's job. Then I went on a long vacation for 3 months to go be with my family and friends. It was grrreat!!! After I got back, we went on another short vacation to be on the beach and get some sun before the Fall season. Finally, I am back now and I am back to baking and blogging.

So, for the comeback: A cake I had made for a friend's daughter, a long time ago. They had lived in Virginia Beach once but now moved to Richmond and the kid was missing the beach. So she wanted to have a beach themed cake for her birthday. And as we have just returned from a beach vacation ourself, I thought it was apt for me to post this one from my backlogs :-)


For this cake, I prepared a full sheet vanilla cake with mocha flavored whipped cream frosting. As for the fondant decorations, I made the figure of a girl relaxing on the beach, a beach blanket, shovel and a beach bucket filled with sand, a sand castle/sculpture kinda thingy (for the lack of a better term), flip-flops and a beach ball. To place the girl and her stuffs on the shore, I piped some white-blue combo frosting in a corner of the cake, making it look like waves. Btw, if you're still looking for the sand sculpture that I mentioned, just put on your 'extra special vision goggles' and look near the flip-flops :-)

Mission Impossible?

Hunting for the right birthday present to surprise a loved one could almost seem like a mission. And this cake that I made is the result of one such mission of a loving husband. He approached me to make a surprise birthday cake for his wife and said that his wife's favorite thing was the merry-go-round or carousel. She has a thing for this particularly simple yet fun ride. She would neither miss them at the amusement parks nor at the souvenir shops.

Anyways, I set out to work on the design for this cake and usually when I make a themed cake, I like to know more about the person's hobbies, favorite timepass etc., so I can incorporate it in their cakes. So, the other things that the husband mentioned about his wife are: She loves flowers, the movie Madagascar, shopping at Macy's and Dillards and of course, the carousel. Finally, the cake was designed to make it look like she is being gifted with all of her favorite things for her birthday.


Red roses for flowers, Macy's shopping bag, Dillards' gift card (seen in the first picture),


her favorite characters Alex and Gloria from the movie Madagascar and last but not the least, the carousel - all made out of fondant and made to be completely edible.


I made the carousel as a keepsake box so she could add it to her collection if she liked. And to add to the surprise, I put a cupcake (actually, I didn't have time to bake a cupcake, its a piece of cake I cut in round shape) inside of the carousel box.


The verdict? The wife called me the next morning and said she was adding the carousel to her collection. Looks like 'Mission' Accomplished :-)

Red roses

I made this cake a long time ago. This cake was made for someone whose favorite color is red and ... roses are red :-) And not just that, the cake itself is a red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting.

The cake is decorated with medium size roses in the center and mini or small size roses around the border. The roses were hand piped with royal icing and it worked out great. Because I was working on several cakes at the same time, it helped to have these made ahead of time. The outside of the cake is covered with crushed roasted pecan nuts.

Baby Einstein

Another kids themed cake to my collection :-) Now, although there was no Baby Einstein when I grew up, I've still enjoyed watching it - Thanks to my nephew and niece in Dallas. I somehow like to watch all the fun stuff that they watch. I guess there is a little kid inside all of us or maybe like some say, I still have to ' grow' up ;-)

Anyways, to the cake now. This is a birthday cake for a 1 yr old baby boy. A front and back view of the cake below. The bottom tier has an underwater theme and the middle tier is land themed (for lack of a better term) and each have the corresponding Baby Einstein characters.


Here is a picture of all the Baby Einstein puppet/characters made for the cake. I didn't have time to shoot the figures individually so I had to crop them out and resize, hence the quality of the picture.


The famous Baby Einstein caterpillar that I made for the top tier along with the label. I really wanted to get the logo right and wondered if I should practice it first (really, drawing on paper and on fondant are different things). But I am always rushing to the last minute when I make big cakes like this. So I had to do directly on the cake and I was quite happy with the result.


Along with the Baby Einstein characters, I made other accents for the underwater tier and here they are. There were more shells and other small details but couldn't crop all of 'em. You can view them in the full cake picture.

Let it snow!

My friend's mom is here in the US for the first time and one thing she was really looking forward to is the snow. It has been raining a lot here but no snow yet. So this 'snowy' cake was for her birthday.


This is a coconut cake with cream cheese frosting. The top of the cake is sprinkled with shredded coconut to make it look like snowflakes. The edible fondant accents that I made for this theme are snow covered cottage, trees, fences, Mr & Mrs Snowman and penguins.


Some shots to give a closer look at the detail work done on the accents: just click on the images. Love the cute snow couple and oh, did I mention the cottage door has a handle and the window curtains are tied back? Maybe, its a bit too much, huh?


I liked the way the fences turned out, looked like real wood panels... almost :-)

Ace of Cakes... NOT!

If I was working for Duff Goldman (Owner of Charm City Cakes from the show Ace of Cakes), I would say it was a sports week at the Charm City Cakes bakery :-D But I haven't got the opportunity... yet. So its just another sports themed cake I made.


This cake was for the second birthday of a little basketball champ. He is only 2, but man, can he play! Every ball right into the basket. Apart from basketball, he likes Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. So, the plan was to put him in the court playing ball with his friends Mickey and Duckey.


I made a half court, covered a cake board with fondant, a basket and backboard out of fondant also and stuck it to the pole which was a dowel covered with fondant. As for the figures, I made the birthday boy and put a ball in his hands like he is getting ready to shoot and then Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. Everything was made out of fondant and completely edible except for the cake board in the court and the dowel stick in the pole/ pillar. Duckey was made to look like he has his hands inside his pockets but I am not sure I got it quite right. I forgot to set it in the right position before it was late. But all in all, I loved the way it turned out and as always, I wanted to keep him for myself :-D

Dallas Cowboys!!!

It's been a while since the blog was updated and its definitely not because I've given up my passion for cake decorating. I've actually been busy making cakes and haven't had the time to update the pics. But I'm going to catch up with some pics for now.


So, this cake was made for a huge Cowboys fan. This an 8 inch cake with fresh fruit filling and whipped cream frosting. The top of the cake is covered with chocolate glaze and has edible cake toppers. For the Dallas Cowboys' team based theme, I made a football, player's helmet and team logo. As usual, it was fun making these cute little cake toppers :-)

Texas Cowboy

This is a birthday cake for someone who is a cowboy at heart :) For the cowboy theme, I made the hat, a pair of cowboy boots, lariat (the rope), horseshoe and a personalized badge out of fondant. I put some cacti to match the scene. To give a ranch effect, I sprinkled a mixture of chocolate chip cookie crumble and brown sugar on top of the cake.

Jet Airways cake

This cake is for the 70th birthday of my friend's dad. His father was here in the US for the first time, on vacation and he wanted him to remember his first birthday here.


The cake has a Jet Airways plane (in fondant), the airlines by which he traveled and outlines of his departure and destination counries, India and US. I made a figure of his dad out of marshmallow fondant.

Sesame Street cake

This weekend I did a big Sesame Street themed cake for a 1 yr old. It is a 3 tiered cake built with 14, 10 and 6 inches round cakes. I picked 3 popular characters from Sesame Street and made cake toppers all out of marshmallow fondant. I took the colors red, blue and yellow from these 3 characters and used it for the fondants to cover the 3 tiers.

The top floor is occupied by baby Big Bird and his 'crib' is decorated with lots of stars. It was a personal request that I use lots of stars and make the cake very colorful.


Baby Cookie Monster is on the second floor, happily eating his chocolate chip cookies. This cake is decorated with colorful gifts all around.


Baby Elmo is on the first floor with his feeding bottle. I used the Sesame Street sign board to display the birthday baby's name. This tier is all about a beautiful, sunny day at Sesame Street :)


The back view of the cake showing all the decorations and the actual sesame street board.

Most people do cake toppers with gum paste (This is a mixture of sugar, starch and gelatin. It's what many of those realistic looking flowers, fruits and ribbons are made of on a wedding cake), which is technically "edible" but once it is dried, it becomes rock solid and not really "edible". So I opted to make these out of marshmallow fondant. It is a bit of a challenge doing figures out of marshmallow fondant due to its texture and the fact that working with sugar is not easy. But it is worth the time and effort to see the kids very excited as they bite off Big Bird's beak, eyes, head etc. made out of fondant. Yeah, while the adults enjoyed a piece of cake, the kids were fighting over Elmo's feeding bottle and Cookie Monster's chocolate chip cookies :) I sooo wanted them myself :D

Watch the Sesame Street cake toppers:

Number One Birthday cake

I just made this cake for a friend's daughter who turned 1 this week. YAY!! Celebrating first birthday is really cute, especially if its a girl :-)
Lots of cute and colorful things: flowers, butterflies, balloons, teddy bear... It was a lot of fun making all these little details out of fondant. The teddy bear is sitting atop of a learning block which is cake covered with fondant.

Wine Bottle cake

I made this for a 50th birthday bash. The request was that the wine bottle be made after the person who is celebrating her birthday.


The wine label was designed with the person's name and the year she was born. The gift box in which the bottle lies is made of 3 layers of devil's chocolate and german chocolate cake. The wine bottle contains several layers of dark chocolate cake in different sizes to form the shape of the bottle. I made the gift box lid and bow with fondant and has no cake in it.

Simple cake

This is the first cake I did with Marshmallow fondant. I topped the cake with some handmade flowers: Daisies, carnations and a fantasy flower.


The picture below shows a drape hanging on one side of the cake. The drape has a marble effect in a blue and white combination.

Designer Purse cake

This is a designer purse cake done for a birthday girl. Usually ladies carry in their bags, the various cosmetics shown but this one contains a speeding ticket. This person was recently given a speeding ticket and was being made fun of all the time for it. Looks like the embarrassment continues :P

It would have been much easier to do the lipstick, nail polish and eye shadow in fondant but I decided to make it more edible. So I cut those items out of cake, frosted with chocolate buttercream and covered with fondant.

Barbie Princess

This is a 3 layered chocolate cake covered with buttercream frosting. This barbie princess cake was made for the 5th birthday of a cute little girl who loves princess.