First swim party

There is a good story behind this one. We were at the place where my son takes swim lessons one day and idly talking to the manager. Nobody else was there, so we sat and talked for a long time. She's real nice and chatty, so we get along well. She was talking about the parties they do there and talked about all of the woes they've had with the cakes. They had to drive a great distance to get cakes for the party to get them from one bakery where their other branch orders from. They asked if we knew anyone who did cakes. My wife just pointed at me. We started talking and I agreed to make them a couple of samples so they could try my more common and typical recipes. I brough those over then next week and they were a hit. However, the owner was still not convinced. He wanted to save a bit more money and possibly use one of the local grocery store bakeries to make the cake. The manager pressured him into using me so that their clients would get a much better product and it would be more customized. The owner relented and I started filling orders for them. Since this is a swimming party, I wanted to go with that theme for their cakes. The first one I made for them happened to be a pool. I took some risks on this one though. I wanted to get the water effect, so I tried making piping gel for the first time to get the clear water effect. It worked beautifully, but was nerve wracking. Since I worked on the cake late into Friday night and again Saturday morning, there was no chance of fixing anthing if things went catastrophically wrong. The gel was m biggest worry. Never having used it before, I was concerned that it would either break down on me and ruin the rest of the cake or leak around the sides and do the same. I tried to mitigate that as much as possible with the design, but I still didn't know for sure. Piping gel has to be cooked. Therefore, it has to be cooled before putting it on the cake. Since I was using a lot, I made the gel on Friday night to use on Saturday. When I went to bed, it was still warm and didn't look quite thick enough to me, but it turned out fine in the morning.

   

If memory serves, the cake was white and I used white buttercream over it. The edges of the pool are fondant. The letters on the bottom of the pool were made from fondant as well and are formed from lots of individual blue "tiles". The morning I had to deliver, I put the letters down then poured the piping gel over the letters. Since put put the tight fitting fondant tiles on the edge of the pool. The served as a barrier for the gel and kept it in place. After pouring the gel, I then made little lane marker floats out of fondant and set them gently in the gel. I then connected the floats with lines of thin buttercream icing. The end result looked cool. It really had the effect of looking through water at the bottom of the pool. It isn't the easiest thing to make out in the pictures, but the one below shows a little bit of the glare from the gel when taken at an angle. It looked much cooler in person.

   

I had leftover fondant after doing the pool sides, so I made the waves to go around the sides of the cake. It just added a little more interest. It was really well received, so my cake making days for FINS had started.

Churchin'

I don't get a lot of requests for religious themed cakes. I did the cross previously, so this is only my second. This one was for a Christian school that one of my co-worker's kids goes to. They came up with the concept. I think they use the sun as one of their logos at the school, though it is not the actual school logo. It went with the theme though. They also wanted it to be colorful. The concept I chose was a bit challenging. The multi-color border had to be piped one color at a time. I had four icing bags with the different colors, and I simply alternated each scallop as I went. It took a little while, but it looked pretty cool when finished.

   

As I recall, the cake was half white and half chocolate with white buttercream icing. It did lead to me getting another order from one of the employees or parents attending the event.

Simply chocolate

This one is a huge hit and I've made plenty of them. It's a simple chocolate cake covered with chocolate buttercream icing. I also tried out the new mega star tip on this cake to see what it would look like. The borders were monstrous! I had plenty of icing, so it wasn't a problem. I like the huge border look when it's on a plain cake like this. It adds interest.

 

Cupcake frenzy

These were made for Admin Professionals Day. I had a request from one of my co-workers to make these for their administrative assistant. I gladly obliged. I had a bunch of cupcakes to make during this week. The chocolate buttercream on chocolate cupcakes were for the admin.

   

They were very well received by the staff and I had people come by throughout the day and give me compliments. Interesting since I've brought in my chocolate cake made the same way and people have been pretty quiet on the matter. I did use the opportunity to try out my new icing tip for cupcakes. It's the biggest star ti I could find and it makes some really great looking cupcakes. During the same week, I was asked to make cupcakes for someone's birthday, by them. That's always weird to me. I sort of feel bad when someone orders their own cake or cupcakes and pays for them. Happens all the time though. These were gluten free cupcakes where I didn't even have to buy the mix. The birthday girl provided them for me, though I offered to make it from scratch. They wanted girly, so I recommended pink. Below is the result.

   

Looks girly enough to me. I dyed the cupcakes pink as well, so you couldn't get away from the color. I also found these really cool clam shell cupcake carriers at the cake supply place. They are awesome for storing and transporting cupcakes.

Another pink one

I have gotten more traction out of this cake design than any other. People are creatures of habit and some just keep ordering this one in different guises. This one is again white cake with white buttercream icing covered with pink marshmallow fondant. The letters used the edible silver candies and there is edible glitter sprinkled on top by request.