Cake of the... well, it's been a few months, hasn't it?

       So, it turns out that maintaining a new business AND a regularly kept blog is a real challenge! I apologize for the lengthy delay since my last post. If you want more frequent updates, like us on Facebook and follow our instagram account, I'm on those all the time!
     So, let's do a recap of some of my favorite cakes that I've decorated recently. Now, it should be noted, that some of these are not my original design, so I don't claim real ownership to all them. However, they are almost always tinkered with, if they are not my original concept.
      Without further delay, here are some of my favorite new cakes!

     This pretty little cake was for a classmate of mine. She was celebrating her adorable baby's first birthday! The theme was "Alice in Wonderland" and I loved the idea of doing a cake that wasn't just your every day topsy turvy, mad hatter take. This cake was not an original design, but I did alter it from being a 5 tiered wedding cake, to being a little more suitable for a baby's 1st birthday. I was really happy with how it came out.

      The DJ cake was a cute little birthday cake I made for one of our shop's neighbor's. She was celebrating around Thanksgiving, so the cake was her favorite fall flavor, pumpkin cake with cinnamon cream cheese icing. Sadly, in a sitcom-worthy twist, it turned out that one of her party guests accidentally SAT ON THE CAKE! That's why you always take a photo before it leaves the shop!




   
     These next cakes were made for our Valentine's Day store window. I had a lot of fun making pretty, love-inspired cakes. I adore the simplicity of the pennant cake and I think it could work for a lot of really cool weddings. The "Be Mine" cake allowed me to play around with painting and developing a deep, rich tone of red and gold on the bottom tier.
I even snuck in our initials into the window by "carving" into the birch bark of our rustic wedding cake. It features some of my favorite flowers, peonies and tulips.

    Believe it or not, this brightly colored cake was actually for a baby shower! The mom-to-be has a lot of love for Mexican art and textiles, so her sister selected them as inspiration for the cake. I LOVE the idea of a baby shower that isn't just pastels. I had a lot of fun piping all the details on this cool little cake. Side note: This cake was also ordered by a former classmate of mine. GFS PRIDE FOREVER!

   For my final cake, I wanted to show off one of my super-favorites. I made this cake at the request of a wonderful event planner who found me through the owner of the shop next to ours. She was putting together a big celebration and really wanted the look of multiple cakes and cupcakes for her dessert table. These cakes, including the ruffles, are iced with buttercream and decorated with hand painted gold cake lace.  I made a few purple peonies to garnish the cake and I LOVE how it all came out. I really hope everyone at the party enjoyed them. Just like I hope you have enjoyed this post. If you would like to talk about designing your own wedding or birthday cake, you can contact us through our website at www.frostedfoxcakeshop.com. Also, please follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest and Twitter. I promise I am way better at keeping up with those!

Baby's First Birthday Cake

 

An Owl Themed 1st
Birthday.

    It just wouldn't be a birthday without a birthday cake, right? At least, that's how I feel about it. There are a lot of different schools of thought about which birthdays are the most important ones to celebrate. I just celebrated my 30th birthday last summer and we had a pretty big party (yes, there was a moon bounce).  We all know the big ones are the ones that end in "0," but then 13, 16, 18, and 21 are all big years too! What you might not realize, is that the 1st birthday is one of the biggest celebrations of all!

Rubber Duckie, You're
the One!

  

    For those of us without kids, it might be hard to imagine throwing a huge party for a 1 year old, especially since they probably won't remember it. But who cares? I think we are always looking for a reason to throw a party and eat cake, and your baby's first birthday is a huge milestone! Not only can you start telling people how old your baby is in terms of years instead of months, but you've also survived what was undoubtedly one of the most challenging years of your own life! If that's not a reason to get your friends together and party, I don't know what is! Plus, it's possible you haven't seen much of your friends since you've been understandably a little busy. 

This Was Probably a Very Cute Party.

   

 I've seen 1st birthday cakes that range from feeding 6 people to 75! 75! I've also seen people spend anywhere from about $30 for a pretty little cake to over $400 for their baby's big day! So if you're the kind of person who really likes to go all out, there's no reason not to. If we're being honest, this party is more about you celebrating with your baby and getting some adorable photos, than it is about the baby actually remembering much of it! 

A Cake to Match the Party
Decorations!

    One fun option for a first birthday, is to make a "smash cake" for your baby. This is usually a much smaller cake that is decorated to match the main cake. It's served to the baby and the idea is you just let them go crazy smashing, eating, and coating themselves in the cake. It's a great photo op, you can limit the flavor to more baby friendly ones, and you get to save the real cake for the partygoers who will appreciate it a little bit more. If a separate cake seems like too much, you can always get a matching cupcake for your little one. 

Baby's First Book Cake.

    I love making 1st birthday cakes that go along with a theme. There's a ton of adorable party supplies and ideas out there for 1st birthdays and it's so much fun to make the perfect custom cake to match. Many people like to make a cake that draws from their baby's favorite book, cartoon character or toy. You may want to pick more family friendly flavors (maybe this isn't the time to go for the chai mousse). Also, want to consider the messiness factor if you are going to let your baby really go to town on their little cake. I suggest changing them out of their party outfit and into something simple before hand. 

  In the end, make sure you take lots of photos. Just have a lot of fun with it! Even though I might not remember my own first birthday, I feel pretty confident everyone else had fun! If you'd like to order a 1st birthday cake, or any other cake, check out our website and get in touch with us!

My little brother's first birthday up top,
and my first birthday at the bottom.

  

Cake of the Week: WALL-E addition

Let's do another cake of the week! I know what you're thinking.... I haven't done one of these for a while, and I only ever did one to begin with! Well, you're right. But let's try to get things back on track. I think in the future I will try to feature a new "Cake of the Week" each monday. In general, the cakes will be pulled from the previous week's work, that is unless we get backed up or I want to feature more than one cake from a given week. Today, let's talk about a cute little sculpted cake I made for a friend of mine at the beginning of the month.
    This friend worked with me at my previous job with John and Kira's chocolates and she's been excited to order her son's birthday cake since about January (his birthday wasn't until August!). Back in January when I was young and naive, I assured her that there was no way we wouldn't be in our shop by then, and of course I would do her cake!! Little did I know I would still be working out of my home kitchen, good thing she's a very understanding friend! (Surely, we will be in our shop soon, I promise!)
    So anyway, her little boy loves WALL-E. Like, LOOOOOOVES WALL-E. Which is great because it's a great movie and even though I sobbed through the whole thing I think it's so cool for a little kid to get into it. She asked that I make a small sculpted "WALL-E" for his birthday cake. She suggested that we make him when he is folded up into his box form to simplify his construction. I started with this photo as my base for the design:

This photo served as the basis for my cake.

    We thought that this would work out well so we selected the flavors  (marble cake with chocolate icing as the filling) and I set to work on stacking and sculpting the general shape. I noticed he isn't quite a cube, so I tried to build out the bottom half a little and build up his eyes. This is how he looked before his crumb coat of icing:

    He kind of looks like he's going to be a washing machine... doesn't he? The next step was to cover this body with a layer of buttercream icing. This serves a couple of purposes. It seals all the crumbs and pieces into the cake, it creates a nice, crisp edge and a smooth surface on which to apply the fondant and it provides the delicious flavor of the buttercream before you add the fondant layer. Unfortunately, I didn't take a photo of the crumb coat, but imagine the photos above, except all white and smooth without any more visible cake crumbs.

    Next, I covered his entire body in WALL-E shaded yellow. This formed the base coat to which I started to apply flat cut out pieces in grays, black and more yellow to create the different components to this little robot. At this point, I made little gumpaste eyebrow pieces and let them set up so that I could add them to the finished piece. Once all the fondant was applied this is when you can start to tell he was going to be WALL-E.

   So, now you can see that he is started to look a little bit like WALL-E. Now the fun part begins. I LOVE painting sculpted on cakes because that's when they go from looking a bit like the subject to looking a LOT like the subject. WALL-E is dented, rusted and dirty and metallic. So, I mixed up some browns, reds, grays, blacks, yellows and whites and start building up layers of high-lights, rust and low-lights. I found that by painting on the food-coloring, then wiping a clean towel through it, I could achieve a cool, rusted look. After all his painting, he finally looked like himself.

    One of the thing I've decided to try to challenge myself with as a decorator is to try to add a little extra detail to make the cake extra special. I've usually had to work under such intense deadlines that it wasn't always possible to take a step back and add that extra element that takes a cake from being "good" to being "great." Now that I am opening my own shop, I really want to push myself to do this as a rule, to try not to settle for just "good." So, with that in mind, I realized that WALL-E needed to be with his best friend, a little cockroach names Hal. I started by finding a photo of him and then I built him out of gumpaste. I made his little body and teeny legs and antenna then allowed them to dry. Next I attached a pair of shiny wings and then I attached his legs and antenna to his body and let the whole thing set up on a toothpick. Once he was completely dry, I attached him to WALL-E so that they could be together. This is what Hal looked like on his own:

   The last thing I had to do was to address the cake drum WALL-E is sitting on. I decided to use cake crumbs to create a dirt look, since WALL-E is a trash collecting robot on a desolate Earth. Then, for the birthday message, I made a couple of leaves (just like the one WALL-E finds at the beginning of the film) and wrote "Happy Birthday" on them. I was really happy with how WALL-E came out. I can't wait to do another sculpted cake. Here he is in all his finished glory!

   So there you have  it! If you'd like to see more of our photos or if you  are interested in ordering a cake, please check out our website www.frostedfoxcakeshop.com for the how-to and photos. Also, please "like" us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/frostedfoxcakeshop  or on Instagram for more current posts about our shop, our staff and our projects! Thanks for reading!!